The Eurynome Code: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set

by K. Gorman

  They came upon the first human a full five minutes later, speed-walking from one door in the big hallway to a door on the opposite side. By the way he turned his head their way, he must have seen them coming, but he didn’t stop.

  A few seconds later, he was gone.

  “Friendly lot they’ve got here,” Soo-jin commented.

  Remembering their experience with the inspection officer, Karin silently agreed.

  “Let’s assume they’re under a lot of stress and actually much nicer under normal circumstances,” Marc said.

  They both turned to look at him. Soo-jin raised a single eyebrow.

  “Or not,” he said, both hands coming up in defense. “Never mind.”

  Then a shout echoed down the hall. “Hey! You there! You the Nemina?”

  A man waved at them as he approached, the netlink in his hand glowing. He had dark skin—not as dark as Marc’s, but more the color of an unroasted chestnut. When he got closer, they could see he had a thin mustache.

  “Hopper?” Marc asked, extending his hand in greeting.

  The man shook his head. “He sent me down, actually. They’re having trouble—no, never mind. You’ll see soon. I’m Netahl. You know about the Shades?”

  Shades. Her eyebrow twitched. Good to know others were using similar terms.

  “We do,” Soo-jin said.

  He hesitated. “Did anyone on your ship…?”

  “No. We got them all.”

  Netahl sucked in a breath. “You are lucky, then.” His gaze dropped to Ethan. “What I’m about to show you is not a pretty sight. Are you sure…?”

  Karin clutched his shoulder, drawing him close. “He stays.”

  “He came from a ship that was not lucky,” Marc explained.

  There was a small silence. Netahl’s face sobered.

  “I see,” he said. “I am sorry to hear that. This way, then.”

  He led them into the door they’d seen the other man disappear through earlier, and they climbed a set of stairs before segueing into a single elevator.

  “This station is not big,” he explained as he pressed the button for the top floor. “Not in terms of active areas, anyway. Enforcement and operation take up the entire top floor so that they are easy to get to. These elevators connect through all of the levels.”

  Karin watched the overhead display clock through the levels. “Tell us about the Shades.”

  He hesitated. “I thought you already knew…?”

  “We’ve been in the outer range,” Marc said. “We only know what we’ve experienced, and then what we saw on Ethan’s ship.”

  At the sound of his name, Ethan’s jaw tightened. His hands balled up into fists at his side.

  “And we weren’t there for long,” she added. “No news from the relay, either.”

  “Ah,” Netahl said.

  At first, that seemed like all he would say. He stood silent for a few moments. The elevator dinged at their floor, and he stepped out into a new hallway, this one much smaller than the last, and held the door open for them.

  Then, he paused.

  “I was on the night shift,” he said. “Data entry, mostly. We didn’t have a big ship in, so there wasn’t much happening on the cameras. That’s how I saw the first Shadows.” His jaw tightened. “I thought someone was playing a prank on me—you know, with video manipulation. They don’t look real.”

  “We got one on camera, too,” Marc said.

  Karin shuddered. That had been her Shadow they’d gotten on camera.

  Netahl nodded. “Well, I didn’t believe it at first. But then I heard screams. Just one or two at first, and they cut off very quickly.” The muscles in his jaw and neck tensed, and he darted a glance down to Ethan before he continued. “I called it in after that. We managed to save some people. The others…”

  The image of the people on the Ozark came to her mind, and she grimaced.

  “Black-eyed?”

  He nodded. “Yes. We put them… well, you’ll see.”

  Gods, this was going to be bad. Caishen wasn’t large, but it was certainly larger than their three-person crew, and the twenty or so that manned the Ozark.

  The grim set to his face sent another shiver down her spine. Her own jaw tensed, and her back stiffened.

  Then they got to the next corridor.

  A series of windows slanted outward from the hallway, looking down on the room below. A single glance through one of them sent her stomach churning.

  It had been a gravball court once. She could tell by the high markers on the walls and the way the nets were tucked into the four corners. It was spacious, with the same dulled metal walls as the rest of the station and a floor that at least looked like the official wooden courts she’d seen on Belenus.

  It was absolutely full of people.

  They were standing, at least, not packed up in stasis bags or pods like she’d seen in a few cases of non-planetary epidemics, which made it easy to tell that they had lost the fight with the Shadows. She recognized it in the clothing they wore, and in how they moved. They were listless, scattered about the room almost at random, except for a couple of groups who bunched loosely at the doors.

  Ethan went ramrod-straight beside her.

  Marc pointed toward one of the groups. “What happens when you open the doors?”

  “Not much.” Netahl shrugged. “Hopper’s thinking of lowering them in soon. Getting hard to push them in when they crowd the door like that.”

  “Do they eat?” Karin asked.

  He flashed her an aggrieved look. “No. We’ve tried to force food into them, but…”

  “They don’t seem to be starving,” Soo-jin commented. “Have you tested them?”

  “Oh—yes. We’ve run about every test we can physically manage, given our equipment limitations. We’ve even got a few in full monitoring pods, you know, all hooked up… Ehm…” Again, Netahl glanced down at Ethan before continuing. “They appear to be in stasis.”

  Karin frowned. “I saw one menstruating.”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know. That’s just what I was told.”

  She exchanged a look with Soo-jin, who rolled her eyes and threw her hands up. “I guess, even with possession, some female processes don’t go away.”

  Marc cleared his throat. “Have any of them… done anything?”

  “No. They seem restricted to basic functions. They can open doors, pick things up—that sort of thing.”

  “The ones on his ship were attracted to light.”

  “And people,” Karin added.

  “Yes. Light, children, and other people.” Netahl’s smile was grim. “And in that order, it would seem.”

  Looking down, she tried not to speculate how they’d come to that conclusion. Some of the people down there were a lot smaller than the others.

  Ethan grabbed her hand and tugged, getting her attention. He raised his eyebrows when she looked down, then nodded meaningfully to the windows.

  She raised her own eyebrows, then frowned, moving closer to the pane for a better look.

  He tugged again. “They’re attracted to light.”

  Everyone glanced over when he spoke. Karin felt heat rise on the back of her neck. She resisted the urge to clutch her hand tighter.

  “Yes, I know.” She forced a smile. “Marc used some flares when we got you.”

  Ethan narrowed his eyes at her, then dropped his head, saying nothing more.

  “Do you know much about the Shadows?” Marc asked. “How they come? Why?”

  Netahl shrugged. “Only that they come, and that we can kill them.”

  “Do you know if anyone had a dream before they came?” Soo-jin asked. “With some kind of old ruins in it?”

  Before he could answer, a scuffing sound at the end of the hall drew their attention. Several men appeared, outfitted nearly as heavily as the inspections team had been.

  “I had a dream,” said the leader of the group. “It was weird as shit.”

  Chapter Fo
urteen

  “We don’t really talk about dreams here,” Officer Victor Hopper said after he had introduced himself. “People consider it unmanly, somehow.”

  He was the commanding officer of station security and, since the captain of station operations was standing down in the room below them with the others, he was also in charge of everything else. He shook each of their hands, including Ethan’s. Behind him, the other two were almost cookie-cutter replicas of the inspection team from earlier—big, burly, and with matching dour looks. One kept an eye on the corridor as Hopper moved amongst the group, chatting.

  “Wasn’t the founder of dream analysis a man?” Karin said.

  Hopper gave her a broad-toothed smile. “I have no idea.”

  “So tell us about your dream.” Soo-jin glanced hard at the security officers. “In a manly way, of course.”

  “Not much to it, actually. The ruins were the big part, and she already said them.” Hopper jerked a thumb in Karin’s direction.

  “Were they in a field?” Karin asked. “With stars?”

  “There she goes again, telling me my dream,” he said to Soo-jin. “I don’t even get to say anything.”

  Karin rolled her eyes. “Did anyone else have this dream?”

  Hopper turned and raised an eyebrow at the two men. “Boys?”

  They looked to each other. Then, simultaneously, they nodded.

  “What’d I tell you?” he said. “It was weird as shit. I think my wife had it, too…”

  “Were there other people in your dreams?” Marc asked. “Or were you alone?”

  “Just me and some hunks of rock.” He gestured to the men behind him. “Like usual. Boys?”

  Again, the two men looked to each other.

  Again, they nodded.

  Ethan let go of Karin’s hand and moved to the window, leaning into the slanted glass, his movement delicate. She watched him for a second, long enough to gauge the emotion on his face—not a great expression, but not falling apart. He seemed more curious and deep in thought than anything else—then returned to the conversation.

  Soo-jin had rounded on the two grunts, a hand on her hip. “Do you guys speak?”

  Their attention switched to her.

  They nodded.

  The ghost of a smile traced across her lips.

  When Karin glanced back over, Hopper was staring at her.

  “What does it mean, anyway?” he asked. “This dream?”

  He held less of a smile in his eyes now, and his jovial accent had dropped when he had asked. Her own spirits dipped as she met his eyes, serious.

  “We’re not sure,” Marc answered. “We just noticed it. Thought it might matter, given the nature of our… enemy.”

  His mouth twisted on the last word as if it left a sour taste on his tongue.

  “You mean, ‘weird things go with weird things’?” Hopper’s face also twisted. “Yeah, I can see what you mean. You might be grasping at straws, but aren’t we all?”

  Her jaw tightened. Yes, they were. Whatever this was, it was big—far bigger than they’d initially thought. And it was also connected to her past. Everyone they had spoken to confirmed that they had seen the ruins.

  Gods, what in the ten hells was happening? Had one of the other kids—no, they had all escaped. And none of the ones she’d known had powers this massive. There was one that could do some time manipulation, they’d been taken away and were likely dead. And everyone else who escaped were probably still on the other side of the gate.

  Technically, they were in the same universe, but she had trouble imagining that a person from Old Earth could reach the Sirius System on mental ability alone.

  Then again, this Shadow thing had already reached across almost a week of space travel. And she had a bad feeling that it had spread quite a bit farther.

  “We’re hoping to go to Enlil, get news there. Have you heard anything out of there?”

  “Not since the incident.” He shook his head. “Most of the others took off for there, too, but it’s too early to get a ping back yet.”

  “I see. Well, we’d like to get some supplies while we’re here. Load up. That all right?”

  “So long’s you got the cash, you’re good.” He gestured to the window. “It’s not like they’re eating anything.”

  A small noise from Ethan drew their attention over. He gave them a small, hesitant wave, his gaze darting between each of them, and lingering on the two security mountains.

  “Uhm, sorry.” His voice trembled. He swallowed, then turned and pointed down at the window. “Could I get a closer look?”

  Hopper raised an eyebrow.

  “We rescued him from another ship,” Marc explained. “He was the only one who made it.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a closer look, too,” Soo-jin said, tilting her head. “Never did get to see one myself.”

  Hopper’s jaw tensed, as did Netahl’s. The two security grunts, too, seemed to stand a bit stiffer.

  “Yes,” Hopper said finally. “I think I can arrange that.”

  He took them to a sub-corridor, dropping down a flight of stairs into a narrower hallway lined with doors. The walls changed from the rough, matte-gray plastic of the rest of the station to a brushed metal that gleamed with a dull sheen under the overhead lights. As they walked between the doors, Karin’s unease grew when she realized they were cabins, not cells.

  “What happens when one of them touches you?” Marc asked.

  Hopper shrugged. “Not a whole lot. You get touched. They linger. It gets weird.”

  His words might have been a joke, but they fell flat on his dismal tone. Though he tried to hide it, he was tense—not scared, she thought, but emotional.

  He stopped at a door and pressed his thumb against the sensor. After a second, the red flashed to green.

  The door hissed open.

  The woman stood alone in the room, dressed in a set of gray station sleepwear and illuminated on all sides by the baseboard lighting. She was tall, thickset, with long tawny hair that fell over her shoulders. It looked like it had been brushed recently.

  When she looked up, her black eyes glistened in the light like oil.

  “Sharon. My wife.” Hopper shifted. “At least, I hope she still is.”

  Karin stared, transfixed at seeing them up close. Sharon’s eyes didn’t have the obvious depthlessness of the Shadows, but there was something about them beyond their color that made the hair rise on the back of her neck, and their interior did appear to have some give.

  Hopper’s jaw worked again, the sound attracting her attention. Muscles rippled beneath the skin of his cheeks, and Karin was close enough to hear his teeth crack. She thought she saw his lips tremble a little.

  But he took a breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped forward. “She won’t hurt you. She doesn’t move around as much as some of them. More like a doll, really.”

  Ethan took a tentative step, arms curled into his chest, and Karin stepped right along with him, ready to haul him back out of the room.

  But the woman only watched, her black eyes blinking once.

  Soo-jin pushed right past them, stepping into the room with a business-like manner. “How long ago was she taken?”

  Sharon’s head turned to follow her as she made a small circuit around. When Soo-jin wiggled a hand around in front of her face, Sharon reached out to grab it.

  Soo-jin let her.

  Behind them, Marc’s breath caught in his throat.

  But Hopper was right. Nothing happened.

  After a few seconds, Soo-jin jerked her hand out of reach.

  “She went last night,” Hopper said. “A loose Shade found her around the Mess. No one else was around… we were… Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “You say they can open doors?” Marc indicated the sensor next to the threshold.

  “Not locked ones.” Hopper tapped it, bringing up the display. “So I hope, anyway.”

  “Netahl said they were attracted to light and
children first,” Karin said. “Why isn’t she moving?”

  “She doesn’t need to. You’re within her trigger point. If you move back, she’ll come forward.” Hopper stepped back, beckoning with a hand. “Come on, try it. She could use the exercise, anyway. I don’t think she moves much while in here.”

  Ethan went stiff under her hand for a second, but then relaxed. Perhaps knowing she was looking at him, he gave a subtle nod, then nudged her to step back.

  The movement attracted Sharon’s attention. Her head turned, black eyes tracking to Ethan. She watched as they moved back, eyes unblinking.

  As soon as they stepped over the threshold, she swayed, leaning forward.

  She took her first step.

  “Like clockwork,” Hopper said as his wife walked out of the room, her focus on only Ethan. “Don’t worry, she won’t do anything. It’s just an attraction.”

  Still, Karin pushed Ethan behind her as they stopped. She stared as Sharon approached, her bare feet quiet on the metal floor. Sharon had several inches on her, and she came close enough that Karin put an arm between them, pressing on Sharon’s shoulder to stop her.

  The black eyes, which had been focused on Ethan until now, moved up to meet hers.

  There was nothing in them. No pupil, no iris. Not even a trace of a sclera. As if someone had dipped a brush into black ink, painted the entire surface, and left it wet. When she tilted her head, taking a side-step to get a better angle on it, she saw there was still a surface of clear liquid—the cornea?—over on top of the black.

  Looking inward, it didn’t feel like she was looking at a retina.

  “We call them ‘Dark Ones,’” Hopper said. “The shadow-men are Shades.”

  “Someone likes their D&D,” Marc commented.

  “That would be Hazel. She’s in with the rest of them in the big room.”

  The room with all the people.

  Karin’s jaws clenched.

  She barely heard the rest. Sharon had met her eyes again, and the black fascinated her. Ethan tugged on her arm again, and she squeezed back.

  Her light could hurt the Shadows.

  What could it do to the ones they’d taken?