by K. Gorman
Ringing metal turned to thumps and stomps on pre-fab resin as the rest of them piled in. One of the creatures—outside, sounding close—screamed. The dull red feeling at the edge of her mind throbbed with the sound, accompanied by a sweet, coppery smell that took her nose. Visions of Dr. Ma, her abdomen ripped apart and gnawed on, tripped through her head.
Then Baik shut the door behind him, pulled the lock she hadn’t seen—a sturdy, double-bolted contraption that she doubted the metal-cutting monsters couldn’t easily bypass—and jogged up the hall toward the rest of them. He flicked on a small flashlight and made a gesture to the first two soldiers he came across, Seras and Colahary.
“We need to find a room. You two, spread out. Find out if this place has a basement. Even better if we can go below the discus.” The flashlight shone her way. “Karin, put that out. It attracts them.”
She frowned. You have no way of knowing that.
“It hurts them,” she said.
“Which I appreciate, but put it out all the same, or I will knock you out.”
He strode past her without a second glance, heading up the hall with his blaster at the ready. Karin, wincing as another wave of static roared up at the edge of her mind, doused the light with a flick of her hand and reabsorbed it, putting her fingers to her temple. The image of the double eclipse came back to her, then a brief flash of the ruins, also under the double black band of the Nova Earth event.
As she shook her head, pushing the images away and refocusing her adrenaline on the present, she realized that Marc was shaking her shoulder.
She was still standing, but she’d moved about three meters from where she’d last remembered, and half the people in the hallway had moved much farther. Laika had taken position at the left-hand side of the hall, facing the door.
“—rin,” Marc was saying. “Can you hear me?”
He shook her shoulder again. This time, she responded, tipping her head up to his face. The worry smoothed out on his features, before being replaced by a different, deeper kind of tension in the next second. He turned his gaze up the hall, the brown tint of his skin catching the briefest flash of light from David, who stood at a midpoint between them and Laika.
The hall remained dark and boxy, its shadowy walls lit only by the pale gradients of their lights or the different-toned rectangles that marked a series of consistent doorways on either side. More than one of them was open, spilling pieces of illumination into the darkness. Karin stared at one, realizing what it meant.
Windows. They had windows. To the outside. Windows that those things could break through.
Colahary’s voice shouted from down the hall. “Here! Stairs!”
“Check them,” Baik ordered.
As the soldier raised his weapon and stalked in, his steps smooth and quick, Seras bypassed him to continue her sweep.
“Your nose is bleeding,” Marc said to her. “Are you okay?”
Distracted, she raised a hand to her face, fingers touching the top of her upper lip. They came back wet with blood.
“It’s ending, I think,” she said, wiping more of the blood off and tipping her head back.
The static rose in her mind again, but quieter this time. She took a deep breath against it and pushed it down, counting in her head. Marc helped guide her free hand to find the bridge of her nose and pinch it.
From down the hall, slightly muffled by the walls, Colahary’s voice came again. “Clear!”
The first aid session ended. Still pinching her nose, she let herself be led down the hall, her walk turning into a shuffling jog. The static rose again, making her squint her eyes shut. This time, though, it appeared to be fading. She got an image of orange light, like a sunset, and of people fading into it, then the sound and feeling receded.
And with it, it seemed, went the eclipse. As they turned into a dark, concrete stairwell, this one more akin to the bunker she’d been promised earlier than the kind of residential or institutional building this seemed to be, the outside light returned through the windows.
She let go of her nose to reach for the dark metal railing on one side, fingers curling up to avoid smearing her blood on it, and followed the rest down. The steps were uneven, poured without workman’s guild supervision. Old tiles, once white but now stained into an off, subtle shade between yellow and brown, rose from the halfway point of the stairs, their grout grimy and dark under the single, yellow box-light that provided for the stairs. Flakes of rust scraped free of the railing under her touch. Naked pipes crawled along the ceiling above them, reminding her of some of the older stations she’d been in.
After the first landing, the tile ended, and the walls took on a recognizable cinderblock shape under the white paint. Baik opened the first door, glanced in, closed it, and went for the second. After a brief pause, he stepped back and gestured for them to go inside. The small concrete room beyond was bare, no windows on any sides. Only a naked tubelight with hasty, uncoded wiring hung at an angle from the wall, sending a stark light across the room. A small mop and bucket stood in the far corner, next to a large, black stain that had oozed across the floor. Squarish marks on the floor indicated where other things had been once.
Everyone piled in, forming a loose, unraveled circle as they turned to each other.
“Sir,” Laika started. “The event is over. I saw the sky come back.”
“I know, I know, but we can’t risk a stray. Air support will be here in an hour or two. We need to find a new vehicle, keep moving.”
Ah. So that’s what he’d been waiting for. And why he’d insisted that they keep driving. Why stop for breaks if they were about to be taken to safety?
Baik turned to Seras and Colahary. “You two will be with me. We’ll search the streets, see if we can’t bypass an ignition somehow—”
David stepped forward. “I can rewire most standard vehicles without the key.”
Her eyebrows twitched, seeing him in a new light—they taught that in butler school?
Baik, too, seemed incredulous. His gaze narrowed on David, mouth forming a small ‘o’ before he spoke again. “Really?”
“Yes. Most of the Diaz and Luna brands are easy enough. Arctos and Bijou take a bit more time.”
“All right, you’re in. We can use another body to carry things, anyway.” Baik cracked a smile. “And afterward, you’re going to have to tell me about your misspent youth.”
David bowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay, let’s go. Move fast, everyone.”
Baik followed Colahary out the door, Seras and David trailing behind. After they left, Laika walked up to the door, leaned out to watch them go, then shut it behind them. It had a small, insubstantial lock near the center, which she flicked over with her thumb.
Then she turned around, leveling them with a narrow-eyed stare.
Karin tried her best to look innocent and innocuous. It wasn’t very hard, since she was still half in shock over everything that had happened. The adrenaline hadn’t even had time to cool from her system. Whatever the case, something must have assuaged Laika’s concerns because she gave a half-shrug and holstered her weapon, apparently deciding that they weren’t crazy enough to go anywhere or try anything with monsters on the loose.
Or perhaps it was Karin’s sagging appearance that made her relax. She could feel the blood smeared over her face, and the bleeding still hadn’t stopped. She also knew how beat she must look. Even with only the skin of her hands, arms, and nose visible to her, she’d noticed the unclean sheen that had developed sometime during the car ride and the escape. And her hair had a greasy, two-day-old unwashed look to it, helped along by the dirt and debris that she felt whenever she smoothed it back from her face.
Still leaning against Marc, who’d taken a semi-protective, semi-concerned stance behind her, she glanced up and met his eyes. He didn’t do anything so obvious as nod, but a rigid look had entered his gaze even before she’d moved—he’d already come to the same conclusion she had.
; His hand tightened on her bicep for a full second, then let go. “Looks like your bleeding has stopped.”
She resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose lest it start again. “If only I had a tissue. Think we can go rob another convenience store soon?”
“Maybe we’ll find some here. This place’ll probably have bathrooms.” He made a gesture to the mop that stood at the back, an old wood and metal thing that looked like it had been through a dust storm. “If anything, there’ll be a tap somewhere.”
“There’s a bathroom on the next floor,” Laika said. “We can take you there when they get back.”
Marc nodded. “A store’ll have a change of clothes.”
“We’ll be at Hawkings-Navarro in a few hours,” Laika informed him. “Probably better to wait until then.”
Yet another reason for them to get away soon. If air support was going to pick them up, it was either a minor miracle or a major tragedy that they hadn’t already. They must be occupied with the results of the last shift event—that narrowed their window of escape opportunity.
As if reading her mind, Marc left her side, steering across the room to Laika. The soldier gave him a narrow-eyed look as he approached, one that passed to Karin as she joined him, but Marc cleared his throat, and his hands fidgeted together, staying close to his chest, a manner that exuded an awkward sort of politeness.
“So,” he said. “Are you all caught up on Moon Sailor?”
Laika gave a snort, the suspicion in her expression vanishing in an instant. “Yvette is never going to fall for Aiden. It’s quite sad.”
“But Veronica has a chance,” Marc countered. “If she can get out of Vender’s Theater.”
“No chance. He’ll never let her go.”
“Kain may get her out,” Karin said. “He owes her—and he should be suspicious of that message she sent him. Why else would they have given it screentime?”
She frowned, more details of the last episode coming back to her. The drama hadn’t been updated since the Shadows attacked—popular news sources reported that several important figures on the show had been turned Lost, and she’d had more than a few requests that she find herself in Alliance territory and heal the cast. Though Fallon might be technically at war with the Alliance, her people apparently loved Moon Sailor just as much as the Alliance people did.
The show had started off as a simple mystery drama, but had quickly spanned into a pan-genre mashup of seasons. Lately, it had been some sort of espionage mix with a dash of cyberpunk. Yvette was a cyborg, one of the first to be mounted with a fully functional AI brain, which the show suggested, in dark, moody, blurry segments, was awakening into its own potentially violent persona. Aiden was the good guy who’d happened upon her in a crisis, then kept coming back in sweet moments that happened to coincide with moments where she was feeling awkward and vulnerable.
Veronica, on the other hand, was the genetically enhanced former super spy that had spent the second season as the drama’s main antagonist, nearly killing Lin, the titular protagonist, mid-season before she’d had her redemption arc and became a dark, edgy, sarcastic addition to the main cast.
They both sucked in thoughtful breaths after she spoke.
“Shit,” Marc said. “I forgot about that. Good memory, Kar.”
“Fuck, me too.” Laika said, her frown making her eyebrows slant over her eyes. “Does that mean Anna might ride along for the rescue, too, then?”
“Now that would be interesting.”
The two of them went on, but Karin half-dropped out of the conversation, the rising tension inside her too much to continue. Her eyes drooped to half-lids as she took a moment to fuss with her dirty hands, trying to hide the way that they shook. Hopefully, Laika would take it as a sign of shock and nerves from the attack they’d just survived—it was a normal reaction, considering they’d been about two seconds away from being killed for most of their run. Unfortunately, she didn’t have to feign the tired expression on her face. The event had really drained her.
But she could survive. She could keep going. She nodded in appropriate places, watching the two of them interact. Although Laika gave some hard looks at some of the quicker and larger hand movements he made, she didn’t move from her position on the wall, and, as the minutes ticked by and Karin rejoined the conversation, arguing with a fervor over one of Moon Sailor’s finer controversies that divided its fans, Laika appeared to come to the same conclusion that Karin would have come to and that Marc was trying to play—that his apparent nervousness stemmed from the attack they’d just experienced.
He waited another five minutes, then attacked.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marc’s hand whipped out, faster than a blink. In the time it took her to register his movement and Laika’s surprised squawk, he’d lunged across the distance. A scrape of metal sounded as she regained her blaster and Marc wrestled it against the wall.
Karin sprang back as the two of them tussled to the side, Laika letting off a series of quick palm-strikes that Marc blocked with his shoulder. The tendons strung tight on the back of his hand. They both grunted and swore, Marc the clear winner in the height and weight department.
After a few tense, struggling seconds and a pained yell, the blaster clattered against the wall and fell to the floor.
Karin darted in, feeling a sense of déjà vu as she snatched the fallen weapon up and rotated its business end away from her. She forced her shaking hands into the grip Nomiki had taught her, and her reaching finger found and deactivated the safety on its side. A tinny whine rose in the air as it powered up.
She squared herself and turned back to the fight, raising the gun.
Marc’s back was to her, in the way, his muscles taut and straining under his shirt. Laika was attempting to get some kind of attack in, something Karin recognized from Nomiki, but Marc had her in a slow maneuver, one arm clamped over her shoulder, and was keeping her off balance. Laika’s head was bowed down, her blonde hair pulling loose from her ponytail—not a hairstyle Nomiki recommended for close-combat fighting. As they rotated around, Karin saw that Marc had blocked her other hand from going to the comms unit in her ear.
Then, he did something with his foot. They both sagged to the floor, Laika falling harder. Karin stepped forward, looking for an opening, but, as Marc muscled Laika into some sort of hold, one arm straight back and locked with her shoulder, she felt as though her control of the blaster was a moot point at this juncture of the fight. They both breathed hard and heavy on the floor. Laika snarled and renewed her struggle, shooting her shoulders back and bucking as if to unbalance Marc, but he only caught her other hand and wrangled it into a different pose—not quite a lock, but awkward for her, anyway.
Then, she tried to scream.
He probably sensed that it was coming—Laika had taken in a large breath beforehand. With the same quickness of his first strike, Marc freed one of his hands and reached for her head and shoved it forward.
There was a sickening crunch as the side of her head slammed into the floor.
The soldier went still.
A stony, queasy churn hit Karin’s stomach as the room fell silent. Her eyes, already wide, stared at Laika’s face. Within a second, as if he’d flicked a switch, she’d gone inanimate and limp, the muscles in her cheeks and jaw all slack, eyes unfocused, closing slowly.
Gods, is she dead?
No. She wasn’t. Just unconscious.
Marc waited a few seconds, maintaining his hold on her. When it became clear that the woman wasn’t going to move, he shifted. One arm still held her down, along with the rest of his body, laying across her in a pose that looked as awkward as it was hard to keep, but the other went to her throat, fingers feeling for her pulse.
He nodded, the movement more for himself than it was for her, she felt, then got off and crouched at Laika’s side. Her body slumped down. He guided it into a recovery position, closing her eyes and checking the position of her tongue in her mouth, gave her another quic
k check, then patted her down.
He removed the second gun at her ankle, one of the short, compact stunners Karin had seen in the markets, as well as a netlink and a laser tech multitool from her pocket. In her other pocket was a small compact of tiger balm and a pill box.
Without glancing back, he said, “You can put that down now.”
She realized with a jolt that she was still aiming the blaster. Heat flooded her face, more shame and panic at what she’d been doing than embarrassment that he’d caught her, and dropped its aim to the ground, clicking its safety off in the same motion. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. If you can find some rope, or something to tie her with, that’d be good. I doubt she’ll stay down more than a few minutes.” He glanced down, wiping some spittle from his lip that he’d acquired in the fight. “Maybe something for her mouth, too. We don’t want her yelling.”
His breaths still came in heavy, prolonged bouts, his chest moving like a bellows. By the way his gaze avoided hers, his attention instead on the part of her shadow that stretched across the floor to their right, she guessed he was feeling some of the same feelings she was right now.
No girlfriend ever wanted to see her boyfriend assault a woman.
“Right,” she said, also dropping her gaze. She swung toward the door. “I’ll find something.”
She found a coil of dirty rope under the stairwell. Marc took that along with the package of tissues he’d fished from one of Laika’s other pockets, and used the multi-tool to cut it into a long and a short piece. He bound her hands with one, then wrapped the other in tissues and put it in her mouth, tying it around the back of her head where it met the neck.
Karin didn’t make any comments about sexual kink as he worked, only watched. The sick feeling in her gut had settled somewhat, replaced by something stiff and cold. Adrenaline fueled her blood, and there was a quiet, thrilling pulse that jangled up and down her nerves as the minutes ticked on.