by K. Gorman
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She jerked awake, kicking out and landing two hollow thumps on something at her feet. The whole world seemed to tumble around her as she panicked, her legs and chest caught up in some sort of strap. Light sprang up, adrenaline shooting straight into her blood as the memory of the dream flooded over her. For a second, her mind still spun from the fall, a dizzying sensation only magnified by the turn and movement of the buildings she saw outside. She struggled against her restraints, breaths coming rough and fast in her throat. One arm came out, and her flailing hand smacked back, meeting the soft surface of…
A car seat?
As her vision focused, recognizing the shapes and features closest to her, Marc pulled the Husky he’d stolen to a slow stop. His startled expression met her gaze in the mirror, his eyes full of worry and concern.
Well, that was a bit of an overreaction on my part. As she licked her dry lips and got her breathing under control, she dropped her gaze down from where Marc stared at her in the mirror, a flush of heat warming her cheeks, and began to extract herself from the two seatbelts he’d put around her—in a logical, proper manner this time.
“Hi,” she said.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Y-yes, I—” She cleared her throat, ready to continue her answer, but frowned as she caught the hint of a chemical aftertaste. “Why does my mouth taste like concentrated soap?”
“You ate a few nutrient packs while you were out,” Marc informed her. “You also got a nano treatment for your head. You hit it kind of hard, so I wanted to be sure.”
Well, that definitely coincided with what she’d thought had happened while in that weird not-dream. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Tylanus’ little ESP hobby—actually, she was sure, and she didn’t like it—but now that she was outside of it and not having to worry about Tylanus and Dr. Sasha’s world-domination goals, her thoughts turned back to something Dr. Takahashi had said once, when she’d been asking about the Eurynome Project.
According to him, the project had been meant to make some sort of hive-mind macrocosm before the two Corringham brothers had gone rogue in their memory removal. Was it them who had been looking for a ‘genesis point’ to human consciousness, or had that always been in the project?
Whatever the case, it was sounding like Dr. Sasha had repurposed Eurynome for her own goals, as was evidenced by the recreation of many Eurynome subjects in her secret, pocket-dimension lab.
“You sure you’re okay?” Marc asked. “How’s your head feeling?”
“I feel like I’ve been wrung through the panic-meter. Tylanus and I had another chat, but this time, it was inside a dream. Except he said it was not a dream, and he could fucking control the world. And Layla—Project Athena—was there, too, but she was really fucking weird about it.”
There was a brief moment of silence in the car as Marc processed this. A flicker of uncertainty ran over his face, visible in the mirror, but it smoothed out a few seconds later.
“You’re seeing strange men in your dreams, Karin? I’m shocked.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “Yes. I’m cheating on you with the creepiest man in the known universe.”
“Aww, Tylanus isn’t that bad. I’m sure Soo-jin’s had creepier hitting on her in station pubrooms.”
“Hang on a second,” she said, her mind backtracking. “Did you say I got a nano treatment? I didn’t think the dealership had one of those.”
Another moment of silence, this one deeper. Marc cleared his throat. “They didn’t.”
He kept his eyes straight forward, staring out the windshield at the street beyond. From her vantage point, the nearest streetlight lit a web-like spiral pattern on the glass, a symptom of heat treatment on some of the less expensive mass-produced vehicles. In the mirror, his expression had shuttered, his face impassive.
Slowly, her mind put the pieces together.
“How long was I out?” she asked. It had been past sunset, probably around seven or eight by city time, but the vehicle they were in—the Husky they’d been looking at before—didn’t have a clock where she could see it.
“Four hours,” he said. “I had time to find a hospital.”
Which explained the nanos. He would have taken her through a medpack, too, to make sure she checked out. But the sheer amount of time concerned her. Despite popular netdrama plots, actually being knocked unconscious for more than a few minutes was a symptom of severe damage inside the head.
“Shit,” she said.
Hopefully, the nanos had taken care of that. But she would get Dr. Takahashi to check her brain out when she saw him again.
“The last shift lasted for only eight minutes, by the way.”
“That’s weird. Maybe time passes differently in his reality, like it did in the pocket dimension. And maybe it also juggles about in dream-worlds.” She pinned Marc with a narrow-eyed stare in the mirror. “Say, do you know much about multi-verse theory?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Tylanus was talking about how he and Sasha are trying to replace Nova with their own Nova, which falls in line with what Baik’s people detected.” Or, well, she guessed it was all of the current functioning Alliance scientists, not just the ones Baik had been commanding. “He keeps telling me not to interfere.”
As Marc did a shoulder-check and pulled away from the curb he’d stopped by, Karin extracted herself from the rest of the second seatbelt, shuffled over to the side of the seat, and refastened the first seatbelt properly over her shoulder.
“I assume it’s my light that’s interfering, but he implied it was my presence on the planet that was interfering.”
“So, we should get off the planet?” Marc asked.
“Actually, I kind of told him to go fuck himself.” She looked out the window. “Not sure how smart that was, and I have this sudden urge to go find Baik, turn myself in, and make him take me to whatever machine they’ve got going on so I can throw a bigger ‘fuck you’ Tylanus’ way.”
Marc paused. “You want to turn yourself in?”
“Well, no, obviously, that would be stupid. But I did entertain the thought for a moment while I was flipping him my middle finger.” She shook her head. “Any sign of our pursuit, by the way?”
“Yes. There was an explosion about three hours ago on this level. Saw it from the hospital windows. You can probably still see the smoke if you go high enough.” He met her eyes in the mirror. “I’ve taken the liberty of not checking them out.”
“Smart man. Smart plan.”
“Yes, I’m all that. However…” Something in his expression wavered as they came to the end of the block. When he stopped at the next intersection, it took her a few seconds to realize that, despite the red light, he could go whenever he wanted to in the empty city and must be stopping for a reason. “Something else happened in the last shift event that you should know about.”
An uneasy feeling pricked the back of her skin. Although it had nothing to do with the static-y tingle she felt whenever a shift event happened, a rush of goosebumps rose in its wake, sending a little thrill up her spine. “What?”
“We’ll see part of it on the next block,” he said, giving the street sign a quick check. “It looks like Sasha and Tylanus were at least partly successful this time.”
He rolled the car forward and turned. As the next block came into view, long and straight and even, her attention snapped to the problem.
Half of it was missing.
Starting at a point about three blocks down and stretching to both sides until her view was blocked by the buildings on either side, a huge section of dark matter filled the street and buildings beyond like a tank filled with dirty water. Or coffee. She could still see the disc-light, but the wall of dimness inhibited its glow, turning it into a dim, brown version of itself and growing dimmer and darker the closer to the ground disc that it got. Black shapes and figures marked the silhouettes of buildings within.
“Uhh… w
hat the fuck is that?”
“It’s probably what’s been keeping Baik and the others busy,” Marc said. “I’d rather not get any closer.”
“No shit. At least, there’s only one of them.” She paused. “Right? There’s only one of them?”
“There are at least three. I saw them from the hospital window. Not sure if they’re inter-disc or not.”
“Let’s assume yes. Let’s also assume that Tylanus and Sasha plan to make more of them. I—wait, what’s that?”
A figure moved at the base of the black square of matter. As they watched, two other figures jogged into sight, and a car—an SUV that looked awfully similar to Baik’s old Lemoore—followed a second later.
“Ehm,” she said. “Fuck?”
“Oh, shit.” Marc froze, staring, then lunged for the car’s dashboard with his fingers. The headlights doused, though the slow hum of the engine remained. His hands went back on the wheel, knuckles clenching it, unsure of what to do.
“Think we can turn without them seeing?” She winced when she noticed that the next intersection was almost half a block away. “Or back up?”
That produced a comical vision in her head. Them, lights off, backing up as fast as they could get away with without the team down the street noticing, then making the excruciating turn back onto the street they’d come from.
“Well, I wanted to say earlier that I kind of agreed with you on your earlier thoughts of helping them. If only because I’m not sure Nomiki would arrive in time to get us off before Sasha managed to turn Nova into that.” He made a gesture down the street to the wall of black. “And I know we wouldn’t be able to get off the planet alone.”
“So you’re saying that now’s a good time to turn myself in?” she asked. “And that I should?”
She frowned. On one hand, she had wanted to give a giant ‘fuck you’ to Tylanus and his whole don’t-interfere-with-our-plans schtick, especially if he was getting the idea that people created by Project Eurynome or related in some sense to his mother were somehow better and more real than the rest of the system’s population.
When she’d come back to reality, however, it had seemed a bit more sensible to simply continue their escape ploy.
The giant block of blackness, one of at least three, had changed things.
Maybe she should go back and help the Alliance.
“I am not going to tell you what you should or should not do,” he said. “I’m just a soldier—a former soldier, at that.”
“But you got us free. Wouldn’t it feel like a pointless waste of effort if we turn ourselves in?”
“No,” Marc said. “Situation’s changed. If we need to change with it, that’s how it goes.”
“Really?” she asked. “You wouldn’t feel put out?”
“Really.” He paused, an eyebrow lifting as he glanced up, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “Though I appreciate you considering my feelings over the potential apocalypse of Nova Earth.”
Well, now that he put it that way, it did seem ridiculous. Unbidden, she felt the skin crinkle as the corners of her eyes as a smile stretched over her lips. “What can I say? I…”
A low, keening sound made her trail off. They both glanced to the right as it made a rapid change from a small, distant sound to a shrieking whine that she recognized.
She jumped up in her seat. “Marc, that’s a ship engine. Coming fast.”
It was hard to say what type, but it sounded like something small and light. Its particular whine tugged at her memory, conjuring several images of potential craft that could fit the sound.
Marc jerked the wheel. She flailed for and hooked her hand around the side handle hard as the car swung right, bumped over the curb, and charged across the sidewalk and toward the overhang of a building close by.
But, before they could even clear half the distance, the flyer—an Arfor craft, single-user, with slim angles and mobile wings that made the air around them ripple—slid into view on the street in front of them, stuttering into the turn. Its front thrusters, located both on either side of its cockpit and on the three arm-like wings that spread out at its top and sides, swiveled to the side to buffer the action. The roar it made split the air like thunder as it turned.
It swiped up their street in one rough, jerky sway, and a set of frontal spotlights switched on, flooding the sidewalk and walls with light. It locked on them a second later, and a bubbly croon sounded overtop the roar as the pilot engaged a specific hover mode.
Marc stomped on the accelerator. The little car jumped forward, gunning for the large, glass entrance of what looked to be a shopping mall, one of the few that hadn’t turned on its lights as night had fallen.
Her heart leapt against her chest as the doors raced closer to them, realizing what Marc intended. Eyes wide, she shoved herself back down against the seat, redoubled her grip on the side-handle, and braced her other hand against the seat in front.
Beside them, the Arfor bobbed and adjusted, the light following them. Then, with a click that shook a jolt of fear straight into her nerves, it opened fire.
Bullets, not bolts, slammed into the building ahead of them, but there were enough tracer rounds that she could get a gist of what it was unloading—and where. Dark pock-marks cracked into the building’s thick wall, and a window next to them shattered with a violent burst of breaking glass. She watched in horror as the Arfor angled the burst toward them, its engine sound shifting to a high-pitched whine.
Marc slammed on the brakes, and the Husky jerked to a halt, but not before broken glass and pieces from the pre-fab and concrete parts of the building rained down on the roof of the car. Still rattled from the ride, she flinched as it continued to come down, seeing the debris drop on the outside of her window, too.
After a few seconds, the sounds petered off. Both engines hummed in the quiet.
“Well, that was a good run while it lasted.” Marc leaned forward in a slow movement to touch a finger to the car’s dashboard. The Husky’s engine had switched off, leaving just the sound of the Arfor filling the air. The floodlights swayed as the ship slipped from side to side in its hover mode, parts of it rippling as the heat of the thrusters warped and shivered the air.
“Yep. And against such vast odds. I’m kind of surprised we made it as far as we did.”
“I’m not. But it was a good run.” Marc glanced out the windows, squinting at the light. “That person isn’t getting out.”
“Guess we’re being taken in by the ground team,” she said.
Down the street, the SUV they’d seen before was speeding up to them, a couple of the soldiers jogging a few blocks farther back where it had left them. As it swerved toward them and jerked to a stop at the curb, she groaned as Baik jumped out, a grim, determined expression on his face.
“Hells, not him.”
Marc gave her a tight smile, but his eyebrows twitched up in bemusement at her reaction. “Sorry, love. Guess it was kind of inevitable.”
She resisted the urge to grumble something back. Despite the joking, the stone-serious expression on Baik’s face made her stomach go cold from worry.
As he approached Marc’s side of the vehicle, his blaster drawn, she had a feeling that the next few hours were not going to be pleasant for them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Baik’s team transferred them into a secondary flyer that arrived about ten minutes later—the Arfor only seated one—and abandoned his borrowed SUV on the level as they took off.
She and Marc had been put on separate sides of the small Temin passenger craft, separated only by a row of seats and the intermittent glares of three different soldiers. Their hands had been bound behind them by some kind of plastic ties which were, though a little awkward, not as uncomfortable as she’d thought they’d be, and, from her vantage point, she had a clear view of the pilot’s station up front.
As the city blocks flashed past in a silent rush, the vehicle rocked and swayed with the occasional shake of turbulence. She caught s
ight of other blocks of blackness as they went, eating up the space between, and, she suspected, beyond the discs, its dimness easy to pick out amongst the city’s normal proud lighting. The queasy feeling from earlier reared up as they passed close to one of them, and a wave of static across the back of her arms made her tense, but the sensation ebbed when they were moving away again.
Baik stayed close to the pilot’s station—little more than a built-in desk with two seats, controls, and a holoscreen, it was neither quite a bridge nor quite a cockpit—with one hand gripping an overhead handle. Karin didn’t recognize the pilot from anyone she’d seen before, but he and Baik exchanged a few quiet words. Then, the commander straightened and turned in her direction.
She tried not to squirm. Squirming, in any form, would be unbecoming. But she was quite aware of the state she was in. The near six-hour escape attempt, which had included a spilled lunch, a stolen car, and a prolonged bout of unconsciousness in addition to the marathon, had not done her any favors in the appearance category. The light jacket, which had been wonderful for the night outside, had overheated her, producing a thin sweat that heated her neck and back like a mini furnace whenever she moved, and a thin sheen coated most of her visible skin. Her face in particular had an oily feel. She wasn’t sure she’d gotten all the blood off from her latest nosebleed.
She squinted up when he stopped in front of her. “Hi.”
He didn’t give an immediate reply. Instead, his eyes narrowed, and he gave her one of those long, in-depth, silent scans that many might describe as soul-piercing. Fortunately, having Nomiki as a sister had given her some immunity to its effects. Where others might have quailed or flinched, she kept her gaze steady, lips pursing a little as the gaze continued.
Finally, he moved. A quick glance that turned his head toward the front windows again. “We’re late for our rendezvous with headquarters.”
Late. That was quite a word for what she’d done.
“We lost an estimated thirty thousand people in the last two shift events.” His head swung back her way. He had to sway a bit as they encountered more turbulence, and his crossed arms flinched on instinct at the rattle, but his staid, dark eyes glittered down on her. “If you had been there, we would have lost less.”