by K. Gorman
“Yep.” Although she was taken back by his language—clearly, he was either a man who didn’t care, feeding into the eccentric scientist asshole type promoted by netseries, or the events had simply pushed him beyond his normal capacity.
“Your job is to give this thing a boost with your powers. By the data Dr. Ma collected, your light abilities also produce a counter energy to that which is taking over the planet. Until we can produce the entire signature of that energy on our own, our protected area will continue to fail and grow smaller. We need you in that chair during every event until we can do that. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, wondering whether he was explaining it to her in this way because he was busy and needed to do it quickly, or because he knew she had escaped, been recaptured, and wasn’t the most willing participant in the exercise.
She decided not to ask, instead directing her gaze down toward the chair itself. “Nice chair. Straps?”
He grunted. “We found it in the psych ward, which I’m sure is not comforting, but it was the only one that would…” He struggled for the word for a bit, though it felt like he was more warring with the correct term that would best represent a complicated scientific explanation that she may or may not understand rather than a struggle with the language itself.
“Fit?” she suggested.
“Sure,” he said. “We’ll go with that. Now, have you—”
A series of nearby beeps cut him off, louder than the normal chatter. A ripple went through the room, conversation dying. At the top of the stairs and almost through the door, Marc looked back with a frown. His gaze wandered over the workstations and people, then met her stare.
Her jaw tightened, and a thin, tingling feeling started in her gut. She unlocked it and turned her gaze to Dr. Lamond. By the pricking of energy along the back of her skin, she had a sinking suspicion that she knew the answer to her next question even before she asked it. “What is that?”
“An alarm we set up to detect a certain kind of energy,” he confirmed. “The next shift event is coming. Time’s up.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The room sprang into motion. Dr. Lamond whirled, ushering her out of the way as he and the rest of the group of lab-coated scientists, over half of which appeared to be at least sixty years old, moved into place around the chair. While three of them went to work on their netlinks, one bending down to fix something on the chair’s back, the others bent down to grip a series of handles in the lower platform. Two soldiers joined them, filling the empty spots.
“Ready?” Dr. Lamond asked, his face upturned to the rest of them. “On three.”
They hefted the platform up and crab-walked it over. She trailed them, skin tingling with the arrival of the next shift event.
Beyond, the large metal box and all of its components had been switched on. One woman, a mixed Caucasian and Chinese-looking person with her hair pulled back in a tight bun, jogged over to the machine itself, her netlink flickering as she ran.
A whining noise sounded, for a moment slipping into a similar keening note to that of the creatures’, then appeared to switch gears. Energy surged on the inside, and, although she didn’t see the light that grew, she knew the instant the bulbs turned on. A different kind of energy slipped into the room. It felt like an old, beloved song played by someone else, at once familiar and strange, a few of the notes sounding off to her mind.
For a moment, she could understand what Dr. Lamond meant when he said they’d almost replicated her power.
The group put the chair down and slid it into place with a collective grunt. Those on their netlinks stepped back as the rest sprang into action, attaching and activating the circuits and wires that trailed from the chair’s two light-capturing devices.
Dr. Lamond straightened and beckoned for her. She stepped forward. As she sat down and her gaze turned toward the rest of the room, she noticed that Marc had not left yet. He, Seras, and David still stood at the top of the stairs, lined up out of the way in a small nook of space next to the door. Their eyes met across the distance, briefly.
Her attention moved downward as Dr. Lamond began fumbling with the straps on the chair’s arms.
“Hey—what?” She stiffened and snatched her hand back. “The hells are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, but I do not have time to fully explain. You need to have constant contact with the devices, and we cannot risk a break.”
She stared at him, wondering how he could possibly know that—and wondering why she might be inclined to break contact.
What hadn’t they told her?
A lot, probably. He was at least right on in one respect: they didn’t have time.
Reluctant, she lowered her hands again, gripping the armrests tightly. Her lip curled back as he guided them into position, palms over the lenses of the two light traps, and began to secure the straps around her.
Dr. Lamond’s head jerked up to a person standing to the back right of her chair. The edge of a netlink screen sliced into the corner of her vision, bobbing as the woman worked on it. After a moment, it lifted.
Karin focused on the metal side of the machine. It seemed to throb next to her, a series of holoscreens and devices working together, their lights blinking and shifting. A few had holoscreens of their own throwing up data. The woman she’d seen before hovered around them, her eyes, parts of them pink from bloodshot, staring at the graphs they displayed.
Dr. Lamond gave the person behind her a nod, then turned back to her. “We’re ready.”
She didn’t need to ask what to do. The lenses they’d strapped her hands over made it obvious. With a thought, she activated her light. The traps buzzed to life beneath her, the vibration humming against her palms. As she directed her power down into them, she had a sense of being pulled, drained.
A second later, she connected to the machine beside her.
The buzz was immediate. She jerked at the contact, the zap of the energy being generated within, then forced herself to relax. She closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation. Slowly, she visualized her light wrapping around the inside of the box, and the two energies began to twin each other.
Something locked in place. In the next instant, her mind was connected, running through the tubes and cables and wires to the nodes that stretched across the campus. Glimpses from outside came to her, along with patches of sound. As she raced through it all, her light blooming amongst the current like water soaking into a rag, she was aware of herself splitting—on one side, the room and its chaos, scientists and muggy air, the smell of unwashed clothes, the hard press of the armrest against her elbow, and the strap around her wrist. The edge of the lens heated against her skin, not quite a burn, but enough to make her fingers flex against the sensation.
On the other, she was light. Flowing, racing, shining.
But, as the connection flowed through her, a different sort of energy rose against it. It came from the air itself, leaking in through the veil of reality like fog through a sieve. As it came, a sound roared in the distance, and a familiar, static-y tingle pricked the hairs on the back of her hand.
She got the impression of an enormous wave gathering itself, sucking upward. The static rose, a buzz now, and she gripped the frame of the lenses hard. A hiss left her mouth as she gritted her teeth, fighting against the vibration in her bones.
It crashed over her all at once, like the passage of the umbra of an eclipse.
The static crackled through her, painful this time. She jerked, gasped, fought as it pulled through her like tiny beads.
Then it was gone.
She breathed heavily, the sound loud in her ears, arms shaking where they gripped the chair. The lenses were cold to the touch. With growing panic and horror, she realized it had fallen silent. The mugginess in the air had left. A new pricking on her skin, this one having little to do with the static from earlier, crawled from the edge of her knuckles and up to the point of her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, the room was dark.
&n
bsp; And every single person in it had been replaced by a Shadow.
Chapter Thirty
Marc’s gone. Sol’s fucking child, Marc’s gone.
She tried to stifle the panic rising in her, sitting stiff in the restraints. As she forced her stare from the top of the room where he’d been standing, her breath shook out in a rough shudder as she turned her attention to the closest Shadow. The tingles of the shift event still prickled her fingers.
This isn’t real. This is like the restaurant again. I’ve crossed over. And there are a shitload of Shadows.
She tightened her grip on the arm rest.
This isn’t real.
A stuttered gasp on her left made her flinch. Her head snapped so fast, her neck cricked. Beside her, Dr. Lamond stood slowly, his movements tense and stiff, eyes bulging at the Shadows that surrounded them. He was petrified.
So was she.
But she was starting to get herself under control.
If he’s here, and Marc isn’t, then maybe Marc is just fine. Maybe he’s on the other side, protected by the military.
“Oh my gods and saints.” Dr. Lamond stumbled a step, his head whipping around as he turned his attention to the Shadows that surrounded him.
She swallowed. She knew there was one behind her—she could feel it—but she didn’t want to move. It felt too much like turning to look at a particularly large spider that was stalking her. Besides, she didn’t think the Shadows were going to attack her. If they were going to, they already would have.
If she had to guess, this was Tylanus’ latest move—a surefire way to stop her ‘interference.’ She half-expected him to come strolling out of one of the side doors and start berating her again.
Well, if he did, she didn’t want to take that sitting down.
“Hey,” she whispered, the single word shaking in the air. Her heart pounded in her chest, breath coming in shallow, thin gasps. “Get me out of these.”
It took the doctor a moment to give her his full attention—to stop his gaze from darting between every single Shadow around them and look at her face—and even then, the look he gave her lasted only a moment. He scurried over to her side, knocking into the chair as he uttered a non-System Standard swear and whirled to face the Shadow that had followed him. When it stopped again, and didn’t move any farther, he reached back. His shaking hands fumbled at the buckles on her wrist and bumped into her skin.
She didn’t watch what he was doing. As her chair imprisonment went on, more and more tension slipped into her body. She stared at the Shadow straight ahead of her. It stood off the edge of the platform, which put its head at her height when sitting. It didn’t move—so far, none of them had moved except the one that had followed Dr. Lamond and a few others in the crowd beyond that had tracked his movement with their heads—but it did stare back.
One buckle came free, and she jerked her hand away, beating Dr. Lamond to the second. She undid it and was on her feet in a heartbeat, hands up and feet in an awkward semblance of a fighting stance Nomiki had taught her.
None of the Shadows moved except to tilt their heads, following her.
Right. Like that isn’t creepy at all. She swallowed, feeling the fear course through her—she was pretty sure she’d had this exact nightmare before. She clenched her hands tight, then flexed them out, trying to control their shaking. With a thought, she pulled her light back into existence. It seeped back onto her skin in a slow trickle, glowing like a smear of extra-radioactive milk on the back of her arm.
As if its presence triggered something, the rest of the room began to turn back on. She flinched as a series of clicks sounded from all over the place, holoscreens and other terminals flicking on and going through boot cycles. A few of the screens shivered to life in the middle rows. She swallowed again as they illuminated more of the Shadows, ones she’d sensed but had not yet seen.
Dr. Lamond sucked in a breath, the air hissing through his teeth. She resisted the urge to do the same.
“Well,” she said, trying and failing to keep her voice level. “They’re not attacking us. That’s good, right?”
“Y-yes.” He cleared his throat. His hands lifted in front of him, but stopped halfway and dropped again—an instinctual action, she thought. She spotted a ring on his finger that she hadn’t noticed before. It caught her light in a cold, blue-tinged gleam.
A second later, a set of lights flickered on at the side of the labs. Not the main lights, which remained dark and dormant overhead, but it was better than nothing. She turned her attention back to the Shadows, eyeing the one closest to her. Every single one of them continued to watch her—and just her, she now noticed. None were looking at Dr. Lamond anymore.
She swallowed, took a deep, slow breath, and counted to ten in her head. Then, still shaking, she straightened her shoulders and stepped forward. “Let’s go see if anyone else got pulled in with us, shall we?”
She braced herself as she moved down the stairs, expecting to feel the slippery, insidious touch of the Shadow’s not-quite-solid-bodies drifting into her skin, but to her surprise, they shifted back. A ripple went through the gathered crowd as the rest of them followed suit, drawing back to let her pass.
Eyes wide, she halted on the last stair, staring. Her jaw locked into place, breaths quick and shallow, her body as stiff as the training seats at Belenus’ flight academy. A glance back told her that the ones behind them had closed the gap, now standing between her and the chair she’d come from. Dr. Lamond had also noticed. He was pressing as close to her back as he could without touching her.
She clenched her fist at her side, then forced it to relax again. Then she took another experimental step forward.
The Shadows in front moved back again. The Shadows behind filled in, following.
Okay. That’s super creepy. A part of her became aware of the adrenaline shooting through her system and of the other effects of the fear coursing through her.
Slowly, she forced her gaze above the heads of the watching Shadows and to the door at the top of the room’s slow, sloping staircase.
New goal, she thought, fixing on it. Get to that door without pissing myself.
She steeled herself with another breath, clenched her fists, and walked forward. As before, the Shadows continued to part for her, drawing back into the steppes and rows of workstations on either side, some simply backing up the way she was going. The room was quiet as she walked. One holoscreen, a model that looked older than the rest, made an audible hum on one of the rows. The computer beneath it ticked.
They’re like the Lost, she thought, watching the Shadows move.
Which made sense, considering the Lost were just people who’d been possessed by Shadows.
As she closed in on the door, a new sound came to her from the hall outside—someone crying.
She stopped and closed her eyes. On one hand, the sound amped the creepiness level of the entire scene straight to one hundred and made her want to find a different exit. On the other, it was almost stereotypical in its creepiness. And she was pretty sure she’d watched Soo-jin play a game like this before.
She clenched her fists again.
If a zombie baby jumps up at me from anywhere, I’m going to punch it in its dead, fetal face.
She opened her eyes again, steeled herself, and peered out the door.
Beyond the sea of Shadows in the hallway, a white-coated figure stood out. The man was crumpled against the wall, his head in his hands. The sounds of raw, panicked gasps came to her.
They sounded familiar.
“Pranav?” she said, her voice carrying in the silent hallway. “Is that you?”
The man’s head jerked up. “Karin?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” she said, putting a little more volume into her voice to make it sound more confident. “Dr. Lamond is with me, too. Looks like we got taken into the other world, hey?”
There was a small silence, then what sounded like a hiccup. She had a feeling that he was having to struggl
e to get himself under control—and no wonder. He was surrounded by at least twenty Shadows, their forms only illuminated by the light that spilled from an open door partway down the hall and, now, from the light she wielded.
She steeled herself again and barged forward into the crowd. Her jaw clenched as one of her arms brushed against a Shadow before it had time to move back, the edge of its hand blurring into her elbow with a tingle. With a thought, she sent her light higher to illuminate the passage as she headed his way.
“Hold on,” she called. “We’re coming to you.”
But, just as she crossed half the distance, the sound of a door opening came from far down the hall. Another voice called out, its—her—words echoing from the distance. “Hello? Is someone down there?”
Behind her, Dr. Lamond perked up. “Anya, is that you?”
“Toran? So they’ve got you, too.” A tapping sound came on the tail of her words. Her walking down the stairs? “Don’t worry about the Shadows. They don’t attack. Trust me. I’ve been here long enough to find out.”
“She was taken eight days ago,” he explained, his eyes squinting at the brightness of Karin’s light. He turned his face away from her and raised his voice. “Is anyone else with you? Emerett? Qing-yi?”
“Yes. We’re all up in the cafeteria. Everyone is fine.”
Well, that certainly boded well for the rest who had been taken. She thought of Tylanus’ words—that they were fine. She hadn’t completely believed him at the time, but this seemed to confirm it. If the people had simply shifted over to this world, which seemed to be just a darker, dimmer version of the normal Nova, then chances were that they’d be all right. Confused and scared and scrounging for food, but all right.