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

by K. Gorman

  Then, it turned around and vanished, as if someone had pulled a curtain over it.

  Her breath froze, Tylanus’ words replaying in her mind.

  “She’s going to rip the universe apart and build a new one, piece by piece. She will eliminate every single being in this world and the next, erase them, and start anew. She will do it by ripping this world—my world—apart at its seams and reusing my parts like fucking Ymir.”

  Was that true?

  Somehow, she didn’t think so. But why would he lie? Why would any of them lie?

  Cold sank through her chest like ice water.

  Well, at least she knew where all those dead children were lurking. As soon as they found the Cradle, they’d likely find them, too. Or what was left of them.

  A soft knock on the door made her jump. A second later, the door panel flashed green, and the door slid aside with a hiss.

  Nomiki poked her head in.

  “We’re an hour out. Figured you’d want some time to…” She trailed off, her gaze traveling from the twisted mess of the bedsheets to where Karin stood in the corner. “Are you okay?”

  She froze. For some reason, she felt unable to tell Nomiki about what had happened. A part of her resisted.

  It was too soon. Too real.

  She stared. Then, she gave herself a little shake. “Yeah. Weird dream.”

  “Ah. Treatment shit?”

  She hesitated. “Probably.”

  It was technically true. While she’d had visits with Tylanus before, she was almost certain that this particular one had been triggered by the treatment.

  From the way Nomiki narrowed her eyes, she guessed that she hadn’t passed her sister’s bullshit detector.

  “Right,” Nomiki said, the skepticism high in her tone. “Well, I’ll just be on my way, then. See you in a bit.”

  Karin nodded. A second later, the door whirred closed, taking her sister with it.

  She let out a breath. The bare metal walls around her provided comfort. They were a reliable constant, similar to the room around her—but, saints, she missed bunking with Marc. She missed his warm cuddles.

  Gods, I have a universe to save.

  She blew out another breath, gave herself a small shake, and turned her back on the rest of the room to access her locker.

  Time to start the day.

  The Nemina rocked and juddered from the occasional turbulence, but was otherwise smooth. When she bent to look out of one of the small side windows, she saw a muted dawn sky, with stretches of softer, drawn out nimbus clouds beneath them.

  She also got a shock when she didn’t see the Nemina’s wings outside, but, after a minor puzzlement and a jolt of adrenaline, she remembered the part about the camouflage upgrade.

  Upon closer inspection, she found that she could see the wings—or at least interruptions and bleeds in the atmosphere where they normally sat.

  Huh. Not bad.

  Prying her groggy, misty-eyed attention away from the small window, she visited the sani room, splashed some water on her bleary eyes—despite the sleep, she was in dire need of coffee—and headed toward Mess, where she found Soo-jin munching on a bowl of cereal with her eyes glued to the screen of her netlink.

  “Hey, girl, hey,” she said, squeezing around the other side of the table to reach the cereal. By the looks of it, Soo-jin was using real milk with hers rather than the powder-based stuff they kept for longer journeys. Clearly, someone had done some shopping while they’d been on Nova.

  Maybe they could get some Earth food, too. Not that she knew much about it. They’d only gotten basic food at the compound—healthy, balanced with nutrients, unremarkable—with the occasional ‘specials’ on holidays.

  “Have a good sleep?”

  “Went into another dimension again,” she replied. “I dunno, maybe I shouldn’t have dropped all that acid as a kid.”

  “Fucking hell, dude. You have got to let me know if you ever find the world from Raphael’s Keep.”

  She quirked a brow. “What?”

  “It’s the one where all the men and woman are super-hot and lusty, and breathing the air gives you a high like a Formra tab.”

  Formra. The most unsexy name of a drug popular in some Novan clubs. Sirius System’s equivalent of Ecstasy.

  “You’ll be the first I tell.”

  Soo-jin gave her a thumbs up. As Karin set her bowl on the table, she returned to her netlink. “So, see anything interesting in the other dimension?”

  “Yeah. Tylanus. He… explained things a bit.”

  “Oh?” Soo-jin perked up. The netlink dropped to the table, screen shivering out as she laid it down, and she leaned forward. “Do tell.”

  Karin did. And, after she was finished, Soo-jin still sat forward, but her gaze had drawn inward, processing everything.

  “Well, that sucks. I’d kind of hoped she’d, you know, given the fuck up, but I guess all that kind of makes sense, right? And at least, we know. That’s also basically what Tia from your other dream said—that your powers wouldn’t work and that you needed to find the Cradle—so at least your dreams are in agreement, even if it’s for slightly different reasons?” She swirled the spoon in her cereal, head tilting and jaw working as she thought. “I’ve been thinking about that genetic framework comment she made. I’m also pretty sure I’ve heard about something similar before. Programmers use it a lot. I guess geneticists, too? I mean, I don’t know about them, but it’s much easier to build off of something pre-made, right? Like building a ship with all pre-cut metal and patterns versus trying it with unrefined ore?”

  “Er… Yeah.” Karin hadn’t thought of the ship metaphor, but it did make sense given it was using ‘framework’ as a vocabulary. Ships had frames. “I don’t know much at all about geneticists, either. Only the basics.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I just studied enough of it to confirm that I wanted nothing to do with my family. Well, that was more of a social conformity and brainwashing thing, but…”

  Karin laughed. “Oh, yeah, I totally get the brainwashing thing.”

  “I mean…” Soo-jin made a gesture. “They weren’t as bad as what the scientists did to you, but Sol, do you know how fucked up their society is? Most of the other families have moved away into different compounds across the system, so the gene pool would be pretty fucking small if they just went with what they had on hand, so to speak, so they require every head to ‘harvest’ eggs and sperm so that they can take them into a lab and fertilize them according to their own fucked up criteria. It avoids inbreeding, I guess, but geez. And if that weren’t bad enough, they also put heavy pressure on marrying within the gene pool. And if you aren’t immediately shacking up with someone of your generation, then your parents and grandparents start helping you along.” Soo-jin took a breath. “Just think about that. Parents and grandparents are already thinking about your wedding day and subsequent marriage when you’re a toddler. They think about it more than the people getting married do. That is fucked up.”

  “Yes, it’s fucked up,” she agreed.

  “Not as fucked up as your shit, but…” Soo-jin shook her head. “Sol.”

  “No, I get it. It’s super fucked up. Especially since your main compound—that was your main compound, wasn’t it?—is only a couple hours from one of the largest cities in the system.”

  “Yeah. You know I had to do that entire journey on jetbike? They wouldn’t fucking let me borrow one of their ships to leave, and wouldn’t even let me leave on that jetbike, even though I’d worked and bought it. I had to steal the fucking thing from Dad’s locked garage and leave in the dead of night. And that was after they’d harvested my eggs and shit.”

  “Damn, dude. I’m surprised you didn’t press charges.”

  “I should have, but… you know. Young and dumb and brainwashed.”

  “I know that feeling,” Karin said.

  “Yeah…” Soo-jin trailed off, leaning back in her chair. One hand fiddled with the spoon in the cereal. After a f
ew seconds, a frown dropped over her expression. She took a small breath and moved forward as if she were going to speak, but cut herself off.

  “What?” Karin prompted.

  “Oh, it’s… nothing, really. I mean… compared to your shit…”

  “So? My shit’s fucked. Doesn’t mean your shit’s any less valid. What?”

  Soo-jin hesitated again. Her lips pursed together, and her jaw moved, as if she were chewing on something that had an unpleasant taste. Her grip on the spoon tightened.

  Then, it relaxed, and she seemed to deflate a bit.

  “Okay. Do you remember when we were talking after you healed everybody? And my mom came in? Before you tripped balls and started staring at the sun?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember that little girl that came in with my mom?”

  Karin nodded. Small, with her hair pulled up into an elaborate braiding scheme. She’d been cute and well-loved, judging by the care that had been taken in her appearance. “Yes?”

  “Well, she is technically both my daughter and my sister. My parents took one of my eggs, fertilized it with sperm from the guy I was supposed to marry, and implanted it in my mother for growth.”

  Karin’s jaw went slack. She paused, her own spoon of cereal halfway to her mouth, and stared at Soo-jin. “What?”

  “Yep.” Soo-jin leaned forward, revisiting her own cereal.

  “That is so fucked up.”

  “Yep. But, to them, it’s completely fucking normal, and that is even more fucked up.” Soo-jin blew out a breath. “It was my dad’s idea, apparently. And, ten hells, did you see how old that kid was? I doubt they waited more than a year after I left to do that. And they sure as hell didn’t tell me about it.”

  “You’d think they would,” Karin said. “A reason to lure you back.”

  “Who the fuck knows. My dad’s a fucking lunatic. And an asshole. You know—” Soo-jin made a gesture than encompassed her dreadlocks and tattoos. “They think I chose to look like this as a rebellion to their traditional stuff. It’s not—I like looking like this, and what they do or do not think has zero effect on my choices—but, you know, I’m suddenly feeling a hankering for a new piercing. Or maybe a tat. Hey, do they do tats here on Old Earth?”

  “Tattooing was invented here, dude.”

  “Oh, right. Hey, they absolutely hate the Japanese. Can we go there and get a tat?”

  “Sure. Hells, I’ll even get one with you.”

  “Will you? Sweet. Maybe we can get Nomiki in on it, too. Or Marc and Cookie. Get a Nemina tat.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  They fell into silence after that, distracted by cereal that was quickly growing too soggy to be palatable. After a few minutes, Soo-jin went back to her netlink, the text shifting every thirty seconds or so when she turned the page on her book.

  Karin sank back, taking in the atmosphere of the Nemina with a groggy kind of ethereal perception that often came just after waking up. The ship was quiet, except for the occasional creak and shudder from its speed. In the small, triangular window under the Mess’ back cupboards, the dawning sky had shifted into a brighter color. Less pink, more yellow.

  If she stretched for it, she could feel her connection to the light. And the second energy that lay beneath it, rippling like water under a thrust engine. It felt so close, as if it were already in her hand.

  Yeah, let’s not go there right now. I have a ship to land.

  The sunlight did feel odd, though. Even though she’d grown up here, playing under the sun, she’d expected a bigger difference between this system’s light and Sirius’, which had two suns. Instead, it was just like those times when Aschere rose alone, untinted by the blue light of Lokabrenna.

  Which was logical. But her brain had been expecting something else.

  An alarm sounded up near the front of the ship, one they both recognized—a notification alarm as opposed to an emergency. Karin tipped the bowl up, drank the last of her milk and cereal, then handed it to Soo-jin when she reached out for it.

  “Thanks,” she said, standing. “Time to find out more about my fucked up family.”

  Chapter Twelve

  An odd bevy of sensations washed through her as she flew a small circuit over the compound, most of them uncomfortable. It was odd seeing it from above. She still recognized things, but the recognition occurred with a kind of detachment—as if she were recognizing it, but the angle threw it off just enough that it didn’t connect properly.

  There was the parking lot, its gravel dusty and worn, overgrown by strands of grass that she could see even from her height and perspective. The compound building attached to it, taking on the shape of a Christmas stocking from above with its blocky, vague L-shape and heavier back end. The fields that spread out to its right hand side were yellowed and overgrown, the copses of trees having grown wilder in neglect. Two of them had fallen since they’d left, and a third leaned heavily on its neighbors, its branches near-dead and its needles a rusty brown color.

  On the left, beyond the concrete wall that separated it from the compound, lay a sweep of dark, evergreen forest.

  That, and the grass-lined hilltop that contained the ruins.

  Karin did a low pass over them, the trees and grass below bowing in waves as she pulled the Nemina into something close to a hover, and someone—Cookie, she thought—gave a low whistle as the stones came into the front viewscreen’s camera feed.

  “Damn. That’s them?”

  “That’s them.”

  There was a small quiet. In her peripheral vision, everyone’s faces—and she did mean everyone, considering the entire population of the ship had crammed onto the bridge for this, crash seats be damned—had taken on severe, stone-serious expressions. Even Nomiki had lifted her gaze up from what she’d been doing to give them a look. And, by her expression, their sight left a severe distaste in her mouth.

  “It’s one thing knowing they exist,” Marc said, taking an audible breath. “But it’s another actually seeing them.”

  She knew what he meant. They’d all seen the ruins in their dreams—the dreams that always signaled that they were about to wake up with a Shadow by their side—but she had no clue as to the significance of them. If she trusted her dreams, there was another pair of them at the Brazilian compound, but neither these nor the ones at the Macedonian compound had come up in any of the files Cookie had found, except for a couple land survey reports noting their existence.

  Still, they had to mean something. Why else would they continue to see them in their dreams?

  “Are we sure these are the right ones?” Cookie said. “I mean, doesn’t Earth have like a million of those things?”

  “Compared to other planets, yes,” Karin said. “But not a million. Sites like these aren’t as common as you’d think.”

  “Shit, I want to visit Africa. Can we go there?”

  “This isn’t a sightseeing vessel.” Baik’s voice rose, stern and hard. “We’re here to do a job.”

  She could see him in her peripheral vision, too. He had, at least, taken her many hints and kept himself away from her on the ship—as much as one could do in the Nemina’s small space. His words, and the sound of his voice, still grated on her.

  Maybe this is a sightseeing vessel. It can be whatever fucking vessel we want it to be.

  But he was right. They had a job to do, and a literal universe to save. And, if the quantity of Centauri ships in Earth’s immediate vicinity was any indication—she counted seven in the long-range scanners above this particular part of the hemisphere—they had to move quickly.

  She landed the Nemina in a field toward the compound’s back—out of the way, with her rear bumped up close to the trees to cover the residual exhaust readings and her camouflage still engaged, just in case. In minutes, their expanded crew was disembarking onto the ground, blinking at their surroundings and taking in the fresh scents of the forest.

  It was surreal, being back here. As if this were one of
those dreams she’d been having. The sky opened overhead in a faded gradient, touched with a deepening that brought it close to sunset, with only a few traces of cloud wisping through it. Evergreen trees, their boughs a dark and deep green, stood with a slow silence, a few beams of sun slipping through their needles to strike their rich, red-brown wood. Under, the shadows of the forest seemed to pull her closer. She had to stop for a moment and ground herself.

  Gods, I’m actually here.

  Her heart skipped up a few beats, the flutter of mixed apprehension and excitement crossing through her abdomen again.

  The light changed behind her, followed by a familiar warm scent. Marc slid his arms around her, pulling her in and planting a kiss on the top of her head. She relaxed into him, releasing the breath she’d been holding.

  They didn’t say anything, only stared into the trees for a few seconds, rocking slightly. After a moment, she closed her eyes and sank further back.

  She missed this.

  But they had a job to do. Too soon, more people had gathered around them, milling around in a silence similar to what she’d come out with. The place was affecting all of them, she guessed. They’d all seen the ruins in their dreams. Even she was getting a humming, jittery sensation at the prospect of seeing them again.

  Marc placed another kiss on the top of her head. His arms squeezed tighter around her. “I’m here for you.”

  She gave him a pat, twisting around to meet his gaze—he was so much taller than her that she had to crane her neck, this close. Perhaps it was the vegetation around them, but his eyes appeared to take on a green tinge as they looked to her.

  “I know,” she said. “Thanks.”

  They found a path in the field—well, Nomiki found it, but Karin remembered it. Loose gravel, overgrown and old even in her youth, hemmed in by narrow slats of wood that had buckled apart at their ends. It made a scraping sound under her shoe, and the grass pressed wetly against her arms. The bank of memory pulled at her, and she found herself keeping her eyes down as they drew closer, ignoring the large building that loomed at the front of her vision as if she hadn’t already memorized each and every square centimeter of it.