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

by K. Gorman

  An old, single-sized bed sat at the back wall, barely far enough to open the door the entire way. Her mattress was gone, leaving only the wooden frame underneath. In a normal space, someone might have put drawers underneath to facilitate storage, but the compound staff had not wanted them collecting possessions. All they’d gotten was the small wardrobe set to the right of the door

  She tugged open the first drawer with a rasp of stuck wood.

  Empty.

  That wasn’t surprising—they would have cleaned everything after their escape—but it did pull at the knot of emotions tightening in her chest.

  Marc stepped in beside her and gave a low whistle. “Sol. This is…”

  “Fucked?” she suggested. She could understand his reaction. It was a small, windowless—hell, featureless—room, offering not much more comfort than a prison cell. It had never been locked, but the hallways had been patrolled at night. And the guards had been armed.

  Yep. Definitely fucked up. She traced the thin scratches across the top of the small dresser, feeling memories of the room return to her. Close to the bottom, the dark smudge of the time she’d tripped her shoe into it remained, along with others. And, in the corner, carved with a safety pin she’d purloined from class, the letter ‘K.’

  Proof that she’d been here, at least.

  “Yes. How… how long did you live here?”

  “From the age of ten until the age of twenty, when I escaped.” The snort that came out of her made a choking sound, more emotion than she’d planned getting loose. She cleared her throat. “Upstairs and toward the back is the children’s ward. They moved us once we hit double-digits so we could have puberty on our own. Before, we shared rooms.”

  Spotting the light switch next to the door, she reached over and toggled it on. Nothing happened. She looked up, expecting it to be a simple circuit failure, only to realize that they’d removed the tube light from its ceiling socket.

  “Okay, that’s a bit weird,” she said.

  “This was your room, right? Maybe they thought some of your power was inside it?” Marc suggested.

  “Who knows.” With a thought, she activated her light. A slow, heavy emotion pulled at her chest as she let it spill over the windowless room. Its white-gold glow illuminated the space like a ghostly presence, casting an eerie set of insubstantial shadows on the walls from its amorphous focal point—like water through a smudged lens.

  She tensed against the shiver that threatened her back and turned away. “Let’s head upstairs, see what’s still there.”

  It turned out that a lot of it was still there. Whatever else Seirlin had removed, they obviously hadn’t given a shit about the classrooms. Everything was as she remembered—they’d even left some of the projection equipment. On the opposite side, one of the windows was still open, the thick blinds around it at half-slats. An image came to her—she, Nomiki, and Brennan, sitting by the open window, egging him on to try out his power. The taxidermic hawk above spinning on a slow reel. Then, with his power, coming alive…

  And they had just accepted that as normal. Awesome, yes, but well within the scope of how they knew the world worked. They’d been raised that way, purposely made unaware of the limits. In fact, there’d been an entire curriculum to how laws of reality could be bent, as if it were a science—

  Are the books still here? She glanced around. The bookshelves sat below the windowsills, but, as her memory swiveled her around to the spot where they had been, she noticed it was empty. And that there was an obvious gap there.

  They had taken them, then. She didn’t blame them. That would have been pretty damning brainwashing evidence.

  “This was the home classroom for students around my age.” Mostly her, Brennan, Nomiki and a few others—Emanuel, too, who had headed the other escape party—but also for those who, like Layla, Program Athena, had been a brief transfer from Brazil.

  Of course, the end of her transfer period had likely been the end of her life. But Layla kept popping into Karin’s mind, prominent among the many faces she had seen in her dreams. She wasn’t sure if that was a psychological thing on her end, or if it had greater implications. One of those times had involved Tylanus, and he had said it was real.

  And the last time she’d run into them in a dream…

  She ran her finger along the edge of the nearest desk with a frown, feeling the grit and dust on its surface. The entire classroom was like that. There was even a brown water stain in the back corner, its ends branching out like tree roots down the wall where the leak had seeped in. The drywall closest to the upper corner had disintegrated near the window, turning black.

  “You and Nomiki were in the same grade?” Marc asked.

  “A year apart,” she said. “She used to help me with assignments.”

  “That makes sense.” A soft scrape sounded behind her, and the light changed. She glanced back to see him head for the front of the classroom, where a flat television monitor—a solid-backed style as opposed to the clear glass of holographic ones she’d seen in the Sirius system—was mounted halfway up the wall. “Suns, this is vintage. Does it work?”

  “It did seven years ago,” she answered with a shrug. “Why? You thinking of salvaging it?”

  “We could. You want us to?”

  Huh. She hadn’t honestly thought about it. “Think we could get good money for it?”

  “Earth-based stuff sells better.”

  She snorted. “Go for it. Might as well make some profit on this trip. How’s it look?”

  Marc turned his attention back to the screen. “Pretty clean. Of course, I won’t know for sure until I get a look at the cords and circuits.”

  He flattened himself to the wall, one hand wrapping around the frame to ease it out.

  Something behind the television gave a loud crack. Marc snapped his hand away.

  “Right. Maybe another time.”

  She laughed. “Better wait for Soo-jin. She’s got the tools for it.”

  “No kidding.” He stepped back, hands going to his hips before he apparently thought better of it, and they crossed over his chest instead. After a moment of studying the screen and the wall, he turned back, his gaze meeting hers. He gave her a quick glance-over, gauging her expression. “You sure you want us to do some scrounge work?”

  “You sure it will sell?” she countered.

  “Yes.” He glanced around. “Though we may have to be a bit fuzzy on where, precisely, we got it.”

  “Macedonia sounds ancient enough,” she suggested. “Very marketable.”

  “Very true.”

  He gave her another glance over. When that assessing look came back into his eyes, and his mouth looked like it was going to open again, she beat him to the punch.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “I’m sure I want to scrounge this. That’s why I signed up for your crew in the first place, isn’t it?”

  “I thought you just wanted to use your navigation skills to keep away from the Man.” A smile quirked up the corners of his mouth. “That’s the reason you gave me back on Amosi.”

  Amosi. Clio, that seemed so long ago now.

  Her attention turned back to the present. An image of the nano injector crown reared in her head, its points and electrodes both sharp and smooth in the lab lights. The chemical smell of the tank liquid rose like gasoline. She swallowed hard as her body reacted. The energy wasn’t quite so all-consuming and active now, but she could feel it purr against her spine like the motor of a car.

  Gods, what happened to being normal?

  Marc noticed the drop on her face. She closed her eyes as he wound around the desks back to her. The clean fabric smell of him preceded his touch by a half-second. She leaned into him as he gathered her close, her own arms coming up behind him. She nestled her head into his chest again.

  For several minutes, they didn’t move, didn’t speak. She just breathed him in.

  They both heard a door bang open downstairs. He chuckled at her jolt and kissed her neck.<
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  “It’s just Cookie. He was going to find, figure out, and grab data from any other computers that were still in the building.”

  She grunted. “Only a few. Mostly at the front.”

  She made to get off, but stopped. Part of her felt like she should be helping him—she could, at least, point to where computers had been in her childhood.

  But she didn’t really want to.

  Marc kissed her again, seeming to read her mind. “He can figure it out himself.”

  She nodded. However, that restlessness returned to her. She couldn’t stay still. She had to do something.

  Maybe a walk would help.

  “Come on,” she said, sliding off the table and pulling him toward the door. “I’ll show you the ruins.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  She hopped the compound wall, scrambling over its top like she’d done as a child. The field stretching up the hill was just as she remembered it, if a bit shorter. The grass didn’t quite reach her chest here, instead settling more around her knee. The last embers of the setting sun glinted on some of the trees beside them, lighting their crowns with pink and gold and contrasting with the thick, shadowy boughs of the evergreens. A small copse jutted into the field from the left, casting most of the compound in gold-tinged shade. Cool air pricked at her hands. As she landed, the impact rang up through her bones, harder than she remembered. Marc followed a second after, his hand finding hers once again.

  In the pause, the memory of the tank returned to her mind. She shoved it back with a sharp exhalation and pushed forward. The grass rustled as she led the way.

  She found the path easily enough, overgrown as it was. It twisted and turned up the hill, disappearing into the vegetation, but the ground cover wasn’t as dense here. Bare spots of soil stuck out from the gravel and grass like splotches of spilled ink.

  They rounded the first copse of trees, and the low, lingering burn of the already-set sun lit her body in a pink-gold light, like the tops of the trees. She took a slow breath and drank it in, feeling the power trickle through her skin and into her blood.

  That was familiar, at least. Her light ability.

  Except, underneath it, she could still feel the pulse of that second energy—that shift energy.

  Just how did it work, anyway? Was it a memory thing? Something that made a connection? This last time, she’d been touching the Cradle. Had it connected to a memory through that?

  Or was it really a dimensional thing, as she suspected it to be?

  Tension slid through her shoulders. She clenched her jaw, keeping her gaze solidly on the brittle dirt and damp growth at her feet. Then, she forced herself to look up, squinting against the gold glare of the hilltop horizon for the ancient standing stones that stood like sticks about two thirds of the way up its slope.

  She lifted a hand, pointing. “There. There they are.”

  That was the thing with them—they weren’t easy to spot. One would think that, with an ancient site such as this, they would have been at the top of the hill, but no. Instead, they stood about two-thirds up its left side, situated in a small, flattened basin in a loose circle, their square shapes and tilted positioning looking like blocks from a child’s play set forgotten in error. A low, amber burn lit the scene from the setting sun. Already, it was below the horizon, the brightness of its last few minutes only serving to outline the silhouette of the stones.

  Above, the glow along the horizon faded into amber, then a pink-tinged ocher. The deep, dark blue of night spread back over them like a quilt. The forest stretched back like bristles along its bottom edge.

  Marc’s breath caught with an audible gasp. He halted, pulling her to a stop.

  She understood.

  It was one thing to remember them. To know they existed. It was another to see them. To know that, in a minute, she would be touching them.

  The scene was absolutely silent. Not even a single leaf moved, as if the entire world had either died or was holding its breath. Her gaze dropped to the sides, where the darkness between the boughs and trunks seemed to pull her in. It was late fall here, she remembered, about midway between the equinox and the winter solstice. Some belief systems she’d read about held that the barrier between this world and the next was lifted around this time, like a symbolic passage between the life and death cycle of the year. Things could pass through it, then. Things like Shadows, perhaps.

  The Shadow world had felt a bit like limbo in the short time she’d been in it.

  A sick feeling hit her stomach as his words returned to her.

  “She’s changed. I think some of her programming is triggering, and not in a good way. She’s planning to replace reality.”

  Dr. Sasha’s face came into her mind. And the pump and pulse of the Shift Event energy she’d fought in Nova.

  Gods, I’m really going to have to go up against her, aren’t I?

  “Kind of spooky, isn’t it?” Marc leaned forward, following her gaze. “You see something?”

  She realized that she’d been staring at the same set of trees for the better part of a minute.

  She almost laughed.

  “No, I don’t see anything.” She gave his hand a squeeze, then peered into the shadows with him. “But I agree—it is spooky.”

  She was also glad that she wasn’t the only one feeling it.

  “I wonder if it’s something about nature that does it—it’s been a long time since I was in a completely non-urban setting.” His shoulders relaxed as he made a gesture to the trees and fields around them.

  The compound was in the middle of nowhere. Even Veles, the nearest town, a near twenty-mile drive away, didn’t produce enough illumination to foster the glow of light pollution. Looking back, she saw that the lights were on in a few rooms of the compound’s upper level. Toward the back of the building, however, it was black. All the labs they’d investigated were either on the inside of the hallway or the other side of the building—and they hadn’t turned any of the lights on in the perimeter rooms.

  Nomiki’s doing, probably.

  “This is Earth, too. Which feels different, somehow.” He glanced around. “I know how crazy it sounds, and it’s probably psychosomatic, but it does.”

  “Maybe it’s the gravity,” she said.

  He paused. “What?”

  “Well, everyone says they use Sol-standard, Earth-based gravity, but you gotta wonder if there aren’t fluctuations in that. And we’ve been on planets, too—not just the artificial gravity on space stations. Chamak is larger than Earth, I think?”

  Of course, now that she thought about it, it hadn’t felt any heavier on Chamak. Or on Belenus, Enlil, Amosi, or Nova.

  “You…” Marc hesitated. “They didn’t teach you much about terraforming in this place, did they?”

  “Nothing about it.” She blinked. “Why?”

  “After Mars, gravity sim function was placed into the terraforming schedules. Turns every planet more or less the same.”

  Her jaw slackened. “They can do that?”

  “Yep. They used drive generators in the past. Screws up a bit around them, but they put in anchors to keep them settled.”

  Huh.

  “I never knew that.”

  “They had some trouble when they first started. I think there are some spots that still act up. We can check them out, if you like?”

  After all of this was over, he meant.

  The thought carved a hollow feeling in her chest. It was hard to believe that this—Dr. Sasha, Eurynome, the Shadows, everything—had only been happening for a few months. That, a year ago, she’d still been in her flight school practicum.

  It was even harder to believe that, in a few months, it might be over, too. That they could, theoretically, go back to their jobs.

  If they could defeat Dr. Sasha and her literal plan to take over the universe.

  A tremble of nerves clawed straight into her stomach. She tensed her jaw, her attention going back to her hand again. The picture of t
he dented table came back into her mind, along with the flash of rage and power that had flooded her system. That split second after where she’d wanted to punch Marc.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’d like that.”

  Gods, this won’t ever go back to normal, will it? I won’t ever go back to normal.

  But she didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not here. She could put that off for another couple hours, at least.

  Their conversation drifted off, replaced by the slow sounds of their breaths as they started up the hill again. A drift of wind stirred the grass as they rose, bringing with it the scent of pine and cedar. The cold ground pressed hard against every step, making her feet twist and shuffle. Marc clutched her hand in his, leading the way this time.

  Between one minute and the next, they were at the ruins.

  The five slabs of stone appeared just as she remembered—old, mystical, secretive, but also undeniably normal. About the width of her shoulders at their narrowest sides, they stretched to double that on their broadsides, and stood twice her height. Although they each had a rectangular shape, centuries—possibly millennia—of weather had cut at their surfaces, making cracks and bulges in the gray stone. Sunset caught the stones from the back, putting them in a near silhouette.

  With a thought, she let her light slip through her fingers and rise up, casting a pale white glow over their surfaces. The inscriptions laid into their faces appeared like half-formed whispers, melding and mixing in with the roughened granite. Close to the middle of the largest one, which stood farthest up the hill, a few faint smudges of faded paint outlined the top of what appeared to be a warrior’s head and helm, but washed away into obscurity before it continued.

  “Suns. Is that… a person?” Marc sucked in a breath, leaning closer to get a better look. “What is that? A god or something?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “I never managed to figure them out.”

  They were too faint and incomplete for that, their lines light and interrupted.