by K. Gorman
“Yeah.” She gave a hard swallow. “Me, too.”
It was one thing to port herself there on her own, or to talk to Tylanus or other people in weird dreams, but…
She’d actually come here. Physically. On her own. On purpose.
She lifted her hand and examined her palm.
That second energy sat inside her bones, hiding under her normal powers, latent until called.
“Whelp.” Soo-jin let the drawer drop with a clatter. “Let’s explore. We got a time limit or anything?”
“No? Yes? Maybe?”
She wasn’t actually sure. It didn’t feel like there was a time limit, but most of her potential cross-dimensional dreams tended to end with abruptness.
She could see where the question had come from. Often, in netgames she’d played, other-world travel had rules, regulations, and a set clock for how long you could be in them. Things such as swimming underwater, or holding one’s breath in a void realm—which, she suspected, would not work in a real-life vacuum.
And Soo-jin had received all her extra-dimensional knowledge from video games.
But there was nothing that she could feel. No urgency. Certainly not a time limit. Instead, it was as though everything had settled. The hallway was still, not a breath of a draft crossing her skin, but a cold was seeping in, shallow and insidious. Already, it had seeped into her skin. When she took a breath, the drag of it through her nose and throat seemed loud.
On either side of the hall, the drizzly gray light from the windows put vague squares on the walls. One side appeared brighter than the others. She turned toward it and made to take a step, but Soo-jin stopped her.
“Wait, we should go back this way,” she said, already turning. “There was a clinic over here. It might have a brace for you. Or, well, something.”
It did. After a few minutes of rummaging under the glow of Karin’s light, Soo-jin shoved a stool out of the way and dug the brace out from a lower cupboard in the back. Karin stayed by the window while she fidgeted with it, attention on the corridor.
Nothing moved outside. Everything was still. Silent. But that didn’t stop the feeling in the back of her mind that something was moving. That there was something out there making a sound.
Her mind slid back to the flood of Shadows she and Marc had seen on the hill. The eerie, whispery sound they’d made through the grass.
Something was setting off her senses, making them ring like a niggling warning bell in her mind. She just wasn’t sure what it was.
After a minute, Soo-jin tapped her on the shoulder. They put the brace on—a simple, thick elastic belt that dug into the bottom of her breasts and made her feel like she was wearing a modern-version of a corset—found another for her wrist, albeit a size too small, and left.
When they looped back to the door they’d broken through, a Shadow was standing right outside the doorway.
They staggered to a halt. Karin’s heart rate picked up in her chest. The orb of light she had floating with them pulsed, burning stronger.
The Shadow’s jet-black head turned their way.
“Oh—oh, hi.” Soo-jin sucked in a breath. “Hello.”
Karin forced a breath past the sudden constriction in her throat. A surge of adrenaline hit her system, driving a series of fight or flight jitters into her muscles. Her wide-eyed attention did not leave the Shadow.
Well, that explains the paranoid feeling I was having.
For a Shadow, this one wasn’t too scary. It looked relatively normal, lacking any of the weird bloated or oblong parts she’d seen on some of its compatriots. It stood about her height and had a thick, square-ish frame with a head that was just slightly a size less proportionate. Of course, that may be due to its lack of hair.
It also wasn’t attacking. An excellent behavioral trait given her and Soo-jin’s current battered states.
She’d encountered that before. More and more often lately, now that she came to think about it.
“Hello?” she managed, her squeak barely more tangible than Soo-jin’s stuttering surprise.
The Shadow stared at her. It had no eyes—none she could see, anyway—but its attention bore weight. The darkness inside its head seemed to writhe.
Right. She almost made to grab Soo-jin’s arm, but a quick pressure from the brace, and a nudge of pain from the broken wrist beneath it, stopped her. Instead, she simply edged closer to the other side of the hall, giving the Shadow a wide berth. Soo-jin took a hesitating step behind her, her back arched like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. Karin held her breath as they passed.
It watched them go, its body pivoting. When they got to the corner, Soo-jin caught her sleeve at the bicep. “It’s following.”
Karin’s jaw tensed. Her shoulders, already stiff from the encounter, felt like balsa wood—ready to bend and snap.
But she let go of the breath she’d been holding. “Keep an eye on it. They’ve gotta be connected to this cross-dimensional bullshit, but I don’t yet know how.”
They were also connected to Dr. Sasha and Tylanus, as exemplified in his dark eyes and in her ability to control them.
But she was going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that was happenstance.
A bright light washed through the windows of a classroom midway up the hallway, painting the wall in a filter of faded white squares. Like all sources except for the orb that glowed at her side, this light appeared weaker than normal. Although strong, it felt like most of the color had been sapped from it, leaving it on the cusp of grayscale. She squinted as they drew even with the first set of windows, trying to discern the source behind the glows that caught the dirt and streaks on their panes and lit them up like winter frost.
Soo-jin recognized it first.
“It’s the Centauri ships.” She took a step closer. Like the wall, her face grew washed out in the light, the brown in her eyes subdued to a color that bordered on gray. The bruising on her left formed a pattern like cloud blooms over her swollen face. She stood tense, as if she were cold.
Beyond her, the Shadow drew closer. Karin’s gaze flicked to it as it stopped about five meters away, its head focused on her.
Still not attacking.
Good.
“Let’s get a closer look. There’s an exit up ahead.”
Soo-jin shouldered the door open with a grind and a squeak. Damp, cool air blew across Karin’s face and arms. From outside, the scent of rain came to her.
The four ships sat in the field, still and silent, their outboard lights panning large areas of brightness against the dark backdrop of the trees. Everything was quiet. Utterly and completely. So much that, when she took the step outside to join Soo-jin on the stairs just past the threshold, the rustle of fabric from her clothes caught at her senses as unnaturally loud.
Above, the sky took on an odd coloration. Instead of the night that should have been there, the horizon was a dim brown—like twilight showing through the smoke of a forest burn. A sea of clouds choked around it, thick and black, their bottom edges bursting with small, blurring tendrils that gave it a diffused appearance, as if it were raining.
To her, the blur looked similar to the edge of a Shadow form—where its impossible darkness seemed to clash with the keenness of reality.
She glanced back. Their follower had taken another step toward them. It stood, staring.
Unease prickled through her back. She’d expected it, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.
Gods, I’m in another fucking world.
By the way Soo-jin had gone stiff and still beside her, she could tell her friend was having similar thoughts.
She shoved them back. “So, what now? Explore, or get the fuck out of here?”
Soo-jin’s expression tautened. She made to lift her hand, but cut the gesture and let her hand slip back down.
“I-I’m not sure. That ramp’s open, but… are you sure you have a hold on this? Gods, I can’t believe we’re actually here.”
&nb
sp; “I know the feeling.” Karin winced as she took another step, the movement twinging her ribs. “I brought us here, and I can’t believe it. I’m still having a hard time believing this place even exists. I mean, look at it!”
Her jaw clenched as she took in the sky again—really took it in. It was like her gaze was the center of a pinwheel. Except, instead of spinning, each spot she focused on instead exuded a feeling of monstrous colossality, and a keen, growing realization of just how real everything was.
She was really here, standing in some Shadow-world variant of her childhood compound, with Centauri ships sitting like giant, silent beasts in the field.
Neither of them spoke for a minute.
At the corner of her senses, she became aware of movement. Other Shadows, slipping in and out of the backdrop as naturally as if the darkness of the trees and the dim diffusion of light were made for them.
Which, to be fair, they probably were. At this point, she was fairly sure that they’d landed themselves in the Shadow world.
Soo-jin’s head tracked one as it walked to the side of the nearest ship. For a moment, the glare of the light hid it from Karin’s senses, but it appeared on the opposite side only a moment later, moving with the same eerie, stilted, long-strided walk.
It paused next to the ship’s open ramp, appeared to stare for a few seconds, then strode up it.
Soo-jin visibly recoiled. “Do you think you can take us back over?”
Karin gave the side of her face a sharp look. “What—now?”
If they switched over here, they’d likely be surrounded by Centauri soldiers—which would end in a bad way for them.
Soo-jin shook her head. “Suns, no. I meant just—in general.”
She swallowed. “Let’s operate on the assumption that I can.”
Hells. She did not want to consider the alternative.
“In that case, I vote we hit up the Nemina, shoot ourselves full of nano, see what stuff we can loot, then find a place in the forest to hide.” Soo-jin didn’t quite meet her eye, but her frowning gaze came close. “If you can transfer stuff over, that could make things interesting.”
Karin gave a shallow snort, wincing as the movement twinged her broken ribs, and started down the stairs. “Well, I transferred you, didn’t I?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
With a sharp pain and a soft hiss of the pump, medication flooded through her arm. Karin let out a groan as the warmth of nanos swarmed her chest, then allowed her body to relax into the Med Bay chair. In seconds, her broken wrist was engulfed in a pleasing buzz of activity—the machines getting to work.
Soo-jin retracted the needle, shoved it into the sani station’s laser autoclave for a minute to sterilize it, then reprogrammed it for her face. A beep sounded, and she injected it into her arm.
Her face relaxed.
“That is so much better.” She withdrew the needle from her arm, stuffed it into the autoclave again, and shut the door. Her dreads, pulled back into a high ponytail on her head, swung as she headed for the room’s exit. “Now, you stay here. Machines need about ten minutes to set your bones—well, maybe fifteen for the wrist. I’ll go see what, precisely, has been fucked with here. Okay?”
Karin, watching through half-lidded eyes from the chair, grunted in acknowledgment.
“Perfect. Stay here.”
A second later, Soo-jin was out the door.
Karin slid her head back with another groan. It wasn’t technically true, what Soo-jin had said—most nano guidebooks required one to stay still for a full half hour while nano-ing broken bones—but she was likely playing it by ear. As she’d guessed earlier, her ribs had only shown a few cracks under the medscan, and the wrist could stay immobile even when the rest of her wasn’t, if she were careful.
Given the situation, she was okay with the rush.
They’d found the Nemina with her camouflage off, ramp down, and lights on—a visual that, combined with the weird dim desaturation of the world and the way the lights didn’t quite feel right to Karin’s senses, made for a mix of deep, unsettling emotions that coiled in her gut.
Things had been pulled out. Nomiki’s weapons boxes and Baik’s bags had sat in the tall grass next to the ramp, catching the light as they’d approached. Next to them, a couple of storage crates from the back had been lifted, their tops popped open and loose—likely abandoned when whoever-it-was had discovered the worn, archaic coffee canister and the three-dozen empty Novan beer cans that sat inside, victims of the Nemina’s last scrounge. The third one, larger than the others, contained an old mosaic wall decal.
Probably not what they’d been expecting to find on an enemy military Scout.
The engines, she hoped, would be different enough to evade sabotage. She’d be sure to run an extremely thorough systems check before doing anything exciting with them.
And—hells—what if they’d put trackers on her?
She squinted her eyes and gave herself a mental shake. She was getting way ahead of herself.
First, they’d have to figure out how to get the rest of them out of there. And if the Nemina could actually fly.
There was no way she was leaving without Marc. And Cookie, too. Nomiki and Jon could fend for themselves, likely, and Baik…
Hells, Baik.
Yesterday, she would have been just fine with leaving him behind—the Alliance, she would have figured, could be left to handle his imprisonment.
But… now?
Soo-jin was right. He had pulled through for them. And as much as she hated to admit it—it was easy to dislike him—his capturing her had just been part of his job. And he’d been nice about it.
A rattle of straps and a startled yelp from the corridor announced Soo-jin’s return. The woman appeared in the doorway, taking a wide turn, eyes focused on something Karin couldn’t see.
She gave it a suspicious look, her mouth pulling back into a stiff, fearful grimace, then slid her way into the room.
“Your friend’s back,” she said.
Karin straightened. “The Shadow?”
“Yep.”
She grunted. That wasn’t surprising. It had followed them from the compound—it and three others they’d picked up along the way. They’d been milling around the bottom of the ramp, at the edge of the Nemina’s lights. So far, none of them had shown any signs of attacking, so she was content to let them be.
Soo-jin, too, appeared to be running along the same lines of thinking. She didn’t give the Shadow another thought, instead walking over to the table and clearing a space with her forearm. She slid a juice bag and protein pack she’d grabbed from Mess toward Karin. A black and purple bag with long straps hung over her shoulder.
She noticed her looking. “I grabbed you a bum bag. Try it on when you’re feeling sprightly.”
Karin was feeling the opposite of sprightly. The nanos made her body’s healing centers work harder—that was part of the fifteen-year-old-update Takahashi had alluded to earlier. As they worked, her energy levels sank. Generally, it presented as a nice, warm invitation to go into a twelve-hour nap.
Which would be a terrible idea right now with them in the Shadow world. If she fell asleep and slipped back over, she might wake up on the real Nemina, surrounded by soldiers.
Plus, she might leave Soo-jin behind.
She gave herself a little shake, fought the urge to pinch herself—it wouldn’t work anyway, with the nanos’ numbness—and eyed the juice. “Get me some undiluted coffee, and I’ll see what I can do.”
By the way Soo-jin’s eyes rounded, she must have realized the problem.
“Shit. On it.” She flung the bag over the next chair and backed out, jabbing a finger at Karin as she left. “No sleeping.”
Working on it.
She pushed herself further upright in the chair, earning another twinge from her side. She must have hit her head at some point, too, because the pleasant, buzzing burn of nanos had extended to her left temple, as well—which did not help her abi
lity to fight sleep. Even without that addition, she could already feel the nanos sapping at her energy.
She grabbed the juice bag, and, after a few seconds’ one-handed fiddling with its top, managed to stab the straw insert through its latch. The taste of orange and melon burst over her tongue, the mix of flavors alien enough to rouse her mind. The protein pack, with its dull, unsweetened, wooden flavor, would be less interesting, but she’d had worse. Much worse, considering what she and Nomiki had eaten during their run from Earth.
Oddly, the memory twigged a smile from her lips.
Suns, this is the second time I’ve had to escape this place.
Soo-jin returned several minutes later with a coffee can, a small, black, official-looking bag, and a huge grin.
“Found this in Cookie’s side of the cupboards,” she said, tipping the can in front of Karin with a slight clunk. The label on its side depicted a small, pink rodent with lightning bolts emanating from its head and read Hyperspace Mouse, a brand she recognized from her university days.
But, when she didn’t immediately walk away, Karin realized it wasn’t the reason Soo-jin was grinning. She glanced up with a frown. A wild, excited gleam broke through Soo-jin’s dark eyes. She barely waited a beat before brandishing the bag—carefully—and opening its drawstring top. “And I found these in Baik’s secret backroom stash.”
Backroom stash? She hadn’t been aware that he had one. But, clearly, Soo-jin had. Her frown deepened as she peered through the top. Inside, about ten circular, pre-fab devices, each with a pin-follicle, a barely-noticeable indent on one side, and a small metallic ring about their middle, jumbled together like ping-pong-sized models of Saturn.
Or like a popular model of sex toy she’d seen in Nova’s shops.
“Er…” She squinted, as if that would help her discern the things’ identity. “I’m guessing those aren’t TX Ticklers.”
“They’re Novan army grenades,” Soo-jin clarified. “But thanks for putting that image in my head. I’ll have much more fun blowing things up with them.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “What are you planning to blow up with them?”