by K. Gorman
This time, he did yell, several ribs now sliced open, floating and collapsing support of his chest. The armor dropped first, but a piece of metal—sharp now that she’d cut through it—pressed its edge into the pad of her finger before she let it drop. A matching piece flashed from inside the wound before he turned away.
Metal-coated ribs. Either an old injury, or a structural replacement.
He’d had a lot more modification than she’d thought.
Two, Tia counted.
He slashed at her, and she danced away, taking a moment to check the crowd around them.
The line hadn’t moved, but more had joined. Likely from other parts of the building. Faces stared at their fight, stone-serious and intense.
The way they stared, and the strange way Leisler had spoken to her, made her feel as though this fight was bigger than just him and her—as if there was a ceremony to this.
She didn’t care. All she wanted to do was rip him apart.
He lunged again. She blocked his attack with a slide of her arm, pain thumping up from the muscle. Her body twisted to the side, going with the motion, but as her other arm whipped round, a clawed fist aiming for the metal cybernetic joint of his shoulders, he surprised her by doing his own twist.
Her eyebrows lifted as he clunked across the ground in a front roll, the image comical given the massive size of his body. Like watching a pony tuck and drop, except the pony was made of metal.
She waited until he’d swung smoothly up again—she’d let him have that, at least—then carved a chunk of his lower abdomen away.
He staggered, blood gushing to the ground. She sliced another two pieces from his hip and shoulder, careful to keep the wounds shallow.
He didn’t bellow, like last time, only grunted.
Five, she thought.
When he turned around to face her again, the marks made neat scores in his flesh. The top one, she noted, had even cut away some of the metal.
A happy part of her purred at the sight, like a cat in the sun.
He deserves it. He beat Nomiki. Imprisoned you. Almost killed Marc.
The thoughts came, light and insidious, their lust fitting through her like a bloody knife sliding back into its sheath.
She shivered, cold dousing through her like a shock.
No, that wasn’t right.
He hadn’t beaten Marc. Though the Centauri’s lackluster medical treatment of their prisoners had violated nearly every agreement of war since Sirius had come out of its planet-conquering stage, he hadn’t actually laid a hand on Marc, and he certainly hadn’t managed to kill him—despite the injuries she’d brought him back to the Shadow Nemina with.
He doesn’t deserve this, she thought. No one deserves this.
And this? This wasn’t her. She wasn’t this bloodthirsty.
Four more, Tia whispered.
The bloodlust keyed back through her body, drove her doubts aside like water crashed against a curb. She dodged his next attack—a slash with his knife hand that started with a feint, then nearly sliced off her head—but he caught her in a backstroke with his elbow.
Pain crashed through her wounded shoulder. Panic flooded through her, then dulled like a shutter door had slammed into place. She staggered back, breath pumping out of her in a collision of air, feet already jerking her away, ducking her down into the movement. He pressed the attack, catching a shallow slice that burned across her thigh.
She turned into it and smashed a quick jab into his chin.
His other hand blocked it, clamped down on her fist—and for one frightening moment, true fear jolted through her like a lightning strike as she felt him move.
She ripped her hand away, not caring when a bone snapped in her finger, shoved him with the heel of the same hand—the force drove him back like she’d nudged him with a car—and carved a deep hole in his right pectoral muscle.
Blood gushed out of the wound as she cored him. She dropped the piece of flesh on the lot. Other splatters of red stood out against the compound’s dusty gray concrete, their color shining brightly in the stark lights of the Centauri ships.
Six.
He darted out with another slash, quick as a sparrow. She twisted, then hissed as she directed the blow into her hip, allowing the bone to deflect the knife. Had it been laser-edged, she would have been screwed.
Muscle damage. Reduced mobility. Kick from off-side, Tia instructed.
Her own personal fight coach AI.
A follow-up cut missed her abdomen by less than a centimeter. Adrenaline spiked her nerves. She rolled back, aware of the thump in the ground as he gave chase. Her body slid back to its feet. Pain screamed through her wounds, but was quickly quieted. Blood poured down her hip and thigh from the cut. She listed to the right, twisting to meet his blow.
He slammed her to the ground. Her back hit hard, whooshing her breath from her, shoulder pinned in a brutal grip. She raised her hand, clasped his forearm, and carved half of the bone and muscle away with her power, meeting his eyes with a calm gaze. Blood poured over them both. She caught a brief flash of white and silver—the bone she’d bisected. He didn’t yell, but she saw the pain light up in his eyes.
Seven, she thought.
Holding them, she reached her hand toward his neck.
He recoiled, metal whirring. The knife of his hand slid back, exchanging for the gun as he staggered back. She leapt up, aware of bullets chewing the ground behind her.
The dimensions warped, dark and light flickering together. It felt like pulling at threads, watching the world unravel in places, giving it a yank—something she felt deep in her gut. She sliced his gun arm in half, knocked him back with a savage kick that he half-blocked, and, when he didn’t fall, cut his left foot off.
He staggered to the ground with a cry. She was on him in an instant, her body arched like a predator on a kill. She blocked his attempt at a guard and drove her fingers into his throat.
Ten.
She dug her fingers in deep, a shudder going through her as she felt his flesh part under her nails. Blood splattered her face when he coughed. His throat ripped in her fingers, metal and flesh either turning aside or breaking. Warmth slipped over her skin. She felt his breath bubble the blood past the pads of her thumb and first two fingers with a soft gurgle.
She pressed tighter, staring into his eyes, feeling the tendons give, and a keen, buzzing sense of satisfaction burned through her core as she watched him struggle, savoring every part.
His breath stopped. She felt him die—a subtle relaxation of his face and limbs that carried a distinct finality to it, and that soothed some dark part of her.
Only when the flow of his blood slowed, and she stopped feeling the warmth of life in his flesh, did she let him go.
It was over.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
She straightened, power flooding through her limbs as she lifted her gaze to the stars, ignoring the piercing attention of the Centauri that surrounded her. Though the parking lot was steeped in a dead silence, the forest beyond was alive with noise—the drones and chirps of insects and frogs made a heady backdrop to the night, accompanied by the small rustlings of night birds and nocturnal mammals. All avoided the parking lot with its strange ships and large crowd, but the dark growth of the forest was fair game.
Her gaze skittered down, skimming over the sloping nose of the nearest corvette. The tinted windows of its bridge sat like wrap-around sunglasses at its front, banking into the yellow, gray, and black pattern of its plates. Subtle indentations, little more than skirts and pocks of shadow on its sides, marked weapons, comms units, and other military admonishments—a radar pitch canted in behind the bridge’s windows like the ear of a lizard. Below, the tension snapping in the air as her gaze dropped to them, the crowd stood.
Tense. Wary. Scared.
She stepped back toward the building and made her way to the front door.
The air was beginning to cool against her body, the blood turning into a caked-on mes
s, pulling at her skin in subtle ways. A few Centauri moved out of her way as she found the stairs. The door creaked, then hissed and banged after her. The light from the ships cast across the hall in bright, slanted rectangles, and for the first time since waking, she re-noticed the lack of power in the facility. Either the Centauri had not managed to find and reconnect the compound’s generator, or had not bothered to turn on the lights, because the hall was otherwise dark.
She frowned, staring at her hands, the way the red washed over her forearms, and a small twinge started at the back of her neck. She’d spilled an incredible amount of blood tonight. She could only imagine what the rest of her looked like—some kind of demon, surely. Or maybe a newborn. Weren’t newborns born with a shitload of blood and birth matter coating them? Real newborns, ones that hadn’t been born in artificial wombs?
She bared her teeth in a savage grin.
This is one hell of a rebirth. I—
Her foot touched something cold.
Her entire body went utterly and completely still.
Slowly, the smell of copper came back to her nose. She looked down, past the glare where light shone, to where a dark patch spread across the light-colored floor—one of three that lined this particular stretch of hallway, though the next section would be flooded with it. In the dimness, the mangled half-corpse was a smear of collapsed, blood-soaked flesh, armor, and clothing, but she could make out small patches of dryness, places her power hadn’t touched. A hand, intact, curled loosely, relaxed. The patch of black Centauri rank stripes below a shoulder. The strap of the rifle. A holopoint screen adaptation embedded in the man’s wrist.
Like a magnet, her gaze slid back to her hands. Blood coated the surface, rubbed thinner in places, but thickened in the trenches that made the wrinkles of her hand like dark rivulets.
I’ve killed people.
Something broke inside her—like a ball of ice. Her hands began to shake. Then, it shuddered through her shoulders and spread to the rest of her.
I killed a lot of people.
Her chest stiffened, breath hitched. The world tripped around her, rippling. She heard someone whimper close to her. After a moment, she realized the sound was coming from her own throat.
Protect the Cradle, Tia whispered.
Numb, she picked up her feet again. The blood felt like slime when she stepped through it, the sensation drawing another shiver from her shoulders. The hallway with its lights passed, and the smell of blood and death grew briefly stronger, then lessened. The door to the stairs shut behind her.
When she got to the third floor landing, an eerie quiet descended on her. The light at the end of the hallway was white, tinged with blue. The next thing she knew, she was on the threshold to the Cradle room, and a very shocked-looking Nomiki was taking her in.
“Karin?”
Nomiki’s jaw visibly slackened. The remains of six dead soldiers littered the room in patches of blood and mangled limbs, two more than she’d left her with. The Cradle’s tankwater was tinged a slight red.
Protect the Cradle, Tia whispered.
“Karin, are you okay?” Nomiki’s voice turned to cautious concern. Her gaze dropped. “You’re… you’re absolutely covered in blood.”
She followed her sister’s gaze down. She was still naked, but she hadn’t noticed in a while. Now that she did, she could feel the way the blood pulled at her, the way it caked over her skin.
“I know,” she said.
Nomiki hesitated. “Is… is any of it yours?”
“No,” she said. Then, remembering the wound on her arm, and the others on her hip and thigh, “Yes.”
She twisted, glancing at them. Then, she found another across her other shoulder—an abrasion from when she’d rolled over the ground outside. There were several others, cuts and burns, many bruises. A careful flexing of her fingers revealed a potential fracture in her knuckles.
A small one, though. Hairline. Not like her wrist had been before.
“We, uh.” Nomiki’s eyebrows twitched. “We should get you cleaned up.”
“No. I have to protect the Cradle.”
She shook off her sister’s hand—when had she touched her? To look at the wounds?—and headed over to the desk at the side of the lab, pulling out the chair.
“Okay, then. How about some clothes?”
Karin glanced down at her arm. “I’ll just get them bloody. I don’t want to dirty them. Easier to wash blood off skin.”
Nomiki’s eyebrows twitched again. Her sister watched her as she sat down and crossed her legs, giving her the latest in what was quickly becoming a string of assessing looks.
“So, you won’t put on clothes because you’d get them dirty, and you won’t get cleaned up because you can’t leave the Cradle?” This time, Nomiki’s eyebrows shot straight into her forehead, not bothering to hide her skepticism any longer. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
She didn’t answer. Nomiki hadn’t meant it as a real question, anyway.
“You’re clearly going into shock. We need to fix you.”
“I’m fine.”
Nomiki laughed. “No, you’re not. You’re covered in blood and being comically stubborn.”
“I killed a lot of people,” she said.
“So I surmised.”
“A lot of people.” Her voice thickened. It seemed important that she let her sister know.
“I didn’t think you’d gone off to fuck spiders.”
It took her a moment to register the joke. She caught the flash of Nomiki’s eye roll. She realized they weren’t speaking System any more, but had switched to English, their mother tongue. It flowed easily, like water over creek stones.
Slowly, her sister seemed to realize what she was trying to say. Bright eyes found hers, sharpening as she focused. When she spoke, her tone slid lower, serious.
“How many?”
“Less than fifty. Maybe.” Karin shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”
She frowned, a niggling feeling nudging at her ribs. There was one that she hadn’t killed—just trapped on the other side of the veil. He’d had a knife, had come at her from the side, upstairs.
Her mind slipped, focusing, trailing through the fabric of reality until she could feel the Shadow world slip across her fingers. She found the man, his steps in the other world giving her a crawling sensation like an ant on her skin. Her power rippled like velvet. She gave him a gentle shove.
She felt him pop back out upstairs, surprising several of his comrades.
Her sister was waving a hand in front of her face. “Karin? Helloooooooo?”
“Do we have a way to contact the Nemina?” she asked. “Fallon?”
“Not until they get that tracker working to find us. And I doubt they’d come anywhere near with the Centauri around.”
“Then we need to go to the village, like I’d planned?” She considered it, then shook her head. “No. I can’t. I need to protect the Cradle.”
Voices sounded in the hall. She and her sister paused, listening. One of them sounded familiar. Feet tramped closer, and she collected herself, shoulders slipping back, legs splaying, angling into a fighting stance. Her instincts began to kick in, power gathering in the wings.
Most of the footsteps stopped halfway down the hall. Only one set continued—quiet, soft. Shuffling, with a slight limp.
Takahashi appeared a few seconds later, a mix of hesitation, confusion, and cautious bemusement slipping over his fingers. He stopped when he caught sight of her and Nomiki, the serious expressions on their faces, the blaster in Nomiki’s good hand, and the sheer amount of blood that coated a very naked Karin. His shock registered in an upward twitch of his eyebrows, followed quickly by a click of understanding.
“Ah,” he said, “That’s why they’re so… inhibited.”
Inhibited? She twitched her head, turned her attention to where she could still sense a small group of Centauri up the hall. The smell of hot chemicals and cold sweat came to her. Str
ess. Anxiety. Fear. Caution.
“They sent me alone,” Takahashi confirmed, striding in with an easy confidence, gaze turned to the floor—as if this were just any other of their encounters, and she was not covered in blood, surrounded by bodies, and fresh from a massacre of her own orchestration. She tracked him as he moved to the Cradle, a loose urge to do something rising in her nerves, but Tia must have decided to trust him because she felt it slip back down. The computer beeped once when he brought its holoscreen up. After a quick skim, he moved to its other side and, with a surprising strength—augments, Tia observed—bent over the Centauri corpse she’d left in the tank and lurched him out and to the floor beside it.
After a few moments, the tank’s bloody water began to clear.
None of it, she noticed, had cycled through to the brain side.
“Token of good faith,” Nomiki prompted. “Or sacrificial lamb?”
“A bit of both, I expect.” Takahashi gave her sister a thin smile, the humor crinkling around the corners of his mouth in a rare, wry way. The expression dropped when he turned to Karin, the usual frown of concentration falling into place as he gave her an assessing look.
“She’s gained more muscle,” he observed.
“And a shitload of combat experience,” Nomiki confirmed, turning her own gaze back to assessment. “I guess that’s why she was twitching so much in the tank.”
“Twitching?” Karin raised an eyebrow.
They both ignored her.
“I assume she woke up around the time the screaming and running started.” Takahashi pulled a netlink out of his pocket and swiveled back around to the computer. Tia tensed inside her, but relaxed. “How long was she active for, after I left?”
“Three hours and twenty-three minutes,” Nomiki said. “She woke up after three hours and forty-two minutes. Total duration of active sequence was four hours and three minutes, with a thirty-three minute span beforehand that you identified as separate and a potential prelude.” She paused, gaze slipping back to Karin and dropping down her body. “We need to find her a medkit.”