by K. Gorman
She only kept a small mental note of them, giving them polite nods as she passed. Even before they’d turned pacifistic, they’d long stopped being a threat to her. Her light was a natural Shadow killer.
It also seemed to be the thing that attracted them, too.
She’d decided to file that under ‘odd things to look into once the universe is safe again.’
Hells, there were quite a few things filed under that label now. She doubted she would ever get answers to half of them.
She’d left the suit helmet off, preferring the feel of the air against her skin. The night was quiet, much different from the insect drones that filled the jungle in the real world.
Suns, Tia said in her head. Just look at all this―it’s all just so…
“Bizarre?” Karen finished aloud.
Yes. If I didn’t have access to your memories, not to mention external eyewitness agreements, I would assume that you were conducting some sort of extreme, on-command hallucinations.
“That would be giving me far too much credit, Tia.” She snorted. “I was never that creative.”
You forget, you’re a creation goddess now.
“Modeled after one, yes, but I’ve been hallucinating Shadows for quite some time now.”
She tapped her foot, turning her attention back to the camp. Several more Shadows had slipped into sight, lurking at the edges of the small clearing, inside tent flaps, next to the parking lots’ many broken and burned-out light poles, under wings and beside noses of aircraft. Above the trees, the sky held its usual dull, dim brown color between the top of the tree canopy and the bottom of the Shadow world’s seemingly endless supply of dense, thick cloud cover. It looked more like the light pollution of a small town than any attempt at clouds obscuring a sun.
There was a sun, though. She could feel it at the edge of her Eos powers.
It just never rose. Except for that one time she’d made it rise.
She nodded in the direction of the slightly brighter side of the horizon and stepped out that way. “That’s as good a direction as any, I think. Thoughts?”
This is new territory for me. I was never a Girl Guide.
She struck off toward the side of the camp, away from the crumbling pavement of the old parking lot, and found a trail that led into the jungle, flicking on the built-in light on her suit’s arm to find the way rather than her light powers. With an estimated three days left on the suit’s battery at moderate use, she wasn’t precisely worried about conserving power. Tree trunks and overhanging branches lit up starkly in her light, and the dirt was hard-packed, full of roots and rocks. It was eerily quiet. No insects. No people. No wind. Only the slide and click of her suit boots and the subtle whir of internal systems. Preferring to sense things rather than trust the HUD―this was about testing her powers, after all―she’d stuffed the suit’s helmet in the small backpack she’d brought from the Nemina, casually tucking the snacks and water sachets she’d also brought inside.
Probably not a regulation packing job, but she doubted anyone would bother her about it. They’d be too busy mincing words about her impromptu and unauthorized venture.
The thought made her teeth clench.
What was wrong with them? Why didn’t they want her using her new powers? Trying to see it from the military’s side―they did have a point, perhaps. There were no resources to cover it. They couldn’t provide her with backup, if things went wrong. Hells, they wouldn’t even be able to find her.
They’d let her go off on her own before, though―she and the rest of the Nemina’s crew, along with a few tag-alongs.
But that had been different. They’d been fighting the Centauri. And they’d only been looking to research the Macedonian compound.
No one could have predicted what had happened.
It was also before you went into the tank. I wasn’t in your head, then, Tia pointed out.
“Do you think that’s what changed things?”
I’m an unknown factor related to a known evil. It can’t have helped.
“A known evil?”
Without me, none of the Project would have been possible. Tia’s thought-voice faltered, and she paused. It might have started as an unbelievable experiment, but I knew what I was doing. When it became clear that Bernard and Elliot were on to something―when the data started spitting back things that should have been impossible―I became a bit obsessed.
As she spoke, Karin caught flashes of Tia’s memories. She remembered checking the data, going over simulations. Obsessing over numbers. Going days and weeks on little sleep, only work. Monitoring the then-cutting-edge nanotechnology as it pieced genetic strands together from variant sources. Watching the first batch of embryos grow.
“You were sick, weren’t you?” Karin remembered the I.V. stand from another memory, the way Tia’s hands had shaken.
Terminally, yes. ALS. Tia paused. That’s partially why I became so obsessed, I think. When my symptoms began to worsen, I thought―
“You thought you could get out of it.”
Yes.
“Well, I guess you did, in a way. Though I doubt this is how you thought it would all go down.”
No, not quite. Though, in my credit, I doubt anyone could have predicted ‘crazy lady tries to rewrite the universe.’
“It’s unbelievable that any of this―” she made a gesture, and her light power flitted to the surface. “―actually works. I always figured it was some weird chemical-glowy thing that defied all medical scans. I hadn’t even considered quantum field manipulation.”
Chemicals are limited, Tia informed her. Attempts to crossbreed humans, genetically speaking, turned out rather…odd. And I agree―I was incredulous at first, too. But they talked me into trying it, and when it actually began to work in the simulations…
“Badabing, badaboom.”
Indeed. Tia paused. Where are we going, anyway?
Karin looked around. The trees were silent, leaves catching in the light from her suit arm. A heady, moist scent permeated the air. Even here, in this dark world, the air had a heat and humidity to it, though not as much as in the other world.
“The slightly brighter area I saw. I think it’s the Centauri camp.” There hadn’t been any villages close by―at least, none that would have made that kind of light pollution. “I figured that, if nothing else, I could snoop.”
Checking out our assets.
“Basically, yes. Of course, I’m hoping that something other than snooping happens on this trip.”
She looked down at her gloved hand, splaying the fingers. With a thought, she pushed at her light power. Globs of white-gold bubbles slipped out of her skin like droplets of glowing oil and lifted into the air, shivering. She felt more of her power shiver within the flesh of her arm, its touch sliding through her muscles and tendons like the fingers of a Shadow―except this was familiar, not foreign.
You’re hoping something will happen, Tia said.
“Yes. Otherwise, we’re kind of wasting our time here.” She blew out a breath and looked around at the trees. “I mean, as interesting as the Shadow world is, it’s not exactly telling me where Sasha is. Or what to do.”
Huh. In her mind, she felt more than saw Tia’s eyebrows lift. And you’re just going to…walk?
“Well, yes.” She narrowed her eyes. What was Tia on about? “Why? What else is there to do?”
Well, wasn’t it you who was bitching about Fallon not utilizing your full potential? Tia barely paused. It seems to me that you’re doing roughly what they were doing, just in a different world.
She rolled her eyes.
You have the power of Eurynome. And I’ve been waiting a lifetime to find out what, exactly, she can do.
She frowned. “You’re the one who programmed her. Shouldn’t you be the expert?”
In genetic coding, yes. But I never got to test-drive the abilities―I never had a fucking chance to. That’s all you. I―
Tia stopped suddenly, whipping her head a
round. A second later, Karin felt it, too.
As they’d been walking, more and more Shadows had gathered in the wings, keeping pace at a distance. Some had moved in closer, wandering in and out of the trees.
“Getting crowded in here,” she observed.
Yes. So you better hurry up.
She let out a breath. Tia was right. They hadn’t come here just to explore, and the growing number of Shadows was a concern.
She shifted, turning her stance, and took a deep, stabilizing breath.
Then, she closed her eyes and pulled on her powers. Carefully. Slowly. Savoring every zip and tingle the quantum field caused. Light flashed against the back of her eyelids. She caught a whiff of humidity―the jungle―along with the telltale aroma of burned air from the lingering ion trails that a massive amount of ships coming and going would leave.
Now, one of the Shadows stood right behind them. And it recognized her.
“Eos.”
The thought-voice cut through her body like a rake of static. She felt it go through her. Felt it echo in her mind.
Slowly, she turned.
The Shadow was roughly her height, standing at about a meter’s pace. As she turned, her light―both from the suit and the droplets in the air―skittered its shadow across the path behind it. It was odd to see, given the Shadow was actually darker to her eyes than the shadow it cast behind it. Like a piece of the universe had been cut, letting part of the abyss leak in.
Except, somehow, this was a being.
This is the one that’s been following you, isn’t it? Tia asked.
Yes, Karin answered inwardly.
For a moment, she stared at the Shadow, regarding it. Then, she shifted forward, opening the angle of her body to it.
“Hello,” she said.
The word seemed to make the Shadow waver. It rocked back, its borders seeming to shiver for a second―like the edges of flame, except in abyssal black and with the weird, blurred, turned-in effect that made them hard to look at.
Though, now that she was trying, she found that she could look at them.
“Hello,” the Shadow repeated. “You’re the one who programmed her. Shouldn’t you be the expert? Well, yes. Why? What else is there to do?”
Ah, yes. A memory twigged. She remembered this. The weird repeats it had done in Macedonia. It seemed to have read something from her mind, back then―a memory of Tia.
That had been before she’d gone into the tank.
The Shadow shivered again, this time seeming to rear up. Then, it took a step. Its arm lifted, raggedy fingers outstretched.
She eyed them. Then, after a slight hesitation, and with a lot of misgiving, she lifted her own hand to meet it.
Its fingers clasped around her forearm and slid deeper, feathering her bones with a light touch.
Inside, something in the back of her nervous system changed, like a long-forgotten door fashioning itself into shape. Instinctively, her eyes began to close. Her mind opened, reached out, found something waiting.
“Eos,” the Shadow said again, and the voice shivered straight through her nerves.
A connection sparked and fused. For a millisecond, she got a brush of intellect, of opinion, of assessment.
Then the Shadow retreated.
It still kept a light touch on her arm, but its psyche pulled back.
“Is it reading my memories?” it said. “It is reading my memories.”
“Yes, yes, I think I get it. A little bit, anyway.” She took a breath, repressing a shiver―its fingers were still inside her arm, brushing against her flesh. “And yes, I am Eos―or at least I was. Who, or what, are you?”
It didn’t immediately answer. She felt it was thinking. Gods, she hoped it wouldn’t just repeat her words back to her―she was getting so gods damned tired of it all.
But, it only shifted again.
“You call us ‘Shadows.’ It is how we are perceived. You cannot perceive us truly.”
The words were stilted and odd, the cadence off―as if it were still piecing bits of a recorded language, but half of the words had strange stresses within the context.
But they were words, and it was speaking.
Considering the Shadows had been just madly attacking only a few months ago, this was huge progress.
Her brain flicked back to that end bit―You cannot perceive us truly. She’d always figured something of the sort. The Shadows weren’t really Shadows, not truly. They weren’t just black demonic forces sent to raid humanity. They were much more complicated than that.
She gestured around.
“This is your world, isn’t it? How did it come to be? Do we belong to different dimensions?” She paused. “Why is everything mirrored?”
“It is complicated,” the Shadow answered. “At first, we were cast-offs. Anomalous. Feeding off of human minds to create individuals over time. We existed like this. Then, we changed.”
“Changed?”
“Yes. Changed.” The Shadow paused, as if thinking. There were no emotions to it―it was as if a computer were compiling an answer. “She changed us. You are changing us.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
Okay, that was a lot to take in.
“She changed you?” she asked, deciding to focus on the first part. “Sasha?” Then, remembering that the Shadow had used project archetype names rather than given names, “Chaos?”
“Yes. She allowed us to reach across the barrier and explore.”
“You attacked us,” she said.
“She forced us to. We were angry. Confused. Lost.”
Her arm tingled where the Shadow touched her, and she repressed the urge to snatch it away. There was a connection between them. She could feel it. Like touching a wire and feeling the current.
“Are you still angry?” she asked.
“No. Now, confused.”
Join the club.
As far as she knew, Sasha might be the only one of them that wasn’t confused.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. She shouldn’t have done that. She hurt us, too.”
Oddly, the Shadow hadn’t mentioned the large amount of death she’d dealt out to the Shadow population.
Maybe they didn’t die when they were ‘killed’ in the other world?
“She’s in our head. We can feel her.”
“It’s only going to get worse,” she told the Shadow. “She’s planning to push parts of my world into your world, then replace my world with her own world.”
“Not her world,” the Shadow answered. “His. Tartarus, the deep one.”
Huh. So they knew about that. And knew, specifically, that it was Tylanus that Sasha would be piecing apart to make her new universe.
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Not spoken, no, but we know him.”
Ah. She supposed that was logical. Like Sasha, he had shown an ability to control Shadows, too, though his ability seemed friendlier than hers.
The one time she’d seen it, he’d told a Shadow to lead them out of a labyrinth in a pocket dimension.
“He tried to talk to me, I think,” she said. “But he just collapsed.”
Maybe something happened to him. Maybe Sasha did something.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “He used to come to me in dreams. Once, he said that it was something that we used to do, back when we were both in the compound, but I don’t remember it.”
Shared dreams? It’s possible. We were all meant to be a hive mind.
“If he’s being kept sedated, do you think he’s dreaming?”
Have you done it while you were unconscious before?
Karin snorted. “Yes. That’s usually when it happens.”
Come to think of it, she’d spent an inordinate amount of time knocked out lately.
I read this book once. Fiction, but it touched on many more meta-physical concepts. Some of the characters could do a telepathic communication that the author called ‘kything,’ which not only allowed words, tone,
and speech to be conveyed, but physical sensations and images, as well.
She shook her head. “Possible, but it felt more direct than that.”
I did say it was fiction. Like I also said, you were both genetically wired for connection. I coded part of Program Delphi into the base, and both of you would have that code.”
“The Delphi code as opposed to the Eurynome code?” she asked, teasing.
Fuck. Here I am, Grand Regent of a large military, chimeric mix of creation gods, arguing about telepathy in a literal Shadow realm.
She sighed. She hadn’t meant that last one as a response to Tia, but she knew the woman had received it all the same.
They shared a brain, after all.
“If Sasha is in your head,” she said to the Shadow, “do you know where she is?”
The Shadow had kept silent throughout her entire side conversation with Tia. Briefly, her mind flickered down to the sensation of its fingers inside of her arm, and she wondered just how much it ‘heard.’ It had, after all, already demonstrated an ability to connect to her mind.
The entity shifted, its middle rippling.
“Yes.”
A shock spiked through her system, and a shot of adrenaline jumped into her blood.
Holy shit.
“Where?” She twisted around, taking a half-step closer to the Shadow. Power shivered through her, licking her nerves like a whip. “Show me―where is she?”
For a few seconds, the Shadow was silent. She became aware of just how many other Shadows stood around them, watching. Tens upon tens of them, solid silhouettes in the trees, their attention all on her and this one Shadow.
Then, it rippled. Her mind reeled as its darkness seemed to writhe and undulate, constantly moving. It was like looking at one of those trick images that never appeared to stop moving, though the lines in the image itself were still, except instead of lines on a screen or colors on paper, it was an abyssal blackness.
The Shadow’s words from earlier came back to her.
‘You call us ‘Shadows.’ It is how we are perceived. You cannot perceive us truly.’