by K. Gorman
She released him then, and with a thought and a twist of dimensions, pushed the two Fallon soldiers back into the other world before they could try anything. Holstering her blaster, she shoved the general to the floor, stalked to the other side of the Shadow Cradle, and sized it up.
Perfect. There was just enough room between it and the cupboards to brace herself.
The general stirred, watching her. “What are you doing?”
“Protecting myself.” She glanced over the base of the tank, rolled her shoulders, then put her hands on its frame and shoved.
The Cradle rocked, the water whipping up and sloshing over her hands. Then, her suit augments recalculated the load―she shoved again, and the Cradle slid a meter and a half over, making a horrendous grating screech on the floor.
She stood and rolled her shoulders.
“Makos,” General Crane began again, his voice a low warning. “We are all in this together. There is a procedure to follow. That is how we win. When we―”
“Really?” she asked. “You have a procedure for ‘if a mad, genetically engineered scientist decides to replace the universe with her own?’ That’s awfully specific, and I don’t believe it. If you’d had a procedure, you would have told me about it. And you would have given me an explanation for refusing to explore my new abilities. No, I’m done with waiting. My tenure with Fallon is over. I’m leaving. I’ll be in touch.”
She flexed her powers. A wave of dizziness crashed through her as she focused on what she wanted, then pulled.
Power rippled.
A second later, Crane was gone, the real Cradle was in front of her, sitting where the Shadow Cradle used to be, and Nomiki was standing across the room.
Her sister glanced around at the space, then down at the Shadow Cradle, whose water still rocked from the move, then to her, an eyebrow lifting.
“So,” her sister said. “I take it we’re leaving?”
“Yes.” Karin gave the Cradle a glance-over, wincing as the brain in the tank reached out to her mind, then veered around the Cradles’ ends, typing up a quick explanation to Tia Origin in the tank about what had happened. “But I’m picking up Tylanus along the way.”
Nomiki joined her, already rolling her shoulders for a fight. “Good idea. Apparently, Fallon is being way more shady than I thought they were.”
“Apparently,” she agreed.
As they left the room and turned down the hall, she glanced back at the Cradle, her gaze snapping to the glow of its screen and the dark silhouette of the backup power they’d strapped to it.
It would be all right until she came back. And, if she didn’t come back, they had other problems.
In the hallway, she pulled out the communicator Tillerman had given her, activated it, and half-phased, appearing like a ghost to the surprised techs.
She ignored the shouts of alarm and surprise, speaking quickly to send the message.
“Commander, be at your ship in five. We’re leaving.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nomiki jogged to keep up with her, dodging around an old pool of blood and gore that had desiccated into a large splotch on the floor. “Did you kill Crane?”
“No.”
“Good. What’s your plan? Pick up Tylanus and then what? Are you going to warp the Nemina over? She requires a twenty-minute warm-up, doesn’t she?”
“She does, but I’m not taking her. I’m leaving with the Centauri.” She glanced over at her sister. “I was informed today that I became their new Grand Regent a week ago when I killed Leisler. I’m guessing you didn’t know.”
Nomiki’s upper lip curled back. “No, I didn’t. Fuck, no wonder you looked so pissed off. Did Crane say anything more to you in the Shadow world that I didn’t hear?”
“Just excuses and threats.” Her teeth ground together for a moment, the steel-toed anger settling into her bones for a slow, continued burn. The headache was beginning to threaten again, lurking like a heavy weight, but Tia’s combat pain reactions sent it to the edges of her mind. “Allowing them near my Cradle was stupid. Tia has some very strict protocols regarding her own protection.”
“Yes,” Nomiki said, her tone dry. “I remember you giving me a side-eye for standing too close to it in the beginning. Gods, what were they thinking? Who in their right minds would bring Seirlin in on this?”
“He gave me an excuse about them having vested interest in the Project and that, since they were the parent company and funding provider, they were likely a good authority on the subject. I shut him down.”
They sprinted up the stairs, her nose scrunching up as they had to leap over another putrefying splotch of Centauri remains. She’d killed about six in the stairwell, most of them at the doors, which made opening them an awkward dance of angles and reach. She had to force one of the doors to unstick and push the gore out of the way like a windshield wiper on a car.
Fortunately, the second floor was clean.
She hadn’t had to fight her way through it.
They jogged up to the clinic space midway up, dodging a few Shadows that loitered in the hall, and ducked into the room.
Karin looked around, the familiarity hitting her like a wall. “Huh. They put him in the exact room he was using when I last dream-talked to him.”
It was the same lab, at any rate, albeit re-arranged to transform it into a clinic. It even had the same desk near the front corner. And, in the Shadow world, the lighting looked similar.
“Well, that’s cool and weird and creepy. Synchronicity, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.” Karin stopped, planting herself near the side of the room next to the bed, and looked around, sizing up the space. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
She pulled on her powers. The world twisted, warped. A thundering crash of static rolled briefly across her mind. In the next second, she was surrounded by a startled group of medical professionals―two men and three women, one of them with an Alliance patch on her uniform’s shoulder, and the others a mix of Fallon and UN.
She glanced toward the bed.
They’d laid Tylanus across a standard hospital bed―one from an Alliance ship, by the looks of it. He’d been stripped of his clothing and sported a number of electrodes across his body, as well as a diagnostics crown, and his right-hand wrist had a double I.V. dripping a fluid into him.
By the holos around the room, they’d already run a series of scans on him. And not all of them looked to be entirely medical.
“Have you done anything to him?” she asked the nearest doctor.
“No, ma’am. Just scans, fluids, and sedation. We―we were told to keep him under.”
His voice shook, uncertain. Most likely, he’d noticed the blood on her armor.
“Good.”
She reached forward and eased the I.V. needle out of his wrist.
The Alliance doctor gave a cry and leapt forward. “Hey, you can’t―”
Nomiki intercepted her and slammed her into the wall. “You don’t want to be messing with her right now.”
The doctor seemed shaken, her spine stiffening and her gaze darting across the room.
Karin pulled the electrodes off his chest and removed the diagnostics crown. Then, she bent over him and began to pull him off the bed.
“’Miki, give me a hand?”
Her sister stopped restraining the Alliance doctor and helped lift Tylanus onto Karin’s back. His arms lolled over her shoulders and his face and chin butted into the back of her head. She hoisted him up, squatting to hike his legs up around her, piggy-back style.
Shouts echoed up the corridor. She heard her name. Reeve appeared in the window, shock and confusion painted on his face. His voice traveled through the open door. “Karin, what’s going on? What―”
She shifted them back into the Shadow world.
More Shadows had gathered in the room and halls in their absence. She ignored them, heading again for the stairs.
“Huh.” Nomiki stared at the place Reeve had been s
tanding. He’d been replaced by a Shadow. “That power’s pretty convenient.”
“Yep. They should have used it while they had the chance.”
“No kidding. What’s your plan? Are you going to talk to Fallon?”
“Sure,” she responded. “Once I’m in orbit and have a fleet behind me. How about you―are you coming with me?’
Nomiki hesitated. “I should stay behind, make sure Marc and the others will be safe.”
“Will you be okay?”
Nomiki hesitated. “Yeah, I think so. Besides, if I’m not, I have Jon. I’m sure we can get out of anything I get us into. I have a few contingencies.”
That was one thing about her sister. She always had contingency plans.
She nodded. “All right. I’ll drop you close to the Nemina.”
They avoided the first floor and its disgusting, hellish mess of rotting gore, instead taking the long route and circling back down the stairwell to the fourth floor down and through the back door of the compound. The night was calm and quiet outside, the jungle around them dark and still. Her gaze caught sight of part of the ruins down the hill. More Shadows gathered around them, facing them in a circle, and a memory of the Macedonian compound came to her.
When she’d switched to the Shadow side and flown over its ruins, a number of Shadows had been standing in a wide circle around the stones, staring at them.
More were gathered by the empty spot where the Nemina was parked in the real world.
She guessed that, with the Shadow Nemina already existing in the real world, there wouldn’t be another duplicate here.
Nomiki stopped short and gave her a long stare. A pang slid through her chest, then vanished under the glass that kept the rest of her emotions away from her.
“Ready?” she asked.
Nomiki gave her a nod, then reached over and rubbed her shoulder. She barely felt the gesture. “See you on the flip side, sister.”
She nodded back. “Stay safe.”
Then, with a twist of the worlds, Nomiki was gone.
She let go of a long breath, feeling a part of her relax. Tylanus weighed unevenly on her back, making her stoop so that he wouldn’t fall. His arms hung limply over her shoulders, fingers slack and curled slightly.
Around them, Shadows gathered, and the jungle watched.
She turned and walked through the quiet encampment, idly watching her own shadow flit around from the varying light sources. Her Eos powers slid into her, giving her an insignificant boost of energy. Over it all, she could feel the weight of a looming headache.
When she got to the Centauri ship, she stepped over its broken door, sat Tylanus on its lip, controlled his lolling head, then hopped up and dragged him inside.
A tinge of pain rolled through her head as she warped them over.
Instantly, the air warmed. Conversation muddied the space, the foreign words cascading across her ears. It halted almost instantly, and the person next to her gave a sharp intake of breath. She glanced up in time to see a cyborg, a different one than the man she’d slammed into the instrument panel earlier, give a start before he controlled himself.
After a second, Tillerman’s low voice drawled from toward the front of the ship. “That was ten minutes, not five, Grand Regent.”
She grunted, glancing up in her direction. “My apologies. I’ll be more prompt next time.”
The commander leaned against the wall of the corridor just behind the cockpit, her arms crossed over her chest and her cybernetics taking up nearly half the width of the hall. She raised an eyebrow as her gaze dropped to the very naked form of Tylanus that Karin had propped up against the wall. “New boyfriend?”
“The son of the crazy scientist.” She stood and pivoted toward the cockpit. “Someone put him in a crash seat, please. He’s valuable, and I want him alive and comfortable.”
Up front, the pilot and cyborg from before watched her. She took hold of one of the balance rings from the ceiling and shuffled past, leaning in to see through the front windows.
Shouts came from outside. Shouts and orders. But it didn’t feel as though what she’d done had hit yet. Everything was still complacent. Outside, the scientists in the nearest tent came to its entrance, their brows furrowed in concern. There was a booming voice in the near distance.
Crane.
“Have we had any communication?” she asked.
“Only from our own sources, Regent,” the cyborg in the navigator’s seat said.
The netlink in Karin’s suit began to buzz. She ignored it. Outside, the shouting had paused.
“Incoming from orbit,” the pilot said. “FSS Pathfinder and Alliance Amaranthe. What are your orders?”
An image of the two ships appeared in her mind. Both were combat ships, but lacked specification. The equivalent of sending a squad car out to check a report.
“Lift us off,” she said. “I want to get out of here.”
“Your boyfriend’s waking up,” Tillerman called from the back.
“Alliance is knocking on our back door,” the navigation officer commented. A feed came up at her gesture, and Karin caught a glimpse of several officers with blasters.
She chewed her tongue, considering. “This vessel has controlled-burn ion, right?”
The pilot stared at her, frowning.
Darn language barrier.
“Don’t let them in, but give them a warning before you burn the air in front of their faces.” She peeled away, lifting her arms to slide back around the cyborg in the hall. At the back, Tillerman had strapped Tylanus into a crash seat and was kneeling in front of him. His eyes were open, but fluttering, the blackness underneath shifting back and forth.
Karin squatted down next to him. “Get us out of here. I’ve got him.”
Tillerman stood and moved around her. “Where do you want to go?”
“Your camp.”
She nodded and vanished down the hallway.
A second later, the cyborg that had been near the front came to the back, standing to the side.
“There is a seat behind you,” he said.
She glanced up. It was the same cyborg she’d shoved into the wall before.
He looked mildly uncomfortable. Awkward.
“Good,” she said, turning back to Tylanus. “Could you pull it out for me? I need to deal with something.”
She reached up and put her hand on Tylanus’ shoulder. His eyes fluttered toward her as she helped cover his nakedness with the shadow of her body.
Then, alarm stiffened his spine. An instant later, the shadows tensed around them. The fingers of his left hand gripped the edge of the seat hard, his arm awkwardly wedged through the gap in the crash harness.
“Easy does it,” she said as the shadows shifted around them, a bubble of her own light powers lifting through the armor on her wrist. “It’s me, Karin. You’re safe.”
He blinked up at her. “Karin?”
His respiration had increased, nostrils flaring and shoulders rising and falling. A smear of drool glistened on his chin when he moved. Smudges of red on his arms and legs must have come from her armor when she’d been carrying him.
“Yes, it’s me.” She leaned closer, putting more pressure on his shoulder so that he could feel it. “You’re safe now. I have you.”
“Safe?” He shook his head. “I―no. I’m not safe. I―”
All at once, pain crumpled his expression. He sucked in a huge breath, and energy spiked around them.
He screamed.
She yelled as the sound sliced across her mind. Loud, painful, brutally raw, full of pain. He spasmed, seizing in the harness. His head smacked hard against the seat cushion, and his free arm almost slapped her. She caught it and pressed it to his knee, growling as the scream in her head continued.
Then, its tone deepened. Energy shifted, deep and primal. Darkness flooded up, tearing from the walls in waves. She felt the dimensional boundary shiver. He spasmed under her hold, the scream still holding in her mind.
Rage bubbled up inside her, heavy and shivering.
For a moment, she wanted to kill him.
No, she thought to herself. Don’t kill him.
He would be better dead, Tia said. That way, Sasha can’t make another world.
Oh, so Tia was still in her head. She hadn’t heard from her since they’d taken the Cradle over.
I don’t think it’s that simple, she replied, the frown deepening on her face as she gritted her teeth and leaned into him.
Slowly, Tylanus’ breathing evened out. The scream stopped, leaving their minds with the gash of its absence, like the wound of a knife after the blade had been pulled out. He began to relax under her, the seizing in his limbs turning into a shallow, steady shake.
“What the fuck was that?” Tillerman called from the front.
“Don’t know. It’s done now, I think.”
“Fantastic. Just so you know, everyone knows where you are now.”
“Great. Get us out of here.”
“Get your ass into a crash seat,” Tillerman retorted.
If she hadn’t been a pilot, she might have been irked by the sarcastic command―but she was, and she knew precisely how annoying it was when people completely disregarded their need to be strapped in during flight.
She was still human, and human bodies were fragile. Plus, there were all sorts of sensitive-looking instrument panels in the walls around her.
And she was not wearing a helmet.
She glanced behind her. The cyborg that had been helping her looked somewhat worse for wear and was holding his head, but he’d pulled out the seat for her and made a gesture when she looked his way.
She pressed one last hand into Tylanus’ shoulder before she moved away.
“We’re in a ship, and we’re about to leave. Probably very fast. I’ll be right here.” She lifted her butt up, plunked it into the crash seat, and started to fiddle with the harness. After she buckled the last lock, she called back. “My ass is now in a crash seat.”