by K. Gorman
It strode partway into the hallway and paused. Its head swung their way.
Karin pulled on her power.
Light erupted from her skin. The Sentinel snarled, lunged.
Something shifted inside her.
The next thing she knew, she was falling.
Blackness consumed her. The marble hit her knees. Her suit screamed. For one solid second, her mind disconnected, wiping out.
When her vision came back, splotches of black mist were rising from her body and collecting into a humanoid shape in front of her.
Her Shadow strode forward.
The Sentinel skittered to a stop, its claws scratching on the floor. The air flexed around them, a fluctuation of energy that crawled up her skin.
She gasped as the last of the Shadow rose from her, pulling like oil through her skin, and gaped as it faced off with the Sentinel.
So that’s where it went.
She took a staggered breath. Layla stood by the side, her wide eyes slowly resolving into a hesitant, cautious calculation.
“Join us, cousin.” The Shadow lifted its arm, holding out a hand.
The Sentinel skittered back as if burned. Large, loud breaths puffed from its chest, the nose holes on its snout flaring. Its mouth gaped open, then closed. The muscles of its cheek rippled as it chewed.
Then, with a burst of speed, it streaked away. Down the hall and out of sight past the next corner.
Her Shadow turned slowly.
“Karin, are you okay?”
She blinked. The Shadow was turning and striding back toward her. A jolt of adrenaline had her on her feet a second later, standing tall and ready to face it.
Though, that was seeming…unnecessary?
She closed her slackened jaw. “Have you been inside me…this whole time?”
The Shadow ignored her. Instead, its attention had wandered to the side, either very fixated on the piece of carved wall next to them or focused on something further off that she couldn’t see.
She suspected the latter.
“I can feel her,” the Shadow said. “You’ve done well, little one. You can be welcome in our world any time.”
“Thank you,” said Layla. “We really appreciate the freedom.”
“Let us go to her,” the Shadow said. “We won’t be free until she is taken care of. Her son, too, but he is a lesser inconvenience. We can live with him.”
Karin’s jaw opened, but she had the wits to keep her mouth closed this time. And she managed to stay still as the Shadow came toward her. Its hand reached out, touching her mind through her skull, and the rest of it stepped into her skin and settled, just as if it had put on a coat.
What the fuck?
Whatever. It had scared the Sentinel off. That was…useful. And it had also invited it to join, which could be badass.
She wouldn’t mind an army of Sentinels behind her. It could go with the other army she had now.
She glanced over to Layla. “Any idea what that was about?”
The girl shrugged. “It’s working as a leader for its people. Which means it’s helping us, I think.”
Right.
Karin gave herself a little shake and moved forward. “Let’s just find Sasha and get on with this.”
It didn’t take long. Either the palatial temple really wasn’t as big as she thought―a possibility, given Sasha’s ability to tamper with dimensional reality―or Layla really did know where she was going.
They found Sasha around the far side of the building, addressing a small child who was backing away from her, his steps quick and shallow, half-stumbling, hands clutched up to his mouth in fear.
He couldn’t have been more than seven years old.
And Sasha…Sasha looked older.
Which made sense, given Tylanus’ age progression. Though only a month had passed for Karin since they’d last met, it had likely been ten years for Sasha, maybe more.
Beside her, Layla’s expression hardened, attention narrowing on the boy.
Tia rose up in her mind.
That her?
Why, you know any other maniacal scientists running around this place?
Other than myself? No. I was merely thinking of all the clones she has. If she controlled time, she could have a second self running around, helping her with the programming.
Karin’s lip curled in disgust. She strode forward, edging around the border of another pool and passing several other tanks and statues. “Hey, Dr. Sasha! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
She was surprised the doctor hadn’t noticed her yet. She wasn’t precisely subtle in her neck to heel silver armor. And Sasha had been immediately aware of them when they’d entered her last pocket dimension.
But then, she had been focused on the child.
Technically, this isn’t her dimension. It’s Tylanus’.
Good. She’d take the advantage, however small it might be.
The doctor jerked upright when she called, her head snapping in Karin’s direction.
The look of anger turned quickly to shock. “Karin?”
The doctor paused, confusion entering her features. Karin watched her expression change. Already, the room was sharpening, the adrenaline slipping into her blood, her body preparing for a fight.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s me.”
The doctor frowned. “What…what are you doing here?”
“I’d like to continue our last conversation.” She bared her teeth in something that was not quite a smile. “I feel like we left it on a bad note.”
Considering Sasha had abandoned them and tried to lock them in her pocket dimension, and then had managed to shoot Soo-jin when they’d come out, she had a lot of things to add to that last ‘conversation.’
“I see. My son has been errant.” Sasha shook her head and dismissed her with a wave. “Go home, Karin. I have no need for an Eos―you screwed that pooch. Go spend your last few hours on a beach. That’s all you can do now. I have to stop him.”
Through her Eurynome power, she felt the dimensional boundaries begin to turn, the air bending and warping around her. It was like a touch of the ERL gate, that slight flutter in her gut, except all over her skin.
She reached into her Eurynome powers and gently stepped around the warp.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Doctor.” Her voice dropped in tone. Beside Sasha, the boy had rooted where he stood, eyes wide and staring at her.
“I’ll get the kid,” Layla said. “You get her.”
“Do it,” she replied. “Tell them to get the kids out. Leave me here, if it comes to that.”
“They won’t do that. Marc and Nomiki won’t.”
She nodded. She knew.
Then, between one step and the next, she snapped into a sprint.
A dull roar filled her mind. She leapt the corner of the pool in a single stride, her armor augmenting the motion, and raced for Sasha.
The doctor watched her come, her face an evolving expression of anger and thinly veiled disgust.
Then, she lifted her hand.
Karin’s suit wailed a warning. She felt herself lifting up, turning over.
Then, everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“You’re quite a smart girl, Karin. I hope you know that.”
Karin blinked at the doctor, and then at the classroom that surrounded them. They were on the eastern side of the building, the blinds open, the view looking out onto fields that shone a dark tan in the early summer sun. Beyond, the fringe of forest bordered them like an ocean, deep green and with leaves and needles that shivered and rustled under the wind.
She looked down, taking in the slender curve of her arm. She was sixteen, and skin and bone, and she’d been working on a year-end science project about the beginning of the universe. Posters of stars and stellar charts layered the tables around her, along with stacks of books on constellations, terrestrial planets, exoplanets, and varying world creation mythos. The unquiet hum of th
e overhead fluorescents pulled at her left temple, threatening to turn into a headache.
The rest of the students had already left. It was just her and Sasha in the classroom, each quietly working on their own thing.
It was…odd.
Sasha wasn’t like most of the other doctors. Where others tended to go through the motions, mouthing small talk as they completed their tasks and examinations, then went to their offices, Sasha went out of her way to spend more time with the children.
But then, she was a Eurynome Project subject herself. Had the tattoo and everything.
After a moment, Karin looked back down at her work. “Not that smart. Layla is smarter. Was smarter.”
She stumbled over the tense, and a shadow crossed Sasha’s face.
The doctor quickly hid it behind a smile.
“She was made to be smart, that one.” The smile broadened. “Your intellect comes naturally. We didn’t modify for that.”
Didn’t modify for…Karin frowned. She was a genetic construct, programmed in a lab. She knew that. Knew also that they’d been modeled after the attributes of gods and goddesses from varying mythologies.
There was no disease that the doctors were trying to cure. They’d dropped that story a few years ago, when it had become less believable. No, they had been born and bred for an experiment. Test tube babies made in artificial wombs. Genetically modified to their Program’s specifications.
But Sasha seemed to be implying something more.
“Nomiki’s smart,” she said. “Much smarter than me.”
“Your sister’s good at analyzing,” Sasha judged. “But you and I―we go a bit deeper.”
Karin frowned. “Deeper?”
“Yes. Deeper.” Sasha seemed to sigh. She leaned back on the stool and set her netlink down. “We both play a part in aspects of creation.”
Karin had never found out what powers the doctor had manifested, but powers in and of themselves had never seemed to be a focus of the Eurynome Project.
She’d come to understand that, now.
“It’s people like us, Karin, who make the world how it is,” Sasha said. “There will always be a need for the Nomikis of the world, but we are a different side of the dice. The world can’t survive without us.”
The trouble with hunting down Sasha was that the woman had never truly been that evil with her. Sure, she’d been part of the people who had modified her and fucked up her childhood for some scientific experiment, but…she had also been a part of that experiment.
And, mad science aside, she hadn’t been an inherently bad person.
In fact, if Karin had to point to anyone as being a ‘mother figure,’ it would be her.
Sasha never was and never would be her mother―she didn’t have one―but there was no arguing that she was a prominent feature and role model in her early life.
Perhaps it was part of her Chaos programming. As a creation deity, Sasha was technically very much an archetypal mother figure.
But, somewhere along the line, something had clearly gone very wrong.
Now, her mind was stuck in a loop, hell-bent on ‘saving the universe’―and willing to sacrifice her only son to do so. Painfully.
She also packed one hell of a punch.
Karin groaned, slowly coming to her senses. Her suit was beeping at her, and her comms were going haywire. She was in a large room. There was an echo at her back and a sense of space that pulled at her and made her feel vulnerable.
Her suit scraped against the floor as she moved. Under her, the granite was polished and cold against her cheek.
She considered staying there for another minute.
She’s after the children.
Pain echoed through her body as she pushed herself up. She gave herself a shake and looked around.
Whatever Sasha had done, it had knocked her clean into a different room. This one, like many in the complex, had an indoor pond, its waters dark and still under the light. The sun had slid closer to the horizon―or, at least, the ridge of the mountaintop―and the sky outside had turned a dusky shade of violet. A thin layer of cloud added a haze of silver to the view.
Three pods took up the center of the wall next to her, backlit in gold. She turned her attention to realize that all three tanks were full, each with what she guessed was a male version of a Sasha clone. They looked like they could be Tylanus’ brothers, hunched over and wholly naked inside the tanks, their faces covered with breathing masks, a nanoinjector crown on each of their heads.
Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon, complete with statues.
I need to find her.
She breathed out and took a step back. “Layla, you there?”
No answer. Oh, well, it had been worth a try. She glanced around the room, briefly out the windows, then back to the statues.
As before, the cable path branched upward to the ceiling, joined together like the roots of a tree―or the branches of nerves―and headed for the door.
She silenced the alarms of the suit, then followed it.
Tia, you in there?
The geneticist didn’t reply for so long, Karin’s heart skipped a beat.
Yes. That was…uncomfortable.
What did she do? All I remember was lifting up, then blacking out.
You hit your head, I think.
Karin lifted her hands to her head, running her fingers along her skull.
Sure enough, one part came away sticky with drying blood.
The anti-pain modifications Tia had given her must be suppressing it.
I don’t even remember hitting it.
Tia made the mental equivalent of a grunt. Comms are down, too.
Yeah, she’d noticed that.
The outer hallway deposited her onto a balcony that wound around the outside. The sky was getting steadily darker, its tint heading more toward the royal blue of night. Stars were starting to appear in the east, shining like scattered, glowing freckles. She could already spot Orion above her, and the Pleiades cluster farther to the right. On the left, the bright double-star of Sirius, her new home system, twinkled brightly. A light breeze touched her skin, and she brushed the tips of her fingers across the stone railing.
Then, the cable-path took her back inside.
The side of her head started to throb.
Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she was still human. That, powers aside, she was still a flesh and blood person. That a heart still pumped blood through her. That she still needed to breathe air. That her mind, for all its thoughts and weirdness, was just a pile of flesh, jelly, and electrical impulses, sensitive to even the slightest knock.
No concussion symptoms yet, anyway.
Not much I can do for those except dull the pain and reduce swelling, Tia commented.
That’s more than most people get.
No, most people get nanos these days. Tia sighed. So, any idea on what Sasha did to us?
She threw us somewhere. Clearly. Let’s not let her do it again.
Do you think it was something as simple as a portal?
Could be.
She followed the cable path up another hallway. More cables had come together from different rooms, forming a main trunk on the ceiling. They passed her Eos statue, and she once again felt the pull of the tank on her mind. The cable overhead thickened further, joining with another branch. In the back of her mind, she felt Tia begin to work on something.
After a few minutes, they came to a large, palatial-looking lobby. A frieze of some ancient battle decorated the walls, gods and goddesses fighting in the stone, glorious and radiant in their depictions. Two grandiose sets of stairs curved up each wall, laden in a thick, blood-red carpet. There were doors both above on the second floor, and below underneath the balcony.
She took a minute to examine the room.
I wonder what’s gotten into Sasha.
Tia shook her head. Tylanus mentioned broken programming, right? She’s one of the earlier tests. It could be as simple as that.
&
nbsp; True. But she didn’t seem broken when I was growing up. And, the last time we spoke, it felt…off.
Does it matter? She wants to destroy the universe. We’ll need to stop her. Tia hesitated. She’s after children.
Karin’s jaw muscles rippled, her back molars grinding together. She glanced to the wall, looking to the cable for direction.
The cable went up.
She followed it.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Eva stared at the plant. It was a simple ficus, and it had lived in the compound for the ten years she’d worked here and likely more, standing innocuously in a ceramic pot that only Adrian, one of the security guards, remembered to water.
She’d never paid it any attention before―but, now, it had caught her eye.
As she stared, her attention diverted completely from the papers she’d carried, or the number of tasks she had to complete that day, and something deep within her began to stir.
It doesn’t belong here.
It started as a piece of static in her mind, like the crackling mix of an old radio dial tuned to a non-existent channel―a hole in the regular noise that gaped at her. And as she watched, she began to see it, too, little pieces of otherness that threaded through the plant’s basic, cellular structure.
It…didn’t belong to this world.
Except―it also did.
She frowned.
What the hell?
“Eva?”
The sound of Bernard’s voice jerked her out of her thoughts. He stood at the intersection to the next hallway, a dormant netlink in his hand. She steeled herself as she felt his eyes pierce straight through her.
She plastered a smile on her face. “Hi, Bernard.”