The Eurynome Code: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set

by K. Gorman

  Slowly, the static receded, and she snatched her hand back.

  Before her, the leaf bobbed up and down.

  But it…wasn’t a leaf. It wasn’t real. Not like it had been moments ago.

  It looked like a leaf, and felt like a leaf. Hells, it even smelled like a leaf. If she put it under a microscope and examined its cells, it would have every single property of a leaf.

  But it was just an alien wearing the same face. Bernard had changed it, just like he’d changed the rest of the world.

  Suns. He really had made himself God.

  No wonder he’d felt so comfortable letting them all in. Even if they did attack, he had an enormous advantage.

  “Now I see what Sasha meant. Now that I’m here, in front of you, I can feel it. You were smart about it, weren’t you? Taking over, bit by bit, living a quiet life, not drawing attention. All the while, you were undermining the entire structure of the world around you, right down to a quantum level.”

  She looked around as she spoke, taking in more and more of the room. It was like watching a film form on top of an old mug, but so much deeper. Bernard had threaded himself through every piece of this reality, an entire universe of dormant cells ready to mutate on his command. She could only see it because she was looking right at him. “Gods, you were always a two-faced bastard.”

  He was watching her. She could feel it. She turned slowly, shaking, until she faced him once again.

  “How many did you kill?” she asked. “How many did you kill to get this power?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Tia, Tia, I’m surprised you even ask that question. You already know the answer.”

  And she did know.

  Hundreds, she thought. Nearly a thousand. If he could, he would have made more. There are millions of deities in some places. If he could, he would have made and killed them all.

  But he hadn’t had time. And, by the looks of it, he hadn’t had the desperate ambition that Sasha had to cook up more in a time-controlled pocket dimension.

  This house was no Olympus. But she was willing to bet his Cradle was here.

  She snapped her gaze once again to the woman in the kitchen. Her clone looked taken aback. There was a comms device in her hand. She must have picked it up when Tia had started acting out.

  Her gaze flicked over the familiar features, the way she turned her head, the cool logic of her gaze.

  Had he made another Eurynome?

  A sick feeling hit her gut. She shuddered, fighting as a fit of anger rolled through her.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I wanted to see if it was possible. And it was.”

  “So you just did it?” She sputtered. “You just killed people?”

  He shrugged. “If it weren’t for me, they never would have lived. Their lives served a single purpose, as did yours.”

  Her hands were shaking. In the kitchen, Grace was silent. Everyone around her had grown tense. Marc was still sitting, but his alert, straight-backed posture suggested he could get to his feet any second. On the other side of the couch, Soo-jin sat with her fingers gripping the chair’s arm like claws, her expression wiped of emotion. Baik and Reeve exchanged a look. They both carried blasters.

  A dull roar covered her mind again. She shuddered, a wave of numbness rushing through her, then her mind clicked.

  “My life was not to serve you,” Tia said. “And neither is hers.”

  Power rippled. She reached out to the dimensional barriers, pulled at their boundaries, and made to rip Bernard Corringham straight down the middle.

  An energy, dark and nefarious, blocked hers with a clank of steel. She staggered, pain blooming through her skin as if she’d been hit. For a full second, the room swayed in her mind.

  When her vision focused again, Bernard was moving forward, his socked feet silent on the carpet. Power built around him, his energy in everything at once. Nothing was sacred for him. She saw that now, what Sasha had been seeing all along. He’d inserted himself into every atom in the universe like an invisible disease. The floor, the walls, the fireplace next to them, even the very air they breathed.

  Along with every person in the room.

  He could do anything he wanted, depending on what Programs he’d loaded into himself.

  She retreated, wide eyes staring at everything.

  He’s taken over everything. And our power is useless against him. This is his world.

  She snarled. “Fuck you.”

  Then, she went for the fire poker.

  She swung it at his face, and it hit an invisible wall. In the kitchen, her clone gave a cry and began running.

  Her power shifted. She turned, the fingers of her free hand flexed into claws, her expression twisting, putting the clone in her sights.

  Bernard attacked.

  She wasn’t sure what he did. The image of him next to her blurred, and the next thing she knew, pain exploded from her left side. A hand grabbed her wrist and jerked it up high. Her shoulder popped, bones snapping and cracking like kindling. She screamed, power fluctuating. Around the room, everyone jumped up. A blaster cracked, splashing straight through Bernard and sniping into the brickwork of the fireplace. The woman in the kitchen yelped. She saw Tylanus move.

  Then, something popped in her head, and everything went black.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The darkness flexed, breathed. The Shadow twisted inside her, around her, the fog of its being both a comfort and a fear. She caught a flash of the Macedonian ruins, the clean, cold smell of their stone, the roughness on her skin. A sky full of stars rotated overhead―then she was gone again, floating in the blackness.

  Memories popped up like bubbles from the deep, floating briefly through her mind, then vanishing again as they rose. Tia, arguing with Bernard from a wheelchair in her office, the sound muted, the emotions vibrant but brief―like heat from a stove. Herself, the cool water of a tank lapping at her naked body, the full-spectrum shock of pain as the nanoinjectors stabbed into her brain and she connected to the Cradle. Herself again, standing among the ruins in Macedonia, watching the sun crawl its way down toward the Western horizon, feeling the light fill her skin.

  Then, voices were calling her, and the darkness in her mind began to ebb.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “Karin? Karin!”

  The sound of her name came from a distance.

  She choked back a breath, blinking as consciousness returned. Pain screamed from her right arm, bright and angry, blinding. A rough wind tugged at her hair and jacket, and she got a sense of openness from her back, as if the sky could just lift her off and suck her up. Rough, uncut rock scraped at her skin when she tried to move.

  A mountain. I’m on a mountain.

  The scrapes of rocks and scree came to her. She lifted her head, shivering. Blood burned bright against the pale skin of her arm, smeared like a clump of red paint. Several people came toward her. They were still wearing the house slippers from Bernard’s, which made for an odd image. She stared at their feet as they slid down the hill.

  “Stay still, we’re coming to you.”

  Marc’s voice, strained with stress and worry. Slowly, her mind adjusted. She shuddered, her good hand clenching at the pain. A metallic clink sounded below her, and she turned her head to see she was still holding Bernard’s fire poker.

  Her upper lip twisted, baring teeth.

  It felt wrong.

  With a pull of her power, she sliced it into seven equal pieces, then worked to bury them in the scree.

  She only managed with three of them. Her arm hurt too much.

  With a crunch and slide of loose rock, Marc, Baik, and Reeve reached her side, Soo-jin and Tylanus trailing after them. Takahashi was farther up the hill, following at a slower pace.

  Good. They’d all made it over. To wherever ‘over’ was.

  “Easy does it. Turn her. Careful with that arm.”

  Pain smote through her nerves. She yelled. Her power rippled, but she resiste
d, clamping her teeth together to cut it off. Then she was on her side, and Marc was above her, supporting her shoulder and back. The light of the sky gleamed a golden white against his head and neck, and his brown eyes crinkled as they looked down on her.

  “It’s okay, Karin, we’ve got you.” He glanced up. “Soo?”

  “He broke it. Badly.”

  “Well, I knew that,” she hissed. “Fuck. Give me a sec.”

  She closed her eyes, focused inward, and breathed.

  Tia, you in there?

  Yes. Hang on. Your pain blockers should kick in soon.

  They did. Slowly, the pain in her arm ebbed, replaced by a light, dizzying sensation. A metallic smell came from her nose, and something dribbled down from her lip.

  Marc glanced down. “She’s bleeding.”

  “It’s normal,” she grit out. “Does anyone have anything to stabilize the arm, or shall we just hike up? Where are we?”

  “Back on Olympus,” Soo-jin said.

  “My mom has a number of medical stations in the temple,” Tylanus said from close by. “There are nanos.”

  “Good. Let’s get her there.” Marc shifted, and more of the sunlight hit her. His arms came under her armpits. Someone else―Reeve? Baik?―supported her back. “Ready? One, two, three―”

  She scrambled up as he pulled, gritting her teeth to get a knee and arm under her and push herself upright. Marc and Reeve caught her before she overbalanced, and she planted her feet.

  The pain from her arm was still there, but manageable now.

  Gods.

  Steeling herself, she looked down.

  He had really done a number on it. Her arm looked mangled. Her shoulder was out of its joint, likely with the rotator cuff fucked and part of the bone snapped―she remembered that bit, the speed and strength with which he’d pulled, the blinding pain and grinding crack. He’d also taken part of her humerus and crunched the bones of her wrist. The joint was swelling like a balloon.

  And he’d broken one of her fingers.

  “Carry her,” Marc said. “Be careful with the shoulder.”

  “No,” she said, gauging the slope and distance, then swinging around him and starting the hike. “Don’t bother. Just make sure I don’t fall on my ass.”

  Ten minutes later, Tylanus had led them to a small, discreet room inside the temple complex, and Baik, Soo-jin, Takahashi, and Reeve had tag-teamed the Med unit to cut her shirt off, ream her arm with a dose of anesthetics, straighten out the bones as best they could, then inject her with a large dose of nanos.

  Everything in her arm that hadn’t already numbed turned to ice.

  Her shoulders slumped against the bed.

  Fuck. I should have brought that armor suit.

  Quiet fell over the group. She closed her eyes and just breathed for a few moments, reveling in the lack of pain and distress. The air outside had that slightly burned smell that it got in the summer fields, as if a high wind had dragged its fingers through the baked grasses on the mountain’s lower slopes before rising up to the temple. Closer, a breeze pushed through the open doorway, slipping over her skin with the cool touch of a pond, and she caught a scent of lilac from one of the manicured gardens outside.

  The winds were Eos’ children, she thought, mythologically speaking.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Okay, so we found Bernard and I’m not dead. That’s good, right?”

  “Yes, you being not dead is very good,” Marc said. “I’d like to keep you that way.”

  She dragged in a breath. “Fuuuuck.”

  How had that gone so wrong? What had he done to get that power?

  Well, that was easy to answer. He’d killed a fuckload of children and stolen their powers.

  “Why aren’t I dead?”

  “We’re in Tartarus,” Tylanus said. “He can’t follow us here. Not unless I allow it. I control this world.”

  She winced as a random spike of pain crept up, this time from her knee.

  If Sasha’s actions were anything to go by, she doubted Tylanus’ ‘control’ over Tartarus was as extensive as Bernard’s hold over the real world.

  “Fuck,” she said again. “How the fuck are we going to beat him? He literally can control everything.”

  Not us, Tia said. We are exempt. But the others, yes. And every molecule in that world. You can defend against him a little, depending on how much power he’s gained, but not by much.

  “We need to find his Cradle. If we destroy it, his power will be gone.” She turned her head to Tylanus. “And we need to get your mother. And my sister. We need to get everyone.”

  “I called an SOS into the Alliance,” Baik said.

  “I did the same for Fallon,” Reeve said. “Gave them the basics.”

  “And if Specialist Malouf followed through, he will have done the same for the Menassi Tri-Quad, which will also bring in Finlai Center Core.”

  Fuck. Malouf and Seki were probably dead by now. Even if they could fly, the Nemina was a Fallon craft, not Centauri, and Bernard could slice into it anyway.

  And she wasn’t sure what all anyone could do about Bernard. Nuke him from orbit?

  Given that he lived next to one of the most populous regions on the planet, that wasn’t a great Plan A.

  She slumped her head back against the bed. “He’ll feel me if I go back. He’ll know I’m there. And he’ll rip me apart.”

  “You’re not going back,” Marc said. “Don’t go back.”

  “I have to. If I don’t, everyone will die.”

  “What if we just left it?” Reeve said. “If he hasn’t done anything by now, will he? How much of a danger is it to let it stay this way?”

  “Do you really want a self-divinated asshole to have complete control of your universe?” she asked. “You can’t see it, but he’s literally inserted himself into every atom. When even you go back, you’ll have his touch all over you. He could manipulate anything he wanted from it. Kill you at a whim. Turn the world inside out. Erase an entire genetic pool―and who knows if he hasn’t done so already? The whole point is that he has the control to do it so intrinsically that you would never know. The man can literally rewrite things. You didn’t want Sasha doing it, so why do you want him? Because I can guarantee you, Sasha is much nicer.”

  She took a breath, her mind whirring.

  “Besides,” she continued. “He isn’t a god. He’s just a man with false powers. There is no way he could have acquired a completed Cradle. Even Sasha was going for a partial one―a single pantheon only. He had a hodgepodge. Therefore, he is incomplete, and that in turn makes every single part of your universe incomplete―like running a computer with only seventy percent of the OS. That’s why it is a problem. He’s literally overtaken it from its natural course and inserted himself in it instead.”

  There was a small silence. The others in the room glanced around at each other.

  “If so,” Takahashi said, his voice calm and considering. “It would be highly unstable.”

  There was another small silence as they all considered that.

  “Yeah,” Soo-jin said. “Sounds like he has to go.”

  “Yes,” Karin said. “He does.”

  “I told you before, you need to bring him here,” Layla said.

  She didn’t jump, and neither did Tylanus, but the others in the room did. Program Athena stood by the side of the bed as if she’d always been there, glancing up at Karin’s holochart.

  “That looks nasty,” she commented.

  “It felt nasty,” Karin said.

  “Unfortunately, Apollo is in the real world, and Chiron is in a tank. No one can heal it.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll just suffer through modern medicine.” She let go of a breath. “Any bright ideas in that head of yours?”

  “I like your idea of bringing back Sasha, though I worry that her program will re-trigger once she is back inside this place, and Bernard Corringham is still a threat.” Layla turned her dark, ancient eyes on her
. “You should try to bring him here, first.”

  She groaned and set her head back on the bed, staring up at the vaulted ceiling through the Med holos.

  Of course. Bring a guy who had literally outgunned her in a second flat over to this world for another fight, where he would likely outgun her in two seconds flat.

  And they’d already tipped their hand with warping. He’d likely be expecting it.

  Plus, there were likely oodles more fun and exciting powers he had that she didn’t yet know about. He had literally pieced himself together with a Cradle, Frankenstein-style.

  She sighed and glanced to Tylanus. “Can I even do that? Warp into here?”

  He nodded. “Yes. You and my mother are allowed. And all of the Cradle children.”

  Well, that made it partially possible, at least.

  She closed her eyes. “He’s literally turned himself into a god. I’m not sure what I can do against that.”

  But, even as the words left her mouth, she was frowning. Something twinged in the back of her mind. Something she’d said before.

  The others glanced at each other again.

  “What about the other Programs?” Brennan said, appearing from behind Soo-jin. The Cradle version of Nomiki stood behind him, her face severe in the light as she pushed to the front and gave Karin’s injuries an assessing look.

  Good to know that her Cradle sister still cared about her. Either that, or she was simply curious as to how much damage a person like Bernard could inflict.

  “What about them?” she asked.

  “Are any of them useful? Maybe some of the Titans? I know I saw a Nyx hanging around.”

  “She was six years old,” Nomiki said. “I don’t think she’ll be up to fighting off supreme evil anytime soon. I agree with Layla. Your best bet is to bring him over here. Outside of his world, he’ll only have control over himself.”