by Kelly Jensen
Please, God, let them have second thoughts.
One of the station rats—a girl whose arms and legs looked more like twigs than actual limbs—staggered, bumping into one of the maybe-AEF guys, one who showed no signs of being able to Zone. He caught and steadied her, then shot a glare at Zed. “You want to ease up?” he growled.
Zed stepped into the group, right up into the guy’s space. He was about an inch taller than Zed, his shoulders nearly as wide, but Zed had almost a decade on him, if the baby face was any indication. “You got something to say to me?”
Baby Face stared straight ahead—definitely former AEF. “I—I just—”
“Why are you here?” Zed demanded.
The guy opened his mouth, then closed it. Then, “To make a difference, sir!”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you stay in the AEF?”
“I...” Baby Face’s eyes flicked to Zed’s, then straight again, and it was clear he didn’t have a good answer.
Zed turned to one of the university crew, a guy whose squint proclaimed he needed vision surgery or glasses. “How about you? Why are you here?”
He swallowed and fidgeted. “Dr. Preston promised to pay my tuition—like the AEF does if you enlist at eighteen. ’Cept the AEF wouldn’t take me and...” He shrugged.
Jesus Christ. Zed pointed to the station rat who’d stumbled earlier. “And you?”
She grinned, showing off one of her crooked and broken front teeth. “The money’s awesome.”
Baby Face’s shoulders stiffened. “Dr. Preston has a vision—”
“Dr. Preston is fucking sick.” Zed grabbed Baby Face’s wrist and guided the man’s fingers to the back of his neck. He didn’t like being touched there, but he wanted to prove a point. Baby Face sucked in a breath as he felt the puckered scars from the stin talons that had injected Zed with venom over and over again.
“Feel that? A stin POW grabbed me by the neck and injected his venom. Four times. Preston arranged it. Fuck, we all signed up for it. We wanted it, we wanted to make a difference, just like you. But it killed my team.” He looked pointedly at the trainees who could Zone. “And it’s going to—”
“That’s enough, Major.”
Zed glanced over his shoulder. “Scared of the truth?”
Preston smiled at him, cold and calculating, and leaned against the doorframe. “The truth is that the AEF doesn’t know what to do with itself, and you’re well aware of that fact. Even Central doesn’t know what actions to take in a galaxy that isn’t at war. We need to be prepared for the inevitable future.”
“War isn’t inevitable.”
“Come now, Zander. You can’t possibly be that naïve.” She waved a hand at the students. “Go shower. We’ll have lunch soon.”
The students filed out of the chamber, with Baby Face bringing up the rear. He looked as if he wanted to say something to Zed—to curse him out, maybe, now that the all-powerful Preston was in attendance—but after a short hesitation, he continued on.
“War is the one constant in humanity’s existence,” Preston said after Baby Face had disappeared into the hall. “You can’t argue that.”
Zed clenched his jaw. “Maybe,” he agreed reluctantly. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t change.”
Preston snorted, a surprisingly elegant sound. “The best predictor of future action is past action. Humanity will go to war again—with itself, or with the stin. Perhaps even the resonance or the ashushk...though the latter is not likely, I admit,” she amended with a shrug. “But war will happen. I intend to be in a position to capitalize on it.”
Zed froze. “This is about money?”
Preston stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “You should see your face. Yes, of course it’s about money. Did you think I was doing this for some altruistic purpose? Really, Zander, after all these years?” She shook her head, still chuckling. “The intellectual and scientific challenge of perfecting the Dreamweaver formula and training—molding it into Dreamcatcher—is fulfilling, yes. But my primary goal is the mountains of credits I’ll be able to name for allowing the AEF to borrow my soldiers. Or, if the AEF won’t pay, others will, I’m sure.”
Holy shit. If this operation had been headed by anyone else, Zed wouldn’t have been surprised that money was the motivation. But he’d assumed Preston was doing it simply for the bragging rights of being able to say she was the one who’d made it work for humanity.
The idea of Preston being in charge of an army—even a small one—and selling them to the highest bidder was chilling. She didn’t care about right and wrong. She wouldn’t give a shit if any of these kids died while on assignment—except for the fact that it would cost her time and money to replace them. And what if the people Preston sold their services to were the ones who wanted to see war come to the galaxy again?
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Zed breathed.
Preston pushed off the wall and gestured for Zed to join her. “Come, Felix is just about to come around. He’ll want to see you.”
Cold flashed through him. “What do you mean, ‘come around’?”
“I wouldn’t operate on him while he was aware, Zander.” Preston smiled. “There are limits to what I want to experience. Besides, when you hear one man scream himself hoarse, you’ve heard them all.”
Numb with the idea that he hadn’t protected Flick at all, Zed allowed Preston to lead him deeper into her complex. He kept track of the turns to try to maintain a mental map in preparation for their eventual escape, and compiled a list of all the things they’d need to survive on this rock until rescue—not the least of which was some way of getting a message to the Chaos or his brothers. But all the planning and thinking in the galaxy wouldn’t help until he had all the relevant data about Flick’s condition. They had to get out of here—there was literally no other option. Eventually, one or both of them would outlive their usefulness, and then...
After all the shit they’d been through—both together and during the war—they deserved more than dying in this fucking hellhole of a planet with a she-devil playing with them. Once she brought him to Flick, Zed would have a better idea of what actions to take. Zed flexed his broken wrist, trying to get a sense of how well the Mendo had set. It was vaguely achy, but no longer sore. The enforced rest overnight had been good for his head too. He felt...better. Not one hundred percent, but better.
Good.
“Where are you holding him?” Zed asked, keeping his voice subdued. As though the thought of Flick being operated on had broken him. Too close to the truth.
“You’d be surprised by the amount of useable space we have under this mountain.”
Yeah, he could see that. Preston didn’t volunteer anything more as they made their way through a series of winding tunnels, some lit, some not. He spotted a comm unit set into the wall, similar to the shipboard communications on the Chaos, and a plan started to form. Classic. Simple.
Please let Flick be mostly coherent. And mobile.
They passed a large operating theater, then moved into an adjacent room with one hospital bed and one chair. A couple of colonists—a guard and a nurse—puttered around the room, monitoring readouts. Flick lay on the bed, shirtless, his left shoulder wrapped in bandages. Had Preston been exploring the connection between crystal and tissue? Flick’s eyes were heavy, and he was obviously groggy, but awake. Sort of. The sort of vanished as Flick spotted Preston. His eyes widened and he struggled to sit up, scramble away.
Zed darted forward. Preston let him go, obviously thinking he was going to comfort Flick. And he was. Just not the way she was thinking.
“Shh, I’m here.” He grabbed Flick’s wrist, sighing inaudibly as their connection reestablished itself. Thank God. Whatever she’d done to him, it hadn’t damaged that.
“You okay?” Flick’s voice was rough and hi
s eyes kept darting from Zed to Preston and back, but he was lucid.
“Was about to ask the same of you.” Leaning over Flick, Zed eyed his crystalline arm. Below the bandage, it looked intact, though the hand seemed off. Misshapen. He tilted his head to get a better look—and sucked in a breath.
“What?” Flick frowned at the bandage wrapping his shoulder, then looked lower and growled. “She took my fucking pinky finger!”
Zed couldn’t stop the rage that cascaded from him to Flick. Flick’s eyes widened—yeah, Zed normally had a better control on his emotions than that, but damn it. Flick had worked fucking hard for that arm, concentrating for ten straight hours to grow it from a seed the resonance had given him in gratitude. For Preston to take even a sliver of it—
He wanted to kill her.
But first, they had to get out of here. Regroup. Plan.
Zed took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Distraction,” he sent across their link. “Be ready.”
Flick nodded. No hesitation. No questions. God, he was such a perfect partner, in everything.
Zed leaned close, as though he was sharing some intimate words with his lover, but instead focused on his Guardian cuff. With the weirdness of the atmosphere, he hadn’t tried to send a signal off-planet—he wasn’t even sure the cuff could reach that far. He’d once hijacked comms for a wide radius near Hemera Station at the Hub—a few hundred thousand kilometers—but even triple that wouldn’t get him to the nearest shipping lane, and there were no other colonies in this system. He could try calling in the Guardians, but that was a bit like launching a nuclear bomb to take out a single spider.
Besides, he wasn’t sure if they’d transport Flick—or even if they’d welcome Zed aboard one of their ships while he was awake and aware.
At any rate, his plan didn’t need off-planet comms to work. On-planet ones would do just fine. Making sure his cuff was hidden from Preston’s view, he accessed its wide-range comms capabilities.
Instantly, Flick’s bracelet lit up, and Zed’s wallet, and Preston’s wallet, and those of the guard and nurse. The comm unit on the wall blinked. Zed allowed himself a small smile, knowing that every comm device in the colony was receiving a mystery signal—one no one would be able to trace. Given their isolation, he was counting on it to thoroughly freak Preston out.
“What the hell?” Preston grabbed at her wallet, as did the guard and nurse. Expressions of puzzlement crossed all their faces.
“What’s going on?” Flick asked. His tone was concerned, but his eyes twinkled. A strong sense of approval came across their link.
“Nothing,” Preston said, her voice firm. “It’s nothing. A communications error.” The surety in her voice wavered at the last. “Keith, with me,” she said to the guard. The man nodded and joined her as Preston started back to the hall. She paused to glare at Zed and Flick. “Stay here. You so much as think about leaving this room, and Tamara will take you out.”
Zed looked over at the nurse to see she’d pulled a stunner from somewhere and was holding it on them. Okay...minor complication, but nothing he couldn’t handle.
“I’m not leaving Flick,” he said. Let Preston think that was meant to be a reassurance. Clearly she did, since she headed into the hall with the guard with no further hesitation.
Truth was, one woman with one stunner was not going to keep him contained.
Chapter Thirteen
Zed let go of his wrist. Missing their connection, Felix reached after him only to have his fingers move through the space where Zed had been. A second later Zed appeared behind Tamara. She fired the stunner, the charge crackling uselessly through the air in front of her, then struggled against the hold of the arm around her neck.
Rather than count the seconds it would take for Zed to cut the flow of oxygen to her brain, Felix eased off the bed. His head spun and his stomach protested in a number of interesting ways, but he got his feet to the floor. There he paused, hip against the bed frame while he plucked remote monitors from his chest and neck. He probed the bandage at his shoulder and was rewarded with a dull ache. Peeling back a corner revealed a series of neatly healing incisions.
He heard Tamara slump to the floor. Another rush of air and Zed appeared at his side, stuffing the stunner into his belt. “Can you walk?”
“I got sick of answering that question four months ago.” When he’d first lost his arm, nearly dying in the process. “Why does everyone think—”
“We need to get moving.”
Felix grabbed Zed’s arm. “Wait, what about you? Are you okay to get us out of here?”
A smile flashed across Zed’s mouth. “Won’t be doing it alone.”
“Reserve the good stuff for when we really need it. No more Zoning or phase-shifting unless there’s no other way.”
His clothes were neatly folded on a chair at the end of the bed. Felix barely shook out his dusty old utility pants—shoulder protesting the sharp movement—before pulling them over his legs. When he tipped sideways, Zed steadied him and helped him finish.
As they pulled his shirt down over his head, Felix wrinkled his nose. “Jesus, this shirt stinks.” But it was his stink so he’d embrace it...after a fashion.
The empty space inside his boot where his knife should be felt weird against his ankle bone. Stinky shirt, no knife—he was ill-dressed and under prepared. But he had Zed—who was rifling through drawers and cupboards, occasionally flinging bandages and whatnot to the floor.
“Nothing in the way of useful supplies in here,” he muttered.
Felix had no idea how deep into the tunnels they were, or how long they’d have to wander before finding a way out. How many of Preston’s soldiers they’d bump into on the way. He might not be much help. Standing was okay, but moving? His empty stomach rolled.
“Not even a lousy protein bar?”
“Nope.”
Despite the bad news, Zed tossed him a smile that said they were doing this escape thing anyway and stepped toward the door. Felix shuffled up behind as Zed leaned through the doorway and scanned the hall.
“All clear,” Zed reported.
“What’s the plan?”
“To get the fuck out of here.”
“Good enough for me.” They could add complications later.
Zed ducked into the hall at a jog. Felix willed his legs to keep up. The hatch of the operating theater was open, but there was no one in the room. Felix’s co-victim must have been moved elsewhere. Had her part of the operation been a success? Had Preston actually managed to insert a shard into the back of her neck?
A feeling of vacuum in front of him drew Felix’s attention forward. Zed had advanced to the next corner and stood looking back at him, clearly impatient. Felix jogged up behind him. “Did you see any other recovery rooms on your way down here? Did Preston mention the other operation?”
“Other operation?”
“There was someone else in there with me. A woman. I’m assuming she’s now got my pinky stuffed into the back of her neck.”
Zed paled. “No, she didn’t say anything.”
Felix chewed on his lips. Zed’s brow creased in thought.
“We shouldn’t waste time looking for her,” Felix finally said, though he felt an odd kinship with the unknown soldier.
“We’ll help all of them when we’re better positioned to.”
Fuck. Felix shook his head. “Don’t make promises we can’t keep.” If they couldn’t help these men and women, Zed would blame himself for eternity.
“Review later.”
Zed always said that when questions came up during a Zone. But his eyes weren’t flat and his whisper was full of inflection.
“Review later,” Felix murmured in return.
Zed turned the corner and jogged down the next tunnel. Felix ran
after him. They navigated two more lengths of rocky passage before running into their first obstacle: a sealed hatch.
“Is this the way you came in?” Felix asked. He had an idea he’d been brought up from the other direction.
“Yeah.” Zed indicated the panel. “Can you hack it?”
Felix’s shoulder protested as he lifted his left wrist to activate his bracelet. He selected a diagnostic tool from his menu. He had to identify the lock before choosing a hack. Hopefully it would be something standard. They probably didn’t have time for him to write code. He wasn’t even sure he could in his condition.
“Huh.”
“What?” Zed asked.
“The power signature in the panel keeps fluctuating.” Had Zed done something more than activate all comms? The lights hadn’t flickered once. Different system? Would make sense to compartmentalize the power solutions...”If it doesn’t stabilize, I won’t be able to hack the lock.”
Zed lifted his wrist with the Guardian cuff. Tiny lights flashed along its surface, but after a moment, he shook his head. “Not working for me, either.”
Felix deactivated the diagnostic. “Let’s try the other direction. I don’t recognize any of this, so they brought me in here another way.”
“Most of these tunnels look natural.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
“We could wander a system like this for days.”
“I really, really don’t need any more nightmares, Zed.”
With a smirk, Zed pushed off the door and jogged back the way they’d come. Felix followed. Zed paused at the corner just beyond, peeked around and lunged back. He held up two fingers. Two hostiles in the next tunnel. Nodding, Felix moved up behind Zed. Something nudged his fingers. Looking down, he saw the stunner. Zed had vanished before Felix’s fingers finished closing around the warm handle.
A muffled thump, a startled cry...
Felix looked around the corner. One guard lay on the floor. The other was locked in a struggle with Zed. Felix ran up behind them and pressed the stunner to the man’s back. The man jerked and fell still. Zed eased him to the floor.