by Frankie Rose
I cast out my mind, hunting for the med scanner. It’s still close. Not as close as I’d like, but close enough. With Reza’s energy coursing through me like an electrical storm, it only takes a thought to create the spark I need. I feel the cells inside the med scanner fuse, and then…
Light.
Light, burning so bright it sears into my retinas. It’s happening. The plasma cartridges are igniting. “Now, now, now!” I scream.
The Oraxis lurches, surging forward. I can’t tell if we’re jumping out of hyperspace or we’re caught in the blast wave of the explosion that’s ripping apart the blue and white streams of hyperspace behind us. I can’t see a thing. The world flips and spins, and then…
Stars.
A blanket of white pin pricks as far as my blurred vision can see.
“We made it!” Col sounds even more shocked than I am. “Is The Nexus gone?”
Flames lick at the inside of the cargo bay, sparks erupting like fireworks from one of the electrical manifolds. I’m by Reza’s side in the blink of an eye, fingers searching for a pulse at her throat. Her skin is ashen, her lips tinged a worrying shade of blue. Her skin is as cold as ice.
“Please. Please. Please don’t be fucking dead,” I chant. I’ve never cared about another soul enough to give a damn if they lived or died. I care more than I can comprehend right now, though. If she dies, I will be true to my word. I will travel the length, breadth, and width of this galaxy until there isn’t a single life form left breathing. I will exact my infinite grief on everyone I find.
There’s no heartbeat.
The energy inside me expands and contracts, throbbing frantically. I tip Reza’s head back and I force a hurried breath of oxygen into her lungs. Her chest rises and falls once. Just once. “Come on. Come on!” Again, I breathe for her, waiting for her to start choking and coughing as she comes back to life.
Nothing happens.
Again, and again.
Still nothing.
I compress her chest. Her ribs protest, and then one of them cracks under the force of my hands, but still she doesn’t draw in a breath. “Goddamn it, Reza. Stop being so damn stubborn.”
She doesn’t hear me. She remains unresponsive as I work furiously, pumping her heart for her. The wall around her mind is completely gone; a hollow, empty abyss is all that remains. No thoughts. No memories. Nothing at all. Not even the faintest glimmer of her. I step inside the vacant space of her mind, yelling as loud as I can.
“REZA! Don’t do this! Don’t you kindle me back to life and then fucking leave me. I won’t allow it!”
I wait for her to emerge out of the shadows of her mind, angry and affronted that I’ve broken my way in. She doesn’t show up, though. Doesn’t even try to shove me out of her head. There is an absence here that chills to my core. No life whatsoever.
I’m getting desperate. Energy pulses in my chest and in my hands, straining against the fragile hold I have on it. It’s far more than I could have imagined, wild and hard to suppress. It would take all of my concentration just to keep it calm and at bay, and right now I’m have other things to worry about.
The Oraxis shudders, more anti-rad tiles showering down from the ceiling, the very structure of the ship groaning. Obviously we’ve sustained some critical damage, but even that isn’t enough to distract me. I keep on working. I keep on compressing Reza’s chest. I keep on begging her to wake up.
The energy surges again, flexing, sending a crippling wave of pain through my nerve endings. I cast the discomfort aside, redoubling my efforts, but in the end the pain won’t be ignored. My hands are burning white hot. My flesh is about to crack open. I sink back onto my heels, fighting the need to scream as the energy twists and turns beneath my skin.
I have no choice. I can’t keep a hold on it anymore. I mentally cut the ropes I’ve been trying to lash the power down with, and it surges out of me like a river of white light. I can’t see it. Not in a traditional way. It’s more of an innate sense of color, shape and form. The energy snaps through the air like a striking snake. It hits the cargo bay wall, and the metal shatters into splinters, creating a hole two meters in diameter. Thankfully there’s another room beyond the cargo bay, otherwise we’d all be dead
I try to pull the energy back, but it won’t listen. It strikes again, and this time it hits Reza’s lifeless body. As soon as it makes contact, something clicks in my head. This is how it was meant to be. How it was always meant to be. One person isn’t strong enough to house the entirety of a force like this. Reza and I are counterweights, balancing each other out. I am a conduit, channeling the life back into her. I’m eaten alive by pain as Reza’s half of the energy returns to her, but it’s helping to heal her. I feel it. Her right hand twitches, and I could die from relief.
“Jass!”
Slowly, the darkness that claimed Reza’s mind begins to retreat, pulling back inch-by-inch.
“JASS!”
Hands pull and poke at me, violently shaking me. I open my eyes and Col’s face is in mine, urgency contorting his features. He knocks his fist against my forehead, right between my eyes. “I hate to interrupt, but The Nexus… It wasn’t destroyed. Not totally. They just dropped out of hyperdrive. And they’re pissed.”
“Reza—”
Col shakes his head, hand under my arm, yanking me to my feet. “She’s waking up. She’s breathing. Even I can see that. Now tell me what to do.”
There are only a handful of things we can do to save this ship and all of us in it. I’m about to start at the top of the list, when my mind hitches on a voice. One I have trained myself to listen out for for cycles.
Regis.
I hear his thoughts, and everything tilts upon its axis. He didn’t allow me to escape through that asteroid field. He’s been playing me all along.
THIRTY-ONE
REZA
TRUE COLORS
I was dead. I know that. I’m not sure how long for, or why, but I feel like I’m thawing from the inside out, reanimating, and it hurts like all seven hells combined. The ground is shaking underneath me. I wince as I open my eyes, propping myself up on both elbows. Something was happening…
Something terrible happened, and I died.
I’m on a ship, and… and it’s on fire.
Scrambling, I shuffle backward, away from the burning electrical manifold that’s been consumed by flames, and I do my best to assess the situation.
The Oraxis.
Col.
The Nexus.
Jass.
Oh gods, where is Jass?
I can barely stand. My legs want to give out underneath me the moment I try and get up. I have to cling to a bench in order to pull myself up, and I come very close to passing out all over again. Alarms are going off all over the pleasure cruiser. I stumble through the ship, frowning at the confusion and chaos unfolding around me: screens flashing; emergency life pods with shattered view ports, wailing, lights flickering and flashing; curtains of exposed wires hanging from the ceiling, sparking and dancing like they’re alive.
In the cockpit, Col and Jass work furiously over the control panels, arguing loudly. And out of the large view port in front of them, a charcoal-black planet filling the horizon. Lights glimmer on the surface—life, somehow existing on a barren, bleak landscape, open to the void.
“Reza! Holy shit. Sit down and strap yourself in. We’re going down.” I don’t register Col’s words until he touches my arm. I stare at Jass as he fights to address a series of blaring system failures on the screen in front of him. He casts a brief, harried glance over his shoulder, and something amazing happens: he smiles at me. A beautiful, brief, broken smile that hits me like a punch to my stomach.
“What happened?” My throat feels like I’ve been eating glass.
“Explanations later.” Col stabs a finger at the view port, to the left of the cracked—and still cracking—glass. The Nexus is there, looming in the dark. Half of the ship’s engulfed in flames, and the aft section
is almost gone. A volley of blue light erupts from The Nexus’ gun turrets, and Jass curses. Loudly.
“Brace, brace, brace!”
Two of the Construct’s phase missiles flash across the bow of the Oraxis, but the last of them hits; the ship rocks violently, and I tumble into the seat behind Col, grimacing as my body tries to process the pain that flares in my side.
“What planet is that?” I wheeze, clutching at my ribs.
Jass silences an alarm, hissing. “Not a planet. A moon.”
“If it’s a moon, then…where is its planet?”
“It’s a rogue. It achieved escape velocity millions of years ago. It’s been slowly floating through space ever since.”
“The only moon I know of like that…” I stop speaking. Gods, I don’t even want to entertain the notion that Jass might have brought us to the most unspeakable place in the entire galaxy. Col does it for me, though.
“Yep. That’s Archimedes,” he says grimly. A red light fills the cockpit, bathing everything in scarlet.
“CRITICAL ERROR. IMMINENT SYSTEM FAILURE.
CRITICAL ERROR. IMMINENT SYSTEM FAILURE.”
The onboard computer’s announcement fills the entire ship. Doesn’t sound good.
“What can I do?” I rasp, looking around, looking for a purpose. A way to prevent what now seems inevitable.
“Too late for emergency measures. Prepare for impact,” Jass says. “We’ll separate from the ship as soon as we’re lower than four thousand feet.”
I fumble with the safety harness, struggling to make my numb fingers clip in the buckles. Archimedes is growing in the view port and fast. We’re coming in hot. Way too hot. And it doesn’t look like there’s anything we can do about it.
“There’s no atmosphere down there,” I whisper.
“We’ll deal with that when we land,” Col says. His hands are a blur as they fly across the nav panel, adjusting the Oraxis’ pitch and yaw.
“We’re never going to make it.” I say this to myself, but Jass hears me.
“Yes, we fucking are. We haven’t dragged this piece of shit through hell and back only to fail at the eleventh hour.” He huffs down his nose, nostrils flared. “And I haven’t brought you back to life just to lose you now.”
Flashes of his memories wash over me. Images of me. My lifeless body. The panic and fear he felt as he did his best to revive me.
It’s harrowing to see myself like that. Even more harrowing is the hurt that fills me. Jass’ pain. I can’t stop to analyze his feelings right now, though. There’ll be a better time. All that matters now is our survival.
Deep ravines and crevasses slash through the surface of Archimedes, the majority of the natural rock formations running perpendicular to one another in great striations that blur past the view ports. We're so low now, much lower than four thousand feet, that I can plainly see the ground below. Rocks, like black ice or highly polished glass, with edges sharp and jagged enough to cut.
"I thought we were going to separate?" My voice sounds high-pitched and entirely unlike my own.
Jass grunts as he pulls up on the controls, sweat marking his brow. "There's something wrong with the emergency eject release mechanism."
"Can't you just force it to open? With your mind?"
"Tried. It's not playing ball."
Not playing ball? Release mechanisms have no free will of their own. They can't just decide not to open in the face of Jass' mental manipulation. There's only one reason why he wouldn't be able to open it, and that's because he's drained. I can feel it, too. I'm alive with the energy strobing through my veins, coating every strand of hair on my head, forging unbreakable bonds with my cells on a genetic level, but I can’t access it like I normally can. I can't plunge my hands into the depths of it, only skim my fingertips along its surface, as if something is blocking me. Col punches the instrument panel, snarling, and the screen splinters. "I can't make it work," he says. "Read-outs are saying The Nexus is right behind us.”
"The read-outs are right," Jass says grimly.
Col's hands fly across the controls, adjusting and correcting as best he can. We're approaching the ground at a frightening speed now, and nothing he's doing seems to have any affect. "That can't be. How?" he demands.
“There is no gravity on Archimedes. None whatsoever. The Nexus can fly all the way down to the surface. They'll be landing right on top of us."
“Gods, why did you bring us here, Jass? This was the worst idea possible."
Jass' eyes have glossed over. He looks distant. Strange. “This was as good a place as any. Regis would have caught up with us no matter what, no matter how far we ran or where we ended up. Archimedes is barely inhabited. Maybe fifty scientists live here, and it's a Construct base. They're not going to fire on their own facility. Not if they don't have to. We'll be able to set down and surrender without any one else loosing their lives."
Col stops moving. He looks like he's just been stung. "You brought us here so we could give ourselves over to the Construct?"
Oh. Oh gods... No. It can't be true. Jass wouldn't just hand us over to the Construct. Not after everything we've been through over the past few weeks. He's volatile and unpredictable, and his actions are confusing and questionable more often than not, but I've seen inside his head. I know how much he hates the Construct. He wants Stryker and Regis dead just as much as I do. "Jass? Jass, you're not going to just throw your hands up and admit defeat now. You're better than that." I haven't noticed how close to the ground we are. The Oraxis slows smoothly as Jass lowers the controls, pushing them in and down to manage our landing. His actions are calm and confident, unhurried, as if he was never struggling to control the ship in the first place. As if... I shiver, horror crawling over my skin. As if he was in perfect control all along. He sets the Oraxis down in front of a sprawling glass complex placed strategically in amongst the spears of shining black rock that punch upward out of the moon's surface. The base looks state of the art, the high-domed ceilings of the structure tinted a subtle metallic silver, preventing us from seeing inside. Jass kills the engines and slowly gets to his feet, rolling back his shoulders, as if he's sore after a boring, uneventful journey. He looks into my eyes, but there's no connection there. No feeling.
What the hell is happening? What the fuck is going on?
“This is the problem with you people,” he says stiffly. “You keep telling me how good I am. That I’m better. But the problem is, I'm not. I am exactly who I am and have always been. Jass Beylar. I'm the bad guy, Reza. And bad guys do bad things. Shitty things. They let people down. They betray them at every turn. You really shouldn't be so surprised."
Surprised? Surprised doesn't even come close to describing how I'm feeling right now. Is he being serious? Does he really mean this? He's brought us here to hand us over to his superiors. Yes, he hates them, but he's being politically minded, playing the game so the odds work out in his favour? If he brings Col and I in and delivers us to Regis, they might eventually trust him again. A girl with the same powers Jass possesses would be very valuable to the Construct. And Col? Col was the adopted, much-loved son of Erika Pakka, one of the most revered leaders in the galaxy. He's bound to be a font of valuable information that Regis will want to tap and run dry. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have ever thought Jass was going to truly cast aside his old life and join me in mine? I was such a fool, trying to make myself believe in fairy tales, because it was what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe he could change. I wanted to believe that he wanted me.
The ground shakes, almost rattling the nuts and bolts right out of the Oraxis as The Nexus lands heavily in front of the glass research facility. How many soldiers are there inside that ship? A hundred thousand brainwashed madmen? Two hundred thousand? The ship is larger than my mind can truly comprehend. The Construct craft I served on, the Invictus, was large, but more of a stealth base, used for recon and tactical work. The Nexus is a city. A dark, black, ruined city, armed to the te
eth with phase canons. It's an ugly, mean thing, a palace constructed from the nightmares of the oppressed. Even looking at it makes me want to bend over and throw up onto the threadbare, musty carpet beneath my feet.
Col gets to his feet and shoves his way past Jass, grabbing me by the arm. "Come on. If we can get into some suits before they disembark—”
“You'll what? Magically escape? Make your way off this floating shard of obsidian? Click your fingers and send out a distress call?” Jass must have been hurt earlier when he was fighting to pull me back in from hyperspace. A trail of blood runs from his temple, down the side of his cheek. He wipes at it with the back of his hand, frowning at the scarlet smear that stains his skin. "You're never leaving this place. If you thought Pirius was a desert, you'll find Archimedes even more lifeless. But by all means, scramble into a suit and try to run. Regis loves a good hunt."
I wrench myself free from Col's grasp and fly across the cockpit. Jass’ head kicks to the right when I slap him; the sound of my palm connecting with his cheek fills the space like the snap of a misfiring phase gun. Jass draws his bottom lip into his mouth, sucking on it. I want to do more than slap him. I want to kick his ass. I want to hurt him, the way he's hurting me right now. I want him dead.
“You lied to me back there on those sand dunes. You said you were going to try and help us, and you knew all along you were going to do nothing of the sort. Darius was wrong,” I whisper. “He said he believed people were innately good. He said once the Light was out of your system, there was every chance you'd show your true colors. You were showing them all along, though, weren't you? You're rotten, right down to your very core. There's nothing inside you but a black, bottomless, cold, dark hole. I can't believe I almost fell head first into it.” I shove him, slamming my palms into his chest, but Jass barely moves. The corner of his mouth quirks up—a fraction of a smirk. The same smirk he wore constantly when we first met.