Athena's Ashes

by Jamie Grey

  “That will be the defense warning sirens. The breach is irreparable. I used your implant to take down their shields and render the security systems useless. You, dove, are the best secret weapon in the galaxy. Using you, I can control almost any communication system. Anywhere.”

  Horror rushed through Renna, making her stomach swoop as though she was jumping to light speed. She couldn’t let this woman destroy everything. There had to be a way to stop her.

  Renna exhaled as she reached out with her implant to the Athena. She needed to feel that connection with the ship, to become one with it again. Maybe she could warn them. They could strike Samil’s facility before she hurt anyone else.

  Slowly, she felt herself slide into the ship’s systems. This time was even easier than before. The footsteps of the crew as they rushed through the ship to their stations vibrated through her. Another deep breath and she went deeper, into the Peron fusion engine and the network that ran through the ship.

  Through both of them.

  Across the room, Samil chuckled at something on the holoscreen, but Renna concentrated on her connection, on passing her thoughts and feelings to the Athena. She needed to send the ship coordinates to this place. Finn would be able to stop Samil, even if Renna couldn’t.

  She tried to enter the nav systems so she could input the data, but around her, the Athena suddenly let out a shrill alarm. The ship threw up a firewall, resisting as Renna tried to take control.

  The Athena thought she was under attack.

  Renna backed out, heart pounding. It had to be the virus inside her making the Athena freak out. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to be subtle about it or figure out a way get around the firewall. She’d have to crash through it and hope for the best.

  She pushed against the firewall with her mind, using every piece of tech in her implant to bring it down. With a snap, the wall broke and her connection slotted into place. She had control of the ship.

  Renna reached out, feeling the connection, feeling the exchange of information.

  Her leg twitched.

  She ignored it, focusing on trying to input her location into the Athena’s system. Around her, she could feel the crew scramble to prep for takeoff as the sirens wailed in the facility.

  Energy flowed through her like a current as the ship’s engine spun up. Her arms twitched, but she ignored it. She was almost there.

  “Look at them, running around like ants. Don’t they know it’s futile?” Samil said, a smile in her voice.

  With one last push, a surge of energy rushed through Renna as the floodgates opened. Data flowed freely between her and the Athena in a heady rush of power. Her whole body vibrated with it, and she opened her eyes. Had she done it? Had she implanted the data coordinates into the ship’s nav computer?

  Her right leg twitched again. Must be an electrical impulse from her connection. But maybe…Slowly she curled her toes.

  How was that possible? Samil had said…

  Screw what Samil had said. If she could move, she could kick the woman’s ass. Carefully, Renna flexed each of her muscle groups, making sure it was true. Her heart kicked with excitement.

  The virus wasn’t working. Samil couldn’t control her any more.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “I suppose it’s time to show MYTH exactly what kind of power I really have,” Samil said, setting her tablet down on the table.

  Renna tensed her muscles. She’d have one shot at this. With a huge push, she launched herself off the gurney. Her legs trembled but held as she landed and grabbed Dr. Samil from behind. She jammed her forearm against the doctor’s throat, holding her in place.

  Samil went perfectly still, pressed against Renna. “Interesting. It looks like my virus calculations were off. I had no idea you could still move.”

  “Not so smart after all, huh?” Renna squeezed tighter. The woman’s labored wheezing vibrated against her forearm. One small movement and she could snap the bitch’s neck.

  “If you kill me, you’ll never get the cure,” Samil whispered, as if she could read Renna’s thoughts.

  “Liar. You don’t have a cure.”

  The woman shook her head. “How else did these people survive the transition? I used a new drug on them, based on your DNA.”

  Renna loosened her arm slightly. “What do you mean?” She knew better than to believe Samil, but she couldn’t help herself. If there was something that could save her…

  “These people have all gone through the same process you did. Their implants tried to take over their nervous system. But with help from your DNA, I’ve developed a formula that helps integrate their implant without it taking over completely. They keep their free will and their minds most of the time. And I’m able to control them when I need to, using my neural network.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then you’re a fool. Did you think I was trying to build an army of mindless drones? That was step one, of course. I used Navang’s early experiments to figure out how to control the integration without destroying their minds. Only a few people survived, but those people were invaluable.”

  Renna jerked her arm against Samil’s throat again, whispering in the woman’s ear. “Tell me where the cure is.”

  “No.” Samil chuckled low in her throat. “Poor Renna. Always a step behind. I don’t want you dead, dove. You’re much too important. But I do want you immobilized, and if I give you the cure, you’ll just go right back to being a pain in my ass.”

  “And yet you’re the one seconds from death. A quick jerk and I can snap your neck.”

  “Did you really think I’d be stupid enough to come in here unarmed?”

  Something small and hard pressed into Renna’s side, and she glanced down. Samil had another tranq pistol aimed directly at Renna’s midsection.

  Before the woman could pull the trigger, Renna shoved her away, using the momentum to duck behind the gurney. She flipped it on its side as Samil’s dart hit with a metallic ding.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. She was losing her touch. Why hadn’t she restrained the woman before getting all cocky? It was a stupid, rookie mistake. She’d made way too many of those lately.

  Renna scanned the room for options. The corner where she was holed up was almost empty, no help there. Just the metal gurney, a dirty white sheet that had fallen to the floor, and a small box of medical supplies. She snatched up the sheet. Pathetic. But it would have to do.

  She twisted it into a tight, thick rope. Her heart raced and her limbs still felt leaden, but at least she was able to move. Maybe she could use the sheet to knock the gun away. She just needed to wait for the right moment.

  “Come out now and I’ll make this painless, Renna,” Samil called.

  “Really? And why should I believe you?”

  “I want you alive and well. Cooperate and maybe we can find some way to end all of this peacefully. No one else has to get hurt.”

  Renna waved a hand above her makeshift barrier. “Fine. Let’s talk. I’m standing up now.”

  But instead of rising to her feet she darted around the edge of the gurney, striking out with the sheet like it was a whip. It snapped against Samil’s arm, and she hissed, dropping the gun.

  Renna lunged for it as it clattered to the floor, but Samil was even faster. The two women collided, sending the gun skidding toward the door. Renna shoved an elbow in Samil’s stomach and tried to move toward it, but the woman grabbed her, shoving her in the opposite direction.

  Renna’s body slid across the floor, hitting the edge of the doorframe. She glanced up at the handle, eyes widening.

  The door was unlocked.

  Screw the gun, she was getting the hell out of here. Renna yanked the handle and shoved the door open, sliding through it into the hall. In one fluid move, she jumped to her feet and slammed it shut. With a loud click she brought home the bolt, locking Samil inside.

  But the bitch still had her gun and her tablet. She’d call for reinforcements in seconds.
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br />   Renna’s body still felt strangely heavy, like it belonged to someone else, and sucked in a deep breath. She needed to find Viktis and get him out of here before her body gave in to the virus. Before Samil’s neural network finally connected with her implant.

  Before Renna turned into nothing but a mindless hybrid.

  She forced her trembling legs to move. First stop, the building’s control room. If she could shut everything down, maybe that would stop Samil from calling for help.

  She cycled through memories of her time here, when it was Blur’s warehouse. Samil had rearranged the interior, but the bones were still the same, which meant one of the control rooms should be at the north end of the building. Knowing the bitch, Samil would’ve installed security cameras everywhere. Hopefully Renna could use those security cameras to find Viktis and then figure out a way to get them out of here.

  As long as the hybrids didn’t find her first.

  Renna crept down the corridor, each foot placed carefully so her boots didn’t click against the cement floors. Larson had taken her gun when he’d captured her, and its missing weight against her hip made her feel naked. Her Bumani skills were excellent, but she had no idea how Samil’s network affected the hybrids. Did it give them extra-strength? Did they know moves gathered from some hivemind? Maybe her own moves had already downloaded into their brains.

  The facility’s continued silence pressed heavily against her skin as she tiptoed past each door. Why hadn’t Samil sounded the alarms yet?

  With each step, she held her breath, heart pounding, expecting the hybrids to burst from each room . At the end of the corridor, Renna paused, glancing back and forth between the junction. Which way? The new walls made the building feel strange, like everything had been turned around.

  She tapped her foot against the cement. Moving forward was better than standing still, even if she chose wrong.

  “Left. Go left,” she muttered, taking that corridor. A few steps down the hall and she knew she’d been right.

  She grabbed the handle of the utility room door. It didn’t budge. Dammit. She’d give her right arm for her electronic lockpicks right now.

  Renna grimaced. Not the best choice of words.

  She’d have to make do with the manual pick she always carried hidden in the waistband of her pants. She wiggled it free and inserted it into the lock, but her fingers were trembling so badly she fumbled with it, dropping it to the floor with a clatter.

  Samil’s presence felt like hot breath on the back of her neck, but she’d waste valuable time if she didn’t do this right. She sucked in a deep breath, letting it out in a long measured exhale.

  Find your center. Ignore the rest. The words from her first mentor, Jack, wove through her head.

  She could do this. Carefully, she slipped the pick into the lock and moved it, searching for each tumbler and clicking it into place. Her concentration calmed her pulse and steadied her hand, and when the lock clicked open, she couldn’t help the grin that curved her lips. Damn, she still had it. That was one thing Samil hadn’t been able to take away.

  Inside the utility room, monitors lined the far wall, while an electrical panel nestled in the corner . First thing’s first: finding Viktis. Renna scanned the screens, each showing a different area of the facility. The room where they’d gotten caught. Several views of the main open space. Three small labs and several hallways. She didn’t see Samil’s private lab on any of the screens. Hardly surprising. Of course the woman wouldn’t want her horrific actions recorded.

  The last monitor showed a large, windowless room and her stomach dropped to the floor. Oh, gods. Viktis.

  He was chained to the wall, arms and legs spread-eagled. His shirt was gone, displaying his muscled chest and arms in all their amber glory, and his head hung forward on his chest like it was too heavy to hold up. Larson stood at a table across the room rearranging tools, a shiny silver med-drone hovering nearby. Renna couldn’t make out which instruments he was using, but she didn’t really need to. She could already see the results marking Viktis’s lithe frame.

  Bile bit at the back of her throat and she pressed a hand to her lips. Larson was a fucking monster.

  A long jagged cut stretched across Viktis’s left pectoral, blood seeping down the hard planes of his stomach. His right eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled from it like tears down his face. Perfectly round pockmarks marred the skin on his arms.

  Larson had used the gravitic cauterizer in the med-drone to burn Viktis’s skin almost down to the bone.

  She backed away from the monitors so fast she knocked over a stool with a clatter. Vomit burned her nose and mouth as she heaved and gagged on what was left of her dinner. Viktis was dying, and it was all her fault. She should have left him behind. Should have forced him to stay on the ship.

  Renna rocked back and forth, arms around her waist. But what could she do? How could she save him? She whimpered low in her throat. She would never be able to forgive herself if he died on her watch.

  Pull it together, Renna, she ordered herself. Having a breakdown now was not part of the plan.

  She forced herself to straighten her spine and turn back to the monitors. From what she could tell, the torture room was in what used to be an old storage area not too far from here. She could be there in a matter of minutes, as long as no one stopped her. Which meant she needed to cut the power to the facility.

  Before she could take more than a step toward the electrical panel, footsteps thundered outside the room.

  “She’s in here!” a man’s voice called outside the door.

  Her whole body tensed, but there was only one thing on her mind right now. Getting to Viktis. Whatever the cost.

  The door opened, and a burly man entered, dark hair curling in a halo around his moon-shaped head.

  “We’ve got her!” he called back into the corridor.

  “You think so?” Renna asked, crossing her arms.

  He held up his robotic right hand and flexed it, the chrome shining in the helolights. “I know so.”

  Her head pounded like a motherfucker and everything was still slightly blurry from Samil’s virus, but she smiled slowly. Show no weakness. “Come and get me then.”

  Renna gathered her strength, and as he moved toward her, she kicked out, catching him dead in the abdomen. “You might have that fancy arm, but I don’t think Samil has created a metal stomach yet.”

  The man doubled over, and Renna kicked out again, using the Bumani techniques Finn had taught her so long ago in this very building.

  Another kick and he dropped to the floor clutching his midsection. He writhed and moaned, oblivious as Renna leapt over him and yanked a handful of wires from the control panel.

  The entire facility went black. Panicked shouts echoed through the building as Samil’s men searched for the cause.

  Renna froze where she was, blinded by the sudden darkness. “Night vision,” she ordered, but her implant didn’t obey. Around her, the screams and cries of Samil’s hybrids filled the blackness, and she closed her eyes. She’d have to do this the hard way.

  Fumbling against the wall, she found the door and slipped back into the hallway. Her sense of direction was still all right, and she headed north toward where she’d seen Viktis and Larson. She trailed her fingers against the wall. Her stomach swooped with each painfully slow footfall, as if she expected the ground to disappear from beneath her feet at any moment.

  Dammit. She did not have time for this. Viktis did not have time for this.

  “Work, damn you,” she ordered, shaking her head like a dog after a bath. But still nothing happened.

  Her whole body trembled as she moved forward. Her fingers hit the edge of the wall, and she froze. Now which way did she go?

  Precious seconds ticked away as she stood, undecided. The scrape of footsteps sounded nearby, and her heart jumped into her throat. Whatever she was going to do, she had to do it now. She turned right, away from the sound of pursuit.

&n
bsp; Move it, she ordered herself.

  Her fingers trailed against the smooth metal of a door. She fumbled for the handle and pushed it open, listening for Larson or Viktis.

  Nothing.

  Her own breathing sounded ragged and loud as she crept farther down the corridor. This whole place made her skin crawl. What other horrors would she stumble on here?

  The next door was locked, but luckily she could pick it blindfolded. Her fingers trembled as she fit her lockpicks into the slot and she forced herself to steady. The throbbing in her head was getting worse. Maybe the virus was finally taking hold. Maybe Samil was trying to use her network to control Renna.

  Stop it. She did not have time to freak out. Viktis needed her.

  Steadying her breathing, she made quick work of the lock and pushed the door open, just as the lights in the facility flooded back on.

  Renna straightened from her crouch, hand pressed to her mouth to stifle her scream.

  It wasn’t Viktis. It was worse.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Crimson blood streaked the white, tiled floor, pooling around the drain in the center of the room. The stench of death mingled with acrid chemicals, burning Renna’s eyes and making her chest ache. She stared, wide eyed, at a dozen stasis trays sitting along the far wall. They were filled with body parts—amputated arms, parts of legs, eyes, even hearts.

  All human. All recently removed from their victims. The victims who were still there.

  Two men and two women lay on metal gurneys lined up in the middle of the room. Each body was torn open and butchered in a different way. But they had one thing in common. They were all victims of Samil’s horrific experiments.

  She moaned, putting a hand against the doorframe to keep from sliding to the floor. Their gaping chest cavities and bloody torsos reminded her of Wall’s. Of the way he’d been torn apart and dismembered. Evidently he hadn’t just been a threat, but an experiment.

  But what the hell was Samil doing with these people? Renna tightened her muscles and forced herself to approach the body parts in their stasis trays. They looked like large carry-out boxes made of clear poly-plastic. Each body part was surrounded by bright blue liquid.