by C. G. Hatton
He raised his eyes, shutting out every emotion he was picking up.
She was beautiful, even looking at him as she was with such cold eyes. It was hard not to fall back in time to another face that was so similar.
Anya leaned close and breathed in his ear, “How does it feel to lose someone you love, NG?”
That hit him as she intended. He didn’t want to read it in her mind, didn’t want to go anywhere near her mind, but he was drawn to her, the way he’d been drawn to her mother so long ago.
She still didn’t know. That was something. What sent him sideways was deeper, almost an irrelevancy. He’d sent her away from the Alsatia but what he saw there in the depths of her mind sent a shard of ice stabbing into his stomach.
His breathing started to speed up, a sense of urgent helpless frustration welling up, and it took everything he had to stifle it, calm and not show it.
Anya stroked an immaculate fingernail across his jaw. “What? You didn’t think the worst I could do was getting the boys sent out on their little adventure, did you? NG, you underestimate me.” Her tone turned harsh. “You always underestimated me.” She beamed a smile, emotions spinning on their head. “I did enjoy seeing them again though. They’ve grown up well, don’t you think? LC especially. I’m sure you must be proud of them.”
He glanced past her at Ballack and Zang, both of them sitting there, smug to be witnessing the mess that the Thieves’ Guild had got itself into.
She took hold of his jaw in her perfect hand and turned his head back to look at her. “Attention now, NG. We want LC. We want the package he went to get for me. And, NG…” He could feel her breath warm on his cheek. “You killed my mother and I want you to pay.”
Chapter 18
“They live such short, complicated lives,” one of them said, frowning.
Another said with disdain, “They live, they breed, they die.”
“They evolve,” she said, speaking up where he was unable. “We are here now, discussing this dilemma, exactly because we have a choice. They have given us this choice. Every other race to face the Bhenykhn has been obliterated. We few escaped by the skin of our teeth and we find ourselves here deciding whether we run or fight because these humans have shown us the hint of a chance. That they may be able to evolve fast enough to stand up to the Devourers.”
“And have they?”
All eyes turned to him. He steepled his fingers. Laced them together again. For a people so long-lived, they were impatient. As if they had been contaminated by the immediacy of the human race.
There was no instant answer. “The virus, the organism they are all chasing shows great potential. Nikolai himself…? He is different. They fear him. And it is far easier to destroy that which you fear than to face it.”
•
She wasn’t done. “What? Was losing Devon not bad enough? I did enjoy pulling the strings on that little episode. She was quite smitten with you. Did you not realise? Faro was so much nicer to me than you ever were, NG.” She squeezed, digging a nail into his skin, drawing blood. “I don’t know. What can I do next? Evelyn perhaps? She’s in quite a precarious situation right now. How is she going to feel, finding out that you’re alive and lying to her? How do we all feel when you lie to us, NG?”
He didn’t fight her as she held him like that, casting his eyes across to glance at Ballack. The leader of the Merchants’ Guild hadn’t told them a thing. He was sitting there, a picture of self-satisfaction, calculating how he was going to use NG and the Thieves’ Guild, and profit from this insane idea that there was an alien invasion on its way.
“It’s not insane,” he said.
Ballack frowned.
Anya slapped him again. “I said, pay attention. I want LC. Where is he and how are you going to get him to me?”
She didn’t just want LC for the package. She was obsessed. Besotted with the kid. That was disturbing.
NG lowered his eyes and scanned around, working out where everyone was, what their actual capacity was, dipping in and out of minds to pick up what he could on Zang Enterprises and the Merchants’ Guild. The Wintran officials were still there, trying to figure out what was going on, why they hadn’t been given the go ahead to transfer their prisoner.
Anya raked her fingernail into his skin again, bringing his focus back to the room, taking hold of his hand with her other hand and stroking gently along each broken finger.
He ignored her, taking everything he could from Zang Tsu Po, this enemy they’d been chasing, and almost laughing as he realised that here he was right at the centre of another of Winter’s big corporations and this time, the information he needed was right there to be taken. The old man was as mad as Anya, his mind wide open, wanting nothing more than the package, lusting for immortality. Like LC kept saying, it all came back to the damned package.
Ballack was smirking. NG listened in as the man opened a private tight wire connection to someone and ordered them to contact the Thieves’ Guild. “Tell them we have NG and will trade for Anderton and the package. Make sure it gets hand-delivered to Evelyn Valencik.” He switched to talking out loud. “You will cooperate with us, NG. Or we will hand you over to the authorities to be charged with murder alongside Anderton and you will both hang. Very public. We don’t want that now, do we?”
They’d resealed the dampening patch. It took more concentration than he thought he had to break the seal again without them seeing anything.
He got an immediate response that time, urgent, repeating. He allowed access and sent back, “They’re going to contact Evelyn. Get to her before them, will you?”
“Roger that,” came through loud and clear. Hal Duncan, so the Man’s ship was close. “How’s the situation down there, NG?”
“All green and rosy but I…” He broke off as Anya gripped a finger and twisted, demanding his attention. He shut off the pain without reacting and sent, “I can’t see a way out. Ballack is here. He’s the one running the show.”
“We know,” Duncan replied. “NG, there’s a warrant out on you. This is going to blow sky high if we’re not careful.”
Ballack was standing up. “Have a think, NG.”
Anya backed away with a parting caress to his cheek, guards closing in.
“I know,” he sent quickly. “Tell Evelyn…”
Hands grabbed his shoulders, one pushed his head to the side and resealed the patch with a grunt. The connection cut out.
“He’s all yours,” Ballack was saying to Zang as a rifle butt crashed into the side of his head. “Try not to kill him just yet, if you can help it.”
He woke to silence. Tired, cold, eyelids heavy, no one near. Wherever he was, it was shielded, not from a dampening patch, something wider. His left forearm was throbbing, bleeding. He pulled energy from somewhere and healed it without thinking. He couldn’t remember how he’d hurt it. Had no idea where he was.
Bright lights slammed on with a thud that resounded in his ears.
He squeezed his eyes shut. A rush of fluid flooded into his bloodstream. Drugs. Sedative. Too much to neutralise and he sank back into the dark.
He woke. Alone in the dark, still cold. Heart thumping. Poison was coursing through his body. Potent. Toxic. Vitals shutting down fast. He neutralised it.
The lights thudded on. Sedative pumped into his bloodstream. He tried to fight it, forced his eyes open. Another flood of sedative, stronger, sent him under.
He woke, drowsy, vaguely aware that something was wrong. He didn’t move. There was no one near but he could feel people watching. He was in an isopod. Restrained. Bleeding. Femoral artery cut. He was dying. They were waiting to see what he did. Christ, it wasn’t like he had much choice. He healed the wound in his thigh, lightning fast. Took a deep breath and stopped his heart. Alarms screamed. Let the bastards mull over that.
He woke, a stimulant shocking him conscious, chest burning. He laughed and almost cried out from the pain. They must have resuscitated. They wanted him awake and it took a minute
to realise they were screwing about with the oxygen levels.
He calmed his breathing and reached out, reading the mind of the first person he encountered, going as deep as he could, fast. Zang wanted to know how he healed, how he’d survived that crash after losing so much blood and walking away with nothing but shredded clothes and scars beneath. Their first experiment had confirmed it. Not smart of him but then what the hell else was he supposed to have done? He hadn’t been thinking straight. It felt like he hadn’t been thinking straight a lot lately.
They’d figured out that he healed when he was awake, that there was nothing automatic about it, nothing in his blood or DNA that was any different from anyone else human, except that peculiar marker they’d matched to the data from UM. They’d started out on the assumption that it was the alien DNA that was doing it, that it was regenerative, something from the stolen Earth research, Zang’s longed-for elixir, but they’d tested it to its limits and had eliminated it as a potential contributory factor. They were working their way through a list of parameters, had a list of tests they were going to pull next, stem cells, spinal fluid…
Screw that.
It was getting hard to breathe. He scanned round quickly, close to panic, figuring out where they had guns stationed, what might be weak points.
There weren’t any. That was the problem. They were taking no chances. They were going to kill him again to see what he did.
He focused, found Zang, weighed up the odds and blew open the pod and the restraints, scrambling out, wires trailing, sparks flying and klaxons howling. Shots peppered the pod instantly, ricocheting all around him. He fell, knees giving out as he hit the floor, falling back as he threw out a shockwave of energy, blind firing, to take out the guards in the room.
He heard, “Nice one, Nikolai,” whispered inside his head and for a cold, stomach-churning second it felt as though Sebastian was back.
He shook it off, forced himself to his feet and staggered to the door. His only plan was to find Zang, hold him hostage and if that failed, kill the bastard. He’d been promising himself that satisfaction for long enough.
There were more guards rushing towards the room. Too many. He backed in, closed the door, fused the lock mechanism and looked around for the first time. It was a medical facility, pristine, sterile, a far cry from UM’s shit hole, overlooked by an observation room, shocked faces at the window, Zang in the centre of them.
Blast shutters slammed down over the window and door. He spun round, looking for a way out as a hiss of gas spurted from multiple vents. He almost laughed, the sting of tranquiliser hitting his throat.
The Senson engaged. “Jumped the gun a bit there, Nikolai.”
Christ. “Elliott.” He sank to his knees.
“The cavalry is about half an hour out. I have the room sealed but you’re going to have to deal with the gas, I’m afraid.”
He felt his vision going, couldn’t help collapsing backwards to sprawl on the cold floor.
“I must say, you’ve generated some impressive data, Nikolai. Let me know when you’re fit to move. You can’t stay there, they have manual over-rides. You have about two minutes.”
He didn’t have much of anything left but he spent it neutralising the drug as best as he could, still queasy and sluggish but he managed to stand. He pulled a shirt and combat pants off one of the guards and shrugged into them, not bothering with boots that would be too big anyway and not even trying to struggle with the buttons.
“Good to go,” he sent.
“Good,” came back. “You need to climb.”
A vent dropped open in the ceiling.
He stood looking at it. Not so long ago, it would have been a nifty run and jump to leap onto the pod, run up off the wall and catch the edge of it with one hand to swing up. Now? He braced himself.
“Just kidding,” Elliott sent. “Go down. It’ll be tight but I’m sure you’ll manage.”
A catch released on a floor panel.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter 19
They listened in silence, some wondering why the Man hadn’t been so efficient in his dealings with Nikolai himself. We need to know, they were thinking. We need to know what this boy can do, how he does it. Why did it take an enemy to inflict that upon him?
It was hard to sit there and be so judged. He’d never revealed even to them the extent of the research he had undertaken on Nikolai. It had never yielded the results he hoped for so it was not pertinent for them to know.
Only one spoke up. “Even so, one gifted human, even two or three, cannot stand against the might of the Bhenykhn. If we are to stay and fight, how do we nurture an entire army that can stand up to them?”
“We make allies,” he said, his voice cold in that vast chamber. “We come out of the shadows and we make allies.”
•
He made it out of the sterile bubble of Zang’s medical facility, dropping out of one access vent and finding himself back in a stone walled corridor.
It was cold. He hugged the shirt around him and leaned against the wall, shivering. They were searching for him. Elliott was screwing around with their systems enough that they couldn’t track him effectively but it was still tough to keep out of sight.
“How long?” he muttered, through the Senson whether anyone could hear it or not.
It seemed to take an eternity then Duncan sent, “Ten minutes, NG. Hold on, bud. We’ll be right there.”
He hadn’t heard anything else from Elliott, except an occasional nudge to change direction when he was headed towards trouble.
He started moving again, working out a way from the details he’d trawled out of Zang. They were assuming he was trying to escape so slipping back down into the heart of the fortress wasn’t impossible. He found the staircase he was looking for and dragged himself into a run, jumping down the steep steps and ignoring the stabbing pain shooting through his knee, busting through a locked door at the bottom and into a warren of passageways between the walls, screw trying to pace himself.
“NG, what are you doing? We need you out of there, buddy. You’re going in the wrong direction.”
“I’ll see you on the roof,” he sent back, still running, chest heaving. “They’ve got SAMs and an ECM pulsenet you’re gonna have to take out. You got that covered, Elliott?”
The tech guy cut in, “Don’t worry yourself with any of that, Nikolai. You’re running out of time. It has a lockdown set to trigger on any security alert. Trust me, that kicks in, you’re on your own. The surveillance system is disabled but there’s a local alarm you’ll need to neutralise.”
It was going to be tight.
He worked his way down, missed Zang’s secret cubby hole twice and had to backtrack until he found it. There was another narrow winding staircase. He took a moment to scan round to check there was no one there then limped down it, trying to take his weight on the handrail without putting any pressure on his fingers, the knee screaming at him and giving out with every other step. He took out the alarm as he was going down. It was hidden but it wasn’t tricky in itself. Even using a Senson, that would have taken even the best field-op thirty seconds, thirty long seconds, at best. It was almost too easy for him to reach ahead and click the circuits across.
The implant engaged as he reached the bottom and came up face to face with the thick metal door. “NG, buddy, we’re coming in hot. Are you somewhere safe?”
He was about to break into Zang Tsu Po’s private vault. It was either the safest place to be or the worst.
“How long?”
“Two minutes out.”
He rested his forehead against the cold metal and threw the tumblers, carefully to get the timing right, running through the convoluted combination he’d taken from Zang’s mind.
“One minute and closing.”
It clanged.
He pushed.
It opened with a puff of released air. There was a bioscan matrix across the doorway. He could see the artefact resting on a pedestal
, enclosed in a glass case, in the centre of the vault.
As soon as he broke the matrix, the system would go into overdrive. And the lockdown was going to trigger in thirty nine, thirty eight…
He didn’t have time for anything elaborate.
He ran in.
The alarm screamed, a cage dropped from the ceiling, the door swung closed.
He turned, still running at the pedestal, held the massive weight of the door and the cage using every last ounce of energy he could wield, crashing into the glass case, elbow first and snatching the key as it fell.
He rolled through fragments of shattered glass as they were still falling, changed direction and scrambled back to the door. The mass of the door was beating him, the cage straining inches above his head as he ducked under it and squeezed through, letting it all go with a resounding bang. He fell back and sprawled on the cold stone floor, heart thumping, hands shaking, feet and arms bleeding.
The key fell into his lap. Seemingly identical to the others but with fresh smears of blood on its polished surfaces. He could hear gunfire echoing through the stone walls.
“Get to the roof, Nikolai.” Elliott sounded concerned. That didn’t bode well.
He didn’t argue.
It was harder making his way back up. He stayed to the shadows and avoided Zang’s people, trying to find a way through and round. They had search teams out, with dogs, for Christ’s sake. He could hear the barking and snarling echoing in tandem with the shouts and thumping footsteps. There were no convenient maintenance tunnels, no access vents or crawl spaces. It was all stone walls, huge staircases and winding passageways. He thought about ducking back into that internal bubble of a medical facility but they had too many people in there, and his way out was via the roof.