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by Matthew Siege

  I glanced over my shoulder, relieved to see the humans already shaking themselves free of their old masters. I watched them for a moment, but that was all it took for the tender way she checked on his well-being to prove to me that they were back in control of their own actions.

  "One of you grab that pickax," I said, "and the other pick up the bucket." The sticky web in my hand was yanked away, into the chokepoint as the XAR fled. They banged their chitinous exoskeletons into the rocks as they continued to emit those awful sounds. "Let's make sure the Hive stops fucking with Earthlings, once and for all."

  She scooped up the bucket, and he transferred the pickax to his enhanced arm. I was already at the chokepoint, but that didn't stop her from flipping over my head and getting in front of me.

  At least the guy behind me wasn't a show off. "You are from Earth, right?" I whispered.

  He nodded. "Concord, born and bred."

  I grinned. "Live free or die, motherfucker."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I had assumed that every XAR would be comprised of the same basic structure, but it looked like I'd been wrong. The passage was too narrow for me to see past the one in the rear, though I could tell right away that it wasn't CAV.

  This one's body was more delicate, the intricate bands of rigid exoskeleton alternating between blue and a pale yellow. Its swollen abdomen was nearly translucent, and I could see sparks and glowing embers swirling around in the bright, sloppy liquid that sloshed within. "I didn't know they came in lightning bug flavor," I said to Lucas. "Can that thing shoot goo out of its ass at us?"

  The guy beside me shook his head as we ran. "They're called fireflies, in New Hampshire."

  "I'm an Oklahoma boy," I said. "At least I was."

  His gaze returned to the XAR ahead of us. Try as we might, its lead was growing. "I've only spotted that type a couple of times, and I've never seen them use the light they carry for anything other than marking a trail."

  The female I'd freed was faster than we were. If she was able to keep up her pace, there was a chance that she'd catch them. Unfortunately for her, she'd be doing it on her own. I wondered if that would stop her, though. "Is that your girl?" I panted at the guy.

  "Yeah."

  "Can you get her to wait for us?"

  I was too busy trying not to trip or snag my injured shoulder on an outcropping to look over at him, but I heard the smile in his reply. "I highly doubt it."

  Despite my earlier predictions, it appeared that the insectoids had little difficulty maneuvering through the tunnel. A couple of times the guy paused for a moment, using the more powerful arm to heft the pickax over his head and take aim, only to give up when they darted around one of the passage's many twists and turns.

  "The whole damn tunnel's like that," I told him, only remembering after I'd opened my mouth that these two had been through it more recently than I. "But I guess you already knew that, since they marched you through here already."

  I may have been breathing hard, struggling to keep up, but he sure wasn't. Whatever his Stamina was, it clearly put mine to shame. He shook his head and scowled at the fleeing aliens. "I don't remember any of that."

  Right now I needed my oxygen too much to carry on my side of this conversation, but I felt a little better knowing that at least I could be a guide. When Zane had led me through here I had done my best to pay attention, though racing through backwards it was very different than the sarcastic tour the big abductee had given me the first time around.

  It'd probably taken he and I almost twenty minutes to get from the Burrower to Neve, but we hadn't been chasing anything. As near as I could guess, we had to be almost back to the illusionary wall.

  I doubted I'd be much help when we got there though, since my lungs were screaming and my legs felt like they were about to fall off. My shoulder had stopped throbbing, but the pain hadn't gone away. It had become a knife instead, twisting deeper with every jarring step. The only thing I could do to preserve what energy remained was slow down to a jog, which made me feel even more like dead weight than ever.

  The girl was a lot faster than either one of us. Every time the rearmost XAR disappeared out of sight, she was so close to catching them that she vanished momentarily too.

  "Sabine," the guy called out, "please don't run straight into a trap again."

  She tossed him a dark look over her shoulder, but at least she eased off a bit. Despite the attitude, I was surprised that she was letting her prey get away.

  I should have known better.

  Her hand had been empty a moment ago, but it wasn't any longer. The object now in her palm was circular, though when she stabbed her thumb into its center a row of spikes slid free and locked into place. Sabine flicked her wrist and sent the device spinning down the tunnel.

  It made a low hum, which had me wondering if it had a power source. She hadn't thrown it fast enough though, and when the XAR went around yet another corner I couldn't stop a disappointed sigh from escaping my lips.

  "Just watch," Lucas said. "And have a little faith. We've been here long enough to learn a few things."

  The shuriken banked and subtly changed direction, hitting one of the walls down there at a new angle and ricocheting in a shower of sparks. A moment later we heard the hum increase and then a screech of pain that threatened to rupture my eardrums before backing off to an angry gurgle.

  I redoubled my efforts, ignoring the hurts I was starting to accumulate. In a couple of seconds, he and I had caught up with her.

  "It won't kill him," Sabine said with a grin, "but he'll wish it did. With any luck I'll have punctured the thin armor encasing that glowing stuff. If you aren't going to let me chase him, at least we'll have a trail to follow."

  I noticed the monofilament silk I'd used to smash the XARs' minds together hanging limply from the craggy wall on our right. "Just the same, they're going to be better able to plan a counterattack now," I said, pointing at it by way of explanation. "And they'll probably realize that they're leaving a trail of luminescent breadcrumbs. Let's be careful not to walk into an ambush."

  She reached out to touch the braided cord, but pulled back and shivered instead when her finger almost made contact. "I need to kill that glowing one again, Lucas."

  "I know," he said. "But they know that too. The new guy's right. Don't get so aggressive that you let them use it against you."

  She rolled her eyes at him. "So what's your plan, then? Because if it's 'let 'em get away', we're doing a bang up job of it right now." The singsong Irish lilt of her accent made me smile, but I made sure to pretend to scratch my nose in order to cover it since I didn't want her to think I was making fun of her.

  Lucas sighed. "I already told you, I hate being in charge. I'm a soldier. I know my place. I can carry out a mission with the best of them, but making one up on the spot is way too much pressure. Besides, our buddy here doesn't look like he could take another step without keeling over."

  It was an exaggeration, but only a minor one. At the moment I was desperately sucking in air, my hands on my knees as I tried to re-oxygenate. I looked up at him, unsure as to whether or not they were making fun of me.

  All I saw was concern, though more from him than her. As if to emphasize that, Sabine scoffed at me. "Stop using him as an excuse. He'll either be fine or he won't. And no fair bitching about not wanting to be the boss if you won't take my lead."

  I couldn't really blame Lucas. She may not have technically had a death wish, but she was certainly reckless. Her lack of concern for her own well-being sure wasn't inspiring confidence in me.

  All right, then, I told myself. Time to step up and get this shitshow back on track. If neither of them was capable of grabbing the reins, I didn't have any qualms about taking control. "I appreciate you two waiting for me, but Sabine's right. We're letting them escape. She may have made tracking them easier, but they still may split up and slip the noose. So, let's do a thing I'd never otherwise suggest."

  "Huh?"
/>   I straightened up and shrugged. "They say 'Don't split the party'. It's an old gaming rule, and if you ask me it's a tried-and-true one. In this case though, I don't think we have much of a choice. There's no way I can keep up with either of you guys. Track them down. See where they go, but try not to engage. And before I forget, there's an illusionary wall up ahead. When you come to the dead-end, push right on through. It's just magic."

  My own words bounced back to me off of the rocks, and now my smile was too big to conceal. It's just magic. Like any of what I'd experienced so far in the Citadel was normal. I knew I was supposed to be serious, and that the stakes were probably way bigger than I'd had the chance to realize yet, but I couldn't be surrounded by this world and not have fun.

  It just wasn't in me.

  "What about you?" Lucas asked.

  "I'll catch up as best I can."

  I thought at least one of them would argue, but Lucas hadn't been lying when he said that he was used to following orders. He nodded, and Sabine rushed off without another word. She was obviously bent on revenge, and even though I didn't think for an instant that she required my permission, I could still sense that at least some small part of her still wanted to be a team player.

  She raced ahead again faster than ever, and Lucas put his head down and sprinted after her.

  Even though I was confident that this was the right decision, a little bit of that washed away when I quickly found myself alone in the tunnel. It took no more than thirty seconds for the sound of the XAR and the humans in hot pursuit to be lost completely.

  "Come on," I told myself. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get moving."

  Hurting more than ever, I pushed myself onward. I hadn't given the tunnel's design much thought on my first trip through the passage, but Zane had expertly constructed it to flow like the reverse of a river and its tributaries.

  When you were headed toward the encampment you faced at least a dozen choices as the real tunnel forked over and over. Heading in the other direction though resulted in a quick escape, since all you had to do was stick to the main shaft. It was an ingenious way of delaying anyone looking for his group whilst still allowing those who knew where it was to locate it.

  I limped along, favoring my injured shoulder more with every painful step. I hadn't wanted to show either Lucas or Sabine exactly how badly hurt I was, but even this moderate pace was taking a toll on me. I followed the smears and drips that glowed on the ground from the XAR's abdominal wound and simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Just as I was thinking that this tunnel system was far longer than I remembered, I turned a corner and practically crashed into the back of the humans I'd freed. They were standing in front of the illusory wall and, from the looks on their faces, they'd heard me coming and cut short whatever argument they were in the middle of.

  "This is what I was talking about," I told them. "It's a hologram, or something." By way of demonstrating, I stepped around them and poked my head out into the Burrower's Tunnel.

  Even though this might be a decent place for the XAR to make a stand, all I saw was a whole lot of emptiness in both directions. It felt like a long time since I'd seen the smooth walls of the Burrower's tunnel, and laying eyes on it again was almost a relief. Zane's construction abilities may have been top-notch, but that didn't stop me from feeling claustrophobic in the smaller space he'd created.

  I stepped through the illusion and waited for them, though when they didn't follow me through after a couple of seconds I returned to the side passage. "Something wrong?" I asked.

  Sabine was looking at me like I was crazy. "That's the Mine Maggot shaft, right?"

  "I suppose it is," I agreed. The name she'd used for it carried a weight with it that 'Burrower' had not. It felt right, the same way as when I said Puddle Piranha either out loud or in my own head. It was as if the proper name was being reinforced internally.

  I guess it made sense that these guys called it something different than Neve's group did. "If you mean the toothy worm that patrols up and down this ramp, the answer is yes. I thought he was called a Burrower, though..."

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "What do you mean? Who calls it that?"

  Crap. I'd already said too much. I wasn't suited to be the guy stuck in the middle of two different factions, especially when I had so much to learn about the world around me. I'd have to tread carefully, or the whole thing would blow up in my face sooner rather than later.

  "That's what I've been calling it, I mean," I lied.

  "How many lives did you lose to the Maggot?" Lucas wanted to know.

  I was quickly being painted into a corner, and I knew it. He didn't look as suspicious of me as Sabine was, but the more dishonest my answer, the more I'd have to keep track of the repercussions. Toot had said that my first death had cost me an hour of Citadel time. The next one would make me sit on the sidelines for ten hours, and then a hundred.

  It wouldn't be long before the math simply wouldn't work, so I told them as much of the truth as I could, for my own sanity if nothing else. "None. It almost did, but I fell through this wall in a panic when I tried to get away."

  "Lucky," said Lucas, though at least it didn't sound like an accusation. "Unfortunately, since we have no way of knowing know how long it's been since the Maggot's passed or in which direction it was going, we could be in trouble fast. And if Sabine dies again, she's down for the count."

  I frowned. "Like, permanently?"

  "Of course not. But her time will be up before the respawn and she won't be back until Evelyn puts her in again in a couple days, on the Station."

  I almost didn't ask, but I had to. "Back in the labyrinth? With a helmet, and that awful atonal noise, and the crazy yawning portal that sucks you into here?"

  Sabine forced a smile. "That's the one. Fun, right? A singular joy..."

  I nodded. I had a million more questions, but we were already wasting way too much time. "We're just going to have to roll the dice with the Maggot. I've killed one of those XAR before. That's how he found me, using the Nemesis nonsense he's got. The good news is that I'm almost positive that CAV would have timed his attack to allow him to get back to safety before the Maggot returned. If that's the case, all we need to do is stay on his trail and we should be safe, too."

  "Okay," Lucas agreed, pointing to a few faintly glowing drops on the ground I'd overlooked. "They went uphill, which makes sense. Their Hive is on the Citadel's third floor."

  "Have you seen it?"

  He glanced away. "Technically, yes. They got me and dragged me up there. I spent a couple days as their unwilling guest, doing God knows what. When I respawned, the Citadel informed me that I'd been up there. It's still the highest floor I've reached."

  "Have you been back there since?"

  Lucas sighed. "Life here is harder here than I think you're giving it credit. Sometimes, it's all we can do just to—"

  I didn't really mean to, but I couldn't stop myself from cutting him off. "Boo fucking hoo. Listen, do me a favor and save your tears for later, since I don't want you to get dehydrated. It's not like life back on Earth is a cakewalk for everyone. I'll choose this one over that one every time."

  Sabine laughed. "I'm liking this guy, Lucas."

  Her boyfriend wasn't amused, though. He tapped on his enhanced right arm with his left hand, then knocked on his right leg with his knuckles before flicking his strange eye.

  Everything he touched rang like metal. "Uncle Sam and the USMC sold me a bum deal. The price was an arm and a leg, and I was so patriotic back then I even tipped the IED an eye for good measure."

  "Oh," I said, otherwise speechless.

  Lucas wasn't done. "I don't hold grudges. In fact, I'm going to forget about this as soon as we shake hands, but don't pretend that you know what anyone other than yourself has gone through. You can't come out of that looking like anything other than an asshole."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I realized that they
had no memory of me jokingly introducing myself before, which meant that I had to do it again. "I'm Adam," I blurted, repeating my name for the fourth or fifth time today. For an introvert turned reclusive shut-in, I was suddenly having to do a lot of social butterflying. "And I can be an asshole, sometimes. I already overheard your names, though..."

  "Pleased to meet you," Sabine said.

  "Like I said, Adam," Lucas told me, "no hard feelings." He shook my hand, his enhanced grip almost turning my bones to powder. "Sorry," he said immediately, letting go right before he did any permanent damage. "I just spent some points on upping their strength, but I keep forgetting to be careful."

  "It's fine," I said, shaking some feeling back into my bruised fingers. "Let's just try and work out where the XAR are hiding, shall we?" Neve had told me that she and the others had spent some time scouting the tunnel when they'd hacked out the secondary one they eventually inhabited. The abductees hadn't found anything obvious, which meant that we were probably looking at either a brand new offshoot or yet another hidden passage that branched off from the main one.

  "On it," Sabine said, flouncing off.

  "And keep your eyes open. If there's a shortcut to be had, the XAR would have taken it. Remember, they're probably far enough ahead that the hurt one may have been able to plug the leak and hide the trail. Even if he hasn't, the XAR may very well be ready to waylay us."

  Both of them dashed up the ramp, scanning the walls as they went while I limped along after.

  As I went, the old standby yellow crystals lit our way at perfectly placed intervals. I studied the walls as well, just in case the others missed something. The way Neve had told it, Zane had found a hairline fracture way back when and attacked it over the course of countless deaths. His commitment was commendable, though with the advantages the XAR had in strength and natural weaponry I had to guess that they could make much shorter work of any structural weakness, should they find one.