He nodded that they should investigate. Archon moved slowly forward and pushed aside the foliage.
Shit, Gavin thought.
A larger form than he anticipated was in the clearing on the other side of the branches. It had four legs, though it was standing up on its rear two, using its massive claws to dig into the bark of a tree. Its black fur coat glistened in the sun, and its massive horns rose a good five feet above its head. Gavin thought it looked beautiful, but at the same time, he knew he was in very grave danger. It was a trimper, a deadly predator that could see them as well as they could see it.
Gavin took a deep breath. We can handle this. They’d had ample training in wilderness activities. Stay calm. Back away. Maybe the horned bear would not see them as a threat or as food.
He felt a rustle to his left, and he moved only his eyes to see Archon. His battle buddy’s blue eyes were wider than Gavin had ever seen them, and he realized his friend was losing his cool.
Don’t sweat. Don’t move, Gavin thought. It can smell your fear.
But Archon couldn’t read Gavin’s mind, and beads of sweat formed on his brow. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said under his breath.
Gavin gripped his friend’s arm tighter, so tight his knuckles lightened. He knew that the tension would draw the trimper’s attention, but he was more concerned about what would happen if Archer ran.
The trimper came down from the tree to stand on all four feet. Gavin’s best guess put it at six and a half feet tall without the horns, making it taller than Gavin and giving it over half a foot on Archon.
Gavin ran his finger up and down his friend’s arm in as soothing a motion as he could. I’m not afraid, and you’re not afraid, and it’s not afraid. No one is afraid, and soon it will go away and leave us alone.
The motion that he’d intended to calm Archon had the opposite effect. He supposed men didn’t generally stroke each other’s arms, but he didn’t have another calm way to communicate stillness. His wrist wrenched as Archon broke free and tore across the forest.
The trimper snorted, and Gavin imagined a mythical fire bull with smoke coming out of its nose. It brushed one front paw along the ground, then with a pounce almost like a cat, it sprinted toward them. Gavin braced himself for impact, knowing he was about to die, but either his attempts to remain still had worked better than he could have imagined, or the trimper wanted a bit of a challenge. It tore off into the woods after Archon.
For what must have been only five or ten seconds but what felt like an eternity, Gavin watched the trimper close in on his friend. As the right horn pierced his friend’s side, Gavin had a feeling of déjà vu and the strangest thought. Fucking Jack. I can’t let him die.
He didn’t know where the thought had come from or what it meant, but the exact anatomy of the trimper flowed through his mind. He knew where the muscles were and what each one did. He knew the exact location of every bone in its body and, more importantly, where it did not have bones covering major arteries. And with expertise that his father had always desired of him, he grabbed his survival knife and flung it toward the trimper with unexpected accuracy.
Blood spurted from the trimper in every direction, and it reared on its hind legs as it squealed an unearthly noise. Gavin half expected Archon to be pierced upon the beast’s horn, but apparently, the impalement hadn’t been complete. Good, he thought as the trimper collapsed to the ground in a pool of its copper-scented blood. Maybe there’s still hope.
But he didn’t see how there could possibly still be hope. He had seen the trimper’s sharp ivory horn stab his friend in the gut, and he knew that some of the blood on the ground over there did not belong to the trimper.
He darted over to his friend, relived to see Archon’s chest still heaving, albeit with substantial effort. His blue eyes were glassy, and his skin was tinged green.
“I’m calling for extraction,” Gavin said, though he had no expectation that his friend would hear him.
Archon made a weak noise.
“What?” Gavin dropped to the ground next to his friend.
“Don’t,” Archon said breathily. “You could still win. You… you killed a trimper. That’s got to be, like, a million points.”
“I don’t care if I win if you die, you moron,” Gavin said. But on some level, he must have still wanted to win, because he wasn’t saying the words that would get them out. Or maybe he was in as much shock as Archon, because his brain was not feeling at all like his brain. Instead of trying to figure out how to get a doctor for Archon, it was trying to be a doctor and analyze what needed to be done to save his friend’s life.
But I don’t know what to do! the panicky part of his brain said. I don’t know how to cauterize a wound or staunch bleeding or stitch up internal organs.
But even his thoughts deconstructed themselves. As he stared at his friend’s wound, he realized he didn’t have to quit the game or watch his friend die. He knew what to do.
Chapter 19
Present Day
Will bounded up the stairs to the third floor of Lexi’s dorm, whistling as he did so. The last two weeks had been the best he could remember in a long time. He and Lexi were together. He seemed to be having an easier time convincing her to go out with him than he had in some previous lives, and already they were practically inseparable. And Bliss was around, which was always nice. She had always been Roslyn’s best friend, but in some ways, she was his too.
He reached Lexi and Bliss’s room and took a moment to observe the digital board hanging on the metal door. “Lexi, meet me at 3. We’re going shopping, bitch,” the one closest to the top read. He glanced at the time on his datapad: 3:05. So much for surprising her. He supposed he should have called first, anyway. Lexi didn’t really like surprises. He was about to walk away when he heard a familiar voice on the other side of the door.
“Stop calling me. I’m not talking to you.”
Only one person had that sarcastic tone, and he hadn’t heard her voice in over twenty years.
“I know you’re not talking to me!” Bliss’s voice came through the door. “What I don’t know is why! Don’t you owe me an explanation?”
“I don’t know,” Roslyn said. “I think you’re the one who owes me an explanation. Why did you tell the professors I cheated? Why did you get me referred into therapy instead of university? They think I’m crazy, by the way. I’m waiting for someone to pick me up to take me to the loony bin.”
“I was trying to help you!” Her voice sounded as if she was crying. “You’d been saying crazy things, and you cheated on that test!”
Will placed his hand on the door. He wasn’t sure exactly what Bliss and Roslyn were arguing about, but he could guess. Roslyn always got her memories back first and most clearly. It was part of being a full-blooded Transient. And when they first came back, they could look like insanity to an outsider.
“I did not cheat on that test!” Roslyn’s roar created static over the interplanetary line. “And how is keeping me a server for the rest of my life helping me? Do you want to keep me as much your pet as Snookems is?”
Will closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door. He wanted to reach out to his sister to comfort her. A server. I can’t believe she was born a server. More than anything in the universe, she would hate that. She, who only ever wanted to go somewhere she had never been before, was stuck in a cage.
He wanted to tell her it would get better. The system couldn’t hold a Transient as a server forever. They had been born into servitude before and always found ways to break free. He wanted to reassure her he knew she hadn’t cheated on the university entrance exam and that the unnatural knowledge that had come to her was perfectly natural, for them, at least. But mostly, he wanted to see her face.
He knew he shouldn’t and most likely wouldn’t be able to. Lexi and Bliss had probably locked the door, so if
he pressed the sensor, it would alert Bliss to his presence instead of opening. Bliss would hang up her call to see who was at the door, or she wouldn’t hang up and would ignore Will. Either way, he wouldn’t get to see Roslyn.
But he had to try. He pressed his hand to the door, and it swung open. Bliss was lying on her bed. She turned to see who had opened the door, and he barely registered the puzzled look she gave him. His gaze followed the angle of her neck to a datapad tilted slightly away from him, but he still recognized the girl on the viewscreen.
His throat felt tight, and a tear formed in his eye. Maybe he should have looked for Roslyn instead of Lexi. He had trusted that Roslyn would find her own way, as she always did, but his sister looked so lost and helpless. Her cheeks were red and tearstained, and he doubted it was because she was so happy to see him. Roslyn only cried when she was angry.
“Will?” Bliss said. “Do you need something? I can get off this call.”
He shook his head, as much to stop staring at Roslyn as to indicate a negative. “No, no. Of course not. Stay on your call. I was looking for Lexi. I’ll just leave her a note.”
His eyes found Roslyn’s once more, and before he could back out of the room with as much grace as was left to him, she said, “Will? Your name is Will?”
“Oh, yes, I’m sorry, Roslyn. How rude of me!” Bliss held up her datapad so Will could see it straight on. “Will, Roslyn. She’s my best friend from home. Roslyn, Will. He’s dating Lexi.”
Roslyn reached out to touch the screen, as if she could somehow reach Will’s face through it. “Do I… Do I know you?”
Bliss brought the datapad back to face her. “I told you about him, I’m sure. He’s been hanging around with us a lot.”
“And he’s dating Lexi? Is he psychotic?” Roslyn’s words didn’t hold quite their usual sarcastic bite, but they sounded enough like his sister that he was content she was feeling better.
“No, of course he’s not psychotic! He’s very nice. He just—”
“Has terrible taste in women,” Roslyn said. “I get it. I apparently have terrible taste in men.”
Will snorted. She does indeed.
Bliss glanced back and forth between Roslyn and Will. She apparently didn’t know whether to focus on Roslyn’s words or Will’s reaction to them.
“I would tell you all about it,” Roslyn continued. “But I’m mad at you. And you’d probably say I was crazy.”
Bliss focused on Roslyn. “If you have a boyfriend you’re not telling me about, I will personally come home to Ariadne and feed Snookems a diet of beans.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Roslyn said, but even Will could tell she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Bliss squealed, and Will wanted to stay and hear the whole story. Is it Jack? Gavin? Some entirely different human boy whose heart she’s destined to break? He wanted to hear everything.
Wait, no, scratch that. He didn’t want to hear about his sister’s love life. He just wanted to hear about her. But he had already given too much away, and he needed to get out of there. To the tune of Bliss’s high-pitched entreaties to know more about the man in Roslyn’s life, Will crept out of the room.
Lexi studied the digital representation of the dress on a figure designed to mimic hers exactly. “I’m just not sure.” It was a nice-enough dress. The red would complement her skin tone nicely and maybe even bring out the mahogany flecks in her eyes, but the sweetheart neckline was so last year.
Her friend Steff groaned. “Come on, Lexi. That’s like the fiftieth dress you’ve tried on, and you don’t like any of them. You do realize the winter formal is months away.”
“Just because everything looks perfect on you, Miss Blond-Haired-Blue-Eyed-Hourglass, does not mean the rest of us are so fortunate.” Lexi shifted through the touch screen to another dress. Have I looked at this blue number already? I wonder if it comes in green.
“Yes, because you’re such a hag.” The petite Steff rolled her eyes. “I would absolutely die if I were five-foot-nine and had legs almost as long. Will will love you no matter what you wear.”
Lexi flipped past a few more dresses. “Who says I’m taking Will to the winter formal?”
“Um, duh. You guys are perfect for each other.”
How can I explain to Steff the strange way Will makes me feel? The boy seemed to adore her, and that was great. She loved it when a guy would do anything for her. But at the same time, he anticipated her wants almost too well, to the point that she wondered whether he was stalking her to learn her preferences.
Not that that would be such a huge deal. She was worthy of a stalker and was perfectly capable of stringing him along while keeping him at arm’s length in case he became violent or something. What mattered was that when she was around Will, the strange voice of her doubts became louder. It kept telling her she couldn’t be famous, and she couldn’t knock it down, not when Will was around.
She hated the look he got every time she mentioned her inevitable fame. His smile would dim, and he would refuse to meet her eyes for a few seconds. Then he would look back and agree with her. He didn’t believe in her, not really, and it drove her mad. He probably pretended to agree with her to get into her pants, which would be fine if her self-doubts didn’t get louder. She hated that Will had so much power over her, which meant that sooner or later, she was going to have to call it quits. Probably before winter formal, since Steff’s right. It’s months away, hardly a blip on anyone’s radar. But if I want a one-of-a-kind dress, I need to get my order in soon.
“Maybe something short.” She reselected her filters and ran dresses over the fake Lexi figure almost faster than the eye could see.
Steff sighed.
Whatever, Lexi thought. She can wait if it means I look perfect.
“I picked out my dress,” Lexi announced as she paraded into the dorm room. “No doubt you’ve been here studying like a little ferret the whole time.”
Bliss looked up from her datapad. She wished she could say she had been studying, but she had been searching for information on Will, though she’d reached a major stumbling block. “What’s Will’s last name?”
Lexi mumbled something from inside her closet then stuck her head out. “Why?”
“Did… did you just say ‘Turin’?” Bliss asked.
“Yes, then I said, ‘Why?’ but I notice you’re ignoring that part.”
“Turin is my friend Roslyn’s last name.” Bliss pulled up a picture of Will then one of Roslyn and arranged them next to each other. She gasped. They didn’t look identical, but the family resemblance was hard to deny.
“So? Who cares?” Lexi said. “I’ve got the same last name as one of those chumps in the Bellerophon Games, and you don’t see me making a big deal out of it.”
“Look at this.” Bliss held up her datapad for Lexi to see.
Lexi pursed her lips. “That’s Will and… his sister? Why am I interested in this?”
“’That’s not Will’s sister,” Bliss said. “That’s my friend Roslyn. She was born a server on Ariadne. I’ve known her my entire life. She doesn’t have any siblings.”
“O-kay,” Lexi said. “So two people you know happen to look similar. Big whoop.”
“They have the same last name.”
Lexi put her hands on her hips. “So, what? You think it’s some kind of galactic conspiracy?”
“All right, I know it sounds crazy, but what if Will was never looking for you or me? What if he approached us—”
“Me. He approached me. You butted in.”
“Right, he approached you, but what if he was looking for his sister the whole time? What if he was born on Ariadne, and his parents smuggled him off so he could have a chance at a better life? And now he’s looking for the sister he left behind?”
Lexi flopped down on her bed. “Cronos, Bliss, can you be any more se
lf-centered? You’re saying Will is interested in me because he wants to get to you?”
Bliss felt heat rise to her face. “No! I mean, I’m sure he really likes you. I just—”
“Besides, if he were looking for his sister, he would be on Ariadne, not here.”
Rolling onto her back, Bliss said, “You’re right. I know you’re right. It’s an insane theory.”
Lexi made an offended noise in her throat. “I did not say it was insane. You’re right. Something is off about Will, and you and I are going to find out what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean dust off that extremely unfashionable trench coat I’ve seen lurking in the back of your closet, because you and I are about to become detectives.”
Chapter 20
Present Day
Tegan wished she had friends.
Scratch that. She’d had friends once. They’d betrayed her, and she’d betrayed them, and it sucked. She had Detrick and Phedre. She didn’t need anyone else, though they weren’t really satisfying company. One had all the social skills of bread mold, and the other threatened to kill her on a regular basis.
Maybe I can get Detrick to build me a robot friend. He’d done some experimenting with AIs in the past, and while he couldn’t get along with the things to save his life, maybe she could. It would give her someone to talk to, anyway. Someone who would never, ever call me Cuttlefish.
Twenty Years Ago
Tegan’s datapad bleeped, and she let out a heavy sigh when she saw the scowling brunette come up on the screen. Her finger hovered over the face for a few seconds before she pushed the button to respond. “Go away, Phedre. I’m not interested in any of your plots.”
“Oh, but I think you are this time” came the silky voice over the line. “You see, your fellow Transients have betrayed you.”
Arachne's Web Page 12