Red lights appeared in the laser ports on the satellites, and six rays fired at the Transients’ vessel. Lexi turned the ship almost sideways to avoid getting hit, and she was the only one to remain upright. In the few seconds it took Bliss to right herself, the comm station indicated a call was coming in. Bliss answered it.
A blond woman with crow’s-feet around her piercing blue eyes appeared on the screen. “Incoming vessel, you are not expected. Please identify yourself.”
Roslyn motioned for Bliss to move and took her vacated seat. “Well, well, well,” she said to the woman on the screen. “If it isn’t Hannah Carriger. Stolen anyone’s boyfriend recently?”
Even over the poor connection, Hannah visibly paled. “Roslyn Turin? No, it can’t be. You’re dead. I buried you myself.”
Demitrius is going to kill me. For some reason, the thought brought a smile to her face. With any luck, she would piss off both her parents that day. “Death is so passé, don’t you think?”
The ship rocked as something struck it.
“What happened to ‘I can dodge anything they throw at us,’ Lexi?” Will yelled.
“They’ve got some kind of tracker on the lasers,” she said. “I’ve dodged more of them than you could.”
Roslyn decided she’d better get down to business before the ship exploded and she failed to stop Phedre in the current life as well as the last one. “Look, Hannah. Let us land. We can help you out with your Phedre problem.”
Hannah gave a bitter laugh. “No one can help us with our Phedre problem. It’s been a reign of terror down here since you… since you left. You think we haven’t tried to get her out of here before? We’ve called in dozens of government investigation teams. Phedre plays nice with them for a few weeks, then they’re gone, and things get even worse for us for reporting her.”
Roslyn gripped the arms of her chair to stay upright as the ship rocked. “Didn’t you show them our bodies? You said you buried them.”
Tears formed in the corners of Hannah’s eyes. “She moved them. I don’t know where. She probably destroyed them.”
“Hannah, Phedre wants to murder people tonight, the same way she murdered us twenty years ago. If you let us down, we can stop her, and we can get evidence that she did it. I’ve got a journalist with me who can help.”
Hannah rubbed her face. “I’m losing my mind. I have to be. I’m finally cracking under the stress.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to lose,” Roslyn said. “Please. Turn off the lasers and let us land.”
Hannah took a deep, shuddery breath then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Come on down. But know that some people here are still loyal to Phedre.” She pushed a few buttons on her datapad. “I’ve rebooted the satellites. That should give you enough time to get down.”
Roslyn nodded at Lexi, who steered the ship toward the surface.
“We should have brought someone who could fight,” Will said. “We’re a journalist, an archaeologist, a social worker, and a singer. What are we going to do against Phedre’s bodyguards?”
“I’m a business student!” Bliss said in a small voice, but everyone ignored her.
“We’ll just have to recruit some people down there,” Roslyn said with certainty she didn’t feel. “Hannah said Phedre’s made everyone’s life miserable. We’ll have to persuade people to help us out.”
Lexi landed the ship smoothly, and Roslyn headed for the hatch and jumped out before it had finished opening. By the time Bliss and Will followed her out, a small crowd of people had formed outside the ship. New arrivals were still a novelty on Arachne, it seemed, and most ships that came were government issue. The Transients had flown in on an electric-blue personal pleasure cruiser that stood out against the black Arachne backdrop like a sore thumb.
“Who are you?” a man in front asked. “I didn’t know we were expecting visitors.”
“My name is Roslyn Turin.” Roslyn’s voice rang strong and clear across the crowd. “I used to work here, oh, so many years ago.”
“Wait, I know that name,” a woman in the back of the crowd said. “Roslyn Turin is the name of one of the people who died in the accident on the site twenty years ago.”
Accident? Is that how Phedre explained our deaths? I wonder what kind of accident results in four slit throats.
Another man pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Roslyn vaguely remembered him from her dreams. “I remember Roslyn and her team. That is her. But… she died. Or at least Phedre said she did.”
“I’ve come back,” Roslyn said, keeping her tone steady and confident. “I’ve come because Phedre Turin is a murderer, and if we don’t stop her, she’s going to kill more people.”
A buzz went through the crowd, and Roslyn couldn’t tell if they supported her or not. Eventually, the first man spoke again. “You can’t stop Phedre.”
“I can,” Roslyn said. “We can. She left the moon for a while, right? She was gathering people she wanted to use as human sacrifices. She believes if she kills them on the ruin site, she can uncover alien secrets.”
“She and her lackey, O’Leary, did drag some people to the dig site when she got back,” someone spoke up.
“We were supposed to stay in our tents,” another person hissed.
“So I peeked!”
“Why would she make you stay in your tents unless she was doing something she didn’t want you to see?” Will came up and stood beside Roslyn. “Something that could get her in trouble.”
“Who is this guy?”
He gave the crowd a bright smile and held up his camera for the people to see. “I’m Will Turin, journalist.”
“Will you help us?” Roslyn asked.
The crowd murmured again, and eventually, a collective agreement rose among them. “Armed guards are standing watch outside the site, though,” the first man said. “And we’re not allowed to have weapons.”
“Lucky for you all, this is my daddy’s hunting vessel.” Lexi appeared in the hatch, carrying two laser rifles. “Who among you is a decent shot?”
After a few more moments of murmuring from the crowd, Bliss raised a shaky hand. Will and Lexi looked at her, aghast.
Roslyn smacked her hand against her forehead. “Of course! Mr. Bhanushali takes Bliss to the rifle range all the time. It’s his idea of father-daughter bonding time.”
“I hate it,” Bliss said. “But set a rifle to stun, and I can snipe the guards.”
“I can help,” another man said, coming forward. “I was born on Bellerophon, though I managed to escape to become an archaeologist.”
“You got any more guns in there, Lex?” Will asked. “Somehow I doubt Phedre’s going to stop just because we kill her guards.”
“Daddy doesn’t believe in handguns.” Lexi tossed her beaded braids over her shoulder. “We’ll have to steal pistols from the downed guards.”
Roslyn nodded. “We have a plan. Bliss, you and… What’s your name?” she asked the sniper volunteer.
“Ethan,” he said. “Ethan Cameron.”
“Bliss and Ethan will find a place where they can hide and still shoot the guards. Maybe that hill behind the mess tent?”
He nodded. “I know the spot. It’s a good choice.”
“The rest of us will move in when the guards get distracted,” Roslyn said.
“Wait a minute.” Will grabbed Bliss by the arms. “Are you sure you want to do this? You’re basically acting as bait.”
Bliss put a hand on one of his. “It’s fine. I can do this. I’ll just have to shoot them down before they get to me.”
Will looked like he was about to protest further, but Lexi interrupted. “As loath as I am to disrupt this moment, my brother is likely going to die any minute now, so if we could speed things along?”
“Right.” Bliss extracted herself from Will’s grasp and nodded at Ethan,
and the two of them headed off behind the tents.
Roslyn led the group around the tents on the other side of camp, moving as slowly and silently as she could. She expected the people behind her were attempting the same, but she was worried about the noise they were making. When the guards came into view, she stumbled to a halt. Six of them. Enough for them to split if they see us, each of them with at least three pistols I can see. She inhaled sharply when one glanced her way. Please let me be enough in the shadows that he can’t see me.
The guard took a step toward Roslyn, but before he could take another, the guard next to him took a blue laser bolt to the chest and collapsed. The remaining guards’ attention turned toward Bliss and Ethan as two more blasts took down two more guards. The three left standing ran toward the hill behind the mess tent, and Roslyn took a moment to hope for Bliss’s safety.
As soon as the guards cleared the entrance to the dig site, Roslyn led her people, still as silently as possible, to the entrance. She stopped to pick up a laser pistol off the fallen guard and motioned that Will and Lexi should do the same. A few of the Arachneans followed suit. Then she led them through the opening into the dig site.
The ruins looked exactly as Roslyn remembered them from her dream, green sigils filling the rocky cavern with ghostly light. Phedre was standing behind the podium, placing the spinning Ringati device into its keyhole, Tegan was lurking in front of the podium, brandishing the same knife she had used to kill Roslyn all those years ago, and Gavin, Cobalt, and Jack were tied up in the same positions as before.
Roslyn wasn’t there this time, though. She wasn’t tied up and powerless. She aimed her pistol straight at Tegan. “Drop that knife!”
Tegan obeyed and held her hands up, a look akin to relief flashing across her face. Roslyn turned her attention to Phedre, who, upon seeing the crowd of people who had come to take her down, threw back her head and laughed.
“Oh, Roslyn,” she said. “My dear, sweet Roslyn. My ever-brave daughter. Did you really think you could come here and best me?”
“I can. You’ll never threaten me or these people again.”
Phedre turned to the crowd. “Did she tell you who she is? Just a server girl from Ariadne, one who’s spent the past several weeks in a psychiatric institution for her paranoid delusions. She thinks she lived here twenty years ago, when anyone can see by looking at her that she’s not nearly old enough.”
“She did live here!” the man who had remembered her called. “I knew her then!”
“Did you? But surely that’s impossible. The girl who was here twenty years ago died. You all saw the body at the time. Dead people don’t just come back to life.”
Murmurs rose from the crowd again, and Roslyn could hear them turning against her. The doubt she had felt for the past few weeks at the institution crept into her brain. Maybe this is all some elaborate delusion. Maybe I’m still dreaming.
I’m not dreaming, and if I were, I’m in charge, not her. “It doesn’t matter who I am! It matters who you are and what you’ve done. You’ve got three people whom you plan to kill tied up on the ground.”
“Well, I wasn’t planning to kill anyone.” She glowered at Tegan. “But it looks like my minion is scared of a few pistols.”
“Give it up, Phedre,” Tegan said. “We’ve lost.”
“Have we?” Phedre scanned the crowd, as if looking for the right person to influence. “Zachariah.” She took a few steps forward, seemingly unconcerned that nine laser pistols remained trained on her.
“Yes?” a man standing at Roslyn’s shoulder asked.
“How is your lovely daughter? You would love to see her again, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course.” Zachariah sounded nervous. Roslyn didn’t blame him. Phedre was clearly playing some game.
“Well, you’re not going to.” Phedre pressed a button on her datapad, and with a splatter of blood and bone against Roslyn’s face, Zachariah’s head exploded.
The crowd remained silent for a moment until the thud of Zachariah’s body hitting the floor echoed through the cavern. Then everyone spoke or screamed at once.
“Silence!” Phedre yelled, and everyone obeyed. In a calmer voice, she continued. “You thought I didn’t have a contingency for all of you turning on me? Those medical tracking chips you all wear? I had them rigged with explosives. So now all of you have a choice. You can tie up those three”—she pointed at Roslyn, Lexi, and Will—“or you can end up like Zachariah there. The choice is yours.”
Before Roslyn could wipe the blood from her face or turn the pistol to defend herself, she was disarmed and dragged toward the center of the room. Metallic ropes wrapped around her limbs and torso, keeping her in place. At least they put me by Jack, she thought, looking over at him with tears in her eyes. He had been uncharacteristically silent through the argument. She wondered if he remembered her as more than the server girl from Ariadne.
“Now, Tegan,” Phedre said. “Pick up that knife and kill them.”
Tegan bent down and retrieved her knife. She stared at the blade for a long time, as if trying to see the bloodstains from the Transients she had killed long ago. “Did you put an explosive in my chip as well?” she asked, her voice distant and casual.
“Of course not,” Phedre said, punching something into her datapad and not looking at Tegan. “Your blood is too valuable.”
“Good.” Tegan reached over the podium and stabbed Phedre in the gut.
“Wha—?” Phedre collapsed onto the ground, clutching the knife hilt. “Why, you miserable traitor! You—” A gurgle came from her throat.
“Get out of here,” Tegan said to the crowd. They didn’t need to be told twice. They all but ran out the door as Ethan and Bliss came rushing in.
“What happened here?” Bliss asked.
Roslyn was at a loss for words, and Tegan seemed disinclined to answer. She strode over to Gavin and untied his bonds. “Save her miserable life,” she said, nodding at Phedre. “I don’t want her being reborn to start over. I want her spending some serious time in jail for what she’s done.”
Gavin ran over to Phedre’s side and pressed his hands to her wound. “Get a medic and a gurney,” he said to Ethan, who nodded and left.
“You’re going to jail, too, you know,” Roslyn told Tegan.
Tegan gave a mirthless laugh. “Believe me… after the last two decades, jail sounds like a vacation.”
Bliss untied Will first and gave him a tight hug. “I can’t believe I shot those guards,” she said.
“I’m a little surprised myself,” Will said. “But I shouldn’t be. You’re the bravest person I know.”
Lexi snorted, and for once, Roslyn was grateful to the girl for expressing what none of the rest of them dared. “You going to let the rest of us out, or what?”
Will and Bliss untied Roslyn and Cobalt then finally Jack.
“Hey, Roslyn,” Jack said as he waited for his turn. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you and your friends, but how in Cronos’s name did you know to be here?”
“Don’t explain it to him,” Cobalt said. “He’ll only forget, and it’ll get super annoying.”
When Jack was untied, Roslyn pulled him to her in a tight hug. Over his shoulder, she met Gavin’s eyes. He had a sad smile on his face, then he turned away from her to lift Phedre onto the gurney Ethan had brought.
They all headed out of the ruins. Roslyn expected the crowd of people to still be hovering outside the entrance, but the only figure there was a thin white-clad figure with graying blond hair.
Roslyn approached Hannah. “I suppose I owe you an explanation for… everything.”
“No. Well, yes, you do, and I want it more than I can say, but that’s not why I came over here.” She took a deep breath. “You were murdered here twenty years ago. I knew it, and I said nothing. Phedre claimed it was an accident, but I saw the b
odies. Your throats were slit.”
The memory of Tegan’s blade cutting through her neck overwhelmed Roslyn for a moment. “Yes.”
“Yeah.” Hannah reached into her pocket and pulled something out. It glittered in the dim light. “I found this on your body. I tried to clean it up as best I could, and I’ve held onto it for all these years for reasons I couldn’t even begin to tell you. But it’s yours.”
Hannah held out what looked like a necklace, and Roslyn started as she recognized the engagement ring Jack had given her twenty years ago. Tears welled in her eyes as she took it from Hannah. “Thank you.”
“I’ve called the authorities, and they’re going to come pick up Tegan and Phedre,” Hannah said. “I’m going to recommend this research facility be shut down. You guys clearly have secrets, big ones, and you deserve to keep them.”
“I will tell you, if you want to know,” Roslyn said.
“No,” Hannah said. “I’ve spent the last twenty years living in fear of what Phedre would do to me if I stepped out of line. Now I don’t have to fear anymore. That’s worth more to me than your secrets. It’ll remain a mystery to me. I could use some mysteries in my old age.”
Roslyn slipped the chain around her neck and hid the ring under her shirt. “Thank you, Hannah.”
Chapter 50
Present Day
“Well, Ms. Turin, you are a very lucky young lady.”
Roslyn didn’t feel particularly lucky, but she figured if the man at the police station in a very expensive suit thought she was lucky, she had better at least pretend to agree. “How so, sir?”
The man sat opposite her in the police interrogation room on Ariadne. “The cops called me in to investigate your case. It seems that one Phedre Turin—she’s not any relation, is she?”
“No.”
“Well, it seems that she targeted you specifically. She came here all the way from Arachne, took you on as a psychiatric patient—her only patient, I may add—and sent you to an institution. She called the police, insisting you were dangerous and planned to hurt people at the facility.”
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