by D K Girl
‘Blake, ready the engagement protocols.’ Cym stood at the controls panel behind the glass window of Tech Room Two. ‘Prepare the inhibitors.’
She hesitated longer than was necessary, the memory of Cym pushing that serum into her veins still fresh. He couldn’t have given her more looks of anguish since, if he’d tried. But still. Pain was pain.
‘Technician copy.’
At this stage of proceedings, the carapaces would act as four singular, powerful magnets that would lock on to each of the incoming energy sources. Cym had to time the engagement precisely. Miss the opportunity for lockdown and not only did they risk compromising the energy sources – the gallu – but they risked the entire Facility. The radiation levels at Azrael’s Meld, before he had been locked into the carapace, had been dangerously impressive.
‘Approaching engagement. Ready for my go-ahead.’
Cym’s voice was a disembodied point of calm in the maelstrom. The Syranians she could see, Bel and Parator, stood with complete ease. Their faces were smooth of any distress or concern. Devoid of anything at all. The same couldn’t be said for the small number of humans in the chamber. Three white-suited technicians gathered at her right, faces lit by jade light, their awestruck terror clear in their expressions. Understandable. It was difficult to think of anything but the vibration of the earth, the immense energy that was building in the room. It was impossible to miss. Prickling, electric energy filled the chamber. Pressure before a great thunderstorm. The rumbling of the Tier Waters like a never-ending roll of thunder. Somewhere, in the midst of it all, was Tamas.
Blake blinked, trying to estimate which of the shadows dancing within the chaos was his slight frame. Whatever he might have believed he’d become, a good liar was not it. He’d lied. She’d known him way too long and he was far too transparent for her to have believed him when he’d said that Kira and Azrael had been located. She could forgive Cym for the truth serum; he had as little control of this game as she did. The Syranian did what he could, when he could. Not so different to her. But not Tamas.
She couldn’t wipe the image of him listening to her spill her guts. Witnessing her agony and doing nothing to stop it. She thought she’d seen a glimpse of something then. A coldness, a deadness in his eyes that hadn’t been evident before. But she’d avoided looking too closely at anyone for so long, she hadn’t been sure. When he spat vitriol into her ear before the Meld, it had removed all doubt.
He was lying about having Kira, but he was not lying about wanting to break her.
‘I really hope that hurts, you asshole,’ Blake whispered.
The shock wave exploded through the chamber, knocking her clear off her feet. The tablet flew from her hand, and the impact with the ground pushed the breath from her lungs. A ripping sound, like a hundred cracks of thunder laid atop one another, tore through the space. Blake cowered beneath raised hands, a paltry defence if the cavern was about to come down on her. It certainly seemed intent on doing so. The funnel of water burst, exploding outward in a shock of jade green. Liquid fireworks sprayed across the chamber. The captain shouted something in the earpiece, but she couldn’t make it out. The roaring around her threatened to rupture her eardrums. A huge shape towered over her. It took a moment to register that it was one of the mini cranes – toppling down. Blake cried out, scrambling to get to her feet. A figure body-slammed her, and they tumbled in a mess of limbs. Whoever grasped her, crushed her body against theirs, taking the impact as they hit the hard concrete. They grunted against Blake’s ear. The crane slammed into the ground right alongside them, and concrete chunks flew in all directions.
Green rain poured down on them, plastering Eron’s silver hair against his skull.
‘Miss Beckworth, are you injured?’
Winded, Blake waved her reply. Eron may have bruised her, but the crane would have killed her. Its impact had created a shallow crater in the concrete.Small pieces of shrapnel rained down on them, pieces of the chamber’s rocky ceiling, knocked clear by the force of the shock wave. One struck her on the cheek.
‘What happened?’ she gasped. ‘Are they here?’
‘Yet to be determined.’
She pushed herself to her knees. Her earpiece was gone, both it and the communicator dislodged in the tumble. The surface of the Tier was a smooth black. The waters showing no sign of movement, still as a mirror. Of the remaining three cranes, one had toppled in over part of the Tier, its furthermost tip jammed hard against the stonework edging, preventing it from sliding completely into the pool. The second lay overturned, most of it hidden from Blake’s view. Parator stood over it, hands outstretched into the air. The third crane had jammed into the narrow space between Tech Rooms One and Two, destroying the observation window of Two, and tearing a slash down the wall of Room One. Dangling between the rectangular rooms was one of the gallu, one of the females, still mostly harnessed into the crane. She thrashed about, tangling herself even more in the wires that bound her. Seder stood over her, no doubt trying to gain some control with the implanted stone in his arm, but his usually benign expression was one of fierce concentration. Beyond him, shadows moved about in Tech Room One, Cym and others still behind the control panels.
The ground beneath Blake rumbled with fresh vibrations, and a low, deep explosion quickly followed. She braced, crouching like a runner at the starting line. But the origins of the explosion were evident. A piece of equipment in Tech Room Two had caught fire, sending an orange glow over Seder and the struggling carapace. Fingers of smoke snaked down around the scene.
Blake got to her feet, and her knees buckled. Eron caught her arm.
‘Blake?’
‘I’m fine.’ She pushed away from his gentle grasp, fighting her own body’s reluctance to allow her to stay on her feet. Soaked to the skin, her clothes clinging tightly, her hair like a sodden wig. The temperature had plummeted. ‘What the hell just happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
The crane that had almost crushed her, jerked, the carapace trapped beneath it bucking and writhing.
‘Eron.’ Bel raced out of the shroud of smoke. ‘I’ll deal with this one, go to Gren. We’ve lost contact. Technician, get those inhibitors up and running. Now.’
Eron gave her a short nod and disappeared into the haze.
Blake thought she heard the captain’s voice over the calamitous noise still bubbling through the chamber. The smoke from the tech room continued to spread, and the figures around her blurred into shadowy, flitting shapes. Blake coughed, her throat irritated by the hazy air. A high screech rang out through the chamber. Shouts came from somewhere beyond the tech rooms. Blake scoured the ground around her, dizzy at the movement. She could run. Use the chaos to leave the chamber. The Facility. Tempting. But what if she’d been wrong? What if Tamas hadn’t been lying, and Kira was here? Somewhere underground, in a Facility that had just been compromised. Rossiter was definitely here. Strapped with Tasers because of her. Blake pressed a hand to her chest. The odd fluttering of her heart was irritating more than anything. As if someone had let birds loose in her chest. She heaved in a breath and held it. Her knees buckled and Blake dropped, throwing her hands out to stop herself from face-planting the concrete.
‘Shit.’ Blake grimaced. Blood ran from a deep cut at the heart of her left palm. She tugged at the twisted screw embedded there and flung it away.
And that was when she saw him. Tamas. As broken as everything else around her.
She should have raced to him, gone to his side as quickly as Eron had come to hers. Blake remained crouched on the ground, surrounded by the smells and sounds of chaos. A chaos as much her making as his.
It would be right to see if Tamas was still alive. No grey area.
And she should do something definitively right.
Blake staggered to Tamas’s body. There was blood – a lot of it – running from a deep gash just below his collarbone. The scalp at his right temple had been ripped back, a hole the size of a stamp leaving bone
exposed. Blood glistened on his eyelashes and stained his cheeks. The whites of his eyes showed through the tiny slit of half-open eyelids. Though the bone had not actually pierced through the skin, his left wrist was unequivocally broken. Blake pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, gagging at the memories that rose. Christ, was this how it was going to be? Was Karma was that much of a bitch it would see her argue with everyone she gave a shit about before they died? Left to stare down at the sorry mess she’d made.
Blake jerked her head to one side, just in time for her stomach contents to lurch free. As she retched, guttural cries erupted around her. Shouts and shrieks in English, and sharper calls in the Syranian tongue.
‘Blake, Jesus. Are you all right?’ Rossiter emerged out of the haze, a piece of cloth pressed to his mouth, muffling his words.
She wiped her mouth. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You’re bleeding.’ Rossiter tried to touch her hand, but she pulled it out of reach.
‘I’ll live. Is Kira here?’
Kneeling beside Tamas, Rossiter cursed under his breath, touching his fingers to Tamas’s bloody neck. ‘I don’t know. They had me locked up on level two. But the boys aren’t assholes. Let me go the minute all the alarms went berserk. He’s got a pulse.’
Blake’s cloudy mind took a second for his words to register. ‘Tamas? He’s not dead?’
‘Not yet.’
The captain burst through the smoke haze like a willowy giant, towering over them. ‘On your feet, Technician.’
He didn’t give her an option to comply, or disobey. Nex hauled her to her feet with none of the gentleness of Eron’s grasp. Blake struggled against him. Rossiter rose alongside her. His height didn’t compare to the Syranian’s, but his bulk still made it a formidable move.
‘Take it easy,’ he said.
‘There’s no time to take it easy,’ Nex spat. ‘We are losing control of the Four. Cym is injured and requires your assistance. The system, what’s left of it, is unresponsive. Now move.’
Nex shoved her forward, and a joint in her neck clicked with the force.
‘Tamas is dying, how is your god going to like that?’ Blake fought against him. ‘Losing the precious Messenger can’t be a good thing, right?’
Captain Nex released her arm, twisting to look back. When his eyes settled on Tamas, a muscle in his jaw twitched.
‘I need two minutes to get him stabilised.’ She took a cautious step away. ‘Rossiter will get him to medical, but I need to strap his wrist. We’re not god-soldiers, not even Tamas. He needs help. Two minutes –’
‘Get on with it,’ the captain growled. He didn’t leave, but he did give them space.
Rossiter frowned as she knelt beside him. ‘I could do this,’ he muttered.
Reaching for Tamas’s broken wrist, Blake breathed against the fresh rise of nausea. ‘My townhouse. Bedroom safe, code 1-7-1-1-2-6.’ Rossiter gave her a sideways look, recognising the code as the date her world had imploded. ‘Take what’s in there and protect it, it might be all we have that’s worth keeping. That and Azrael. Without them, we’re at a gunfight without a gun. You have to find Kira. No way she won’t leave a trail somewhere. Try Beleiro.’ She was pinning everything on one notion; that she knew her sister well enough to predict Kira’s actions. ‘Protect them. And do not come back here.’
The Syrana truth serum had not clawed everything from her. Blake had never intended for Kira to go to Melgrove. And there had been no better way to ensure she wouldn’t go there, than to order her to a place filled with memories of a dead man.
With Tamas’s blood sticky on her skin, Blake rose to her feet and strode after the captain. She had done all she could. Now everything was, quite literally, in Rossiter’s hands.
Eron - 19
Radio comms weren’t out entirely but were severely distorted. Static was muffling conversations into incoherency. Following Bel’s directive, Eron ran around the perimeter of the Tier, headed for the overturned crane that lay on its far side. The bitter scents in the room riled delicate membranes within his sinuses, and the bristling energy still pulsing from the Waters toyed with the layers of his skin. Eron coughed against the discomfort, focusing his attention on not tumbling over the debris scattered in his path.
Within moments he located Gren. The Syranian lay on his back, legs trapped beneath the heavy core of the crane. Eron saw quickly why his brother had not just pulled himself free of the wreckage. A piston from one of the crablike legs that held the crane in place had snapped from its position and speared into his gut. The tubular piece of steel was thick as an arm, piercing the flesh just above Gren’s right hip bone. The force it would have taken to propel it through two layers of ballistics armour was equally impressive and horrifying.
‘Gren, are you –’
‘Eron, just assist me.’ Gren gripped the metal impaling him. ‘It has gone through to the ground. I can’t dislodge it from this angle.’
The Syranians were quick healers, resilient to injuries that would fell other corporeal beings, but they were not immune to pain. Gren would have been in agony. Eron stepped over him, grasped the metal in his hands, and was preparing to attempt to dislodge it when all at once the crane shifted.
‘Quickly,’ Gren snapped. ‘He is rousing.’
For the first time, Eron saw that the gallu was still in the harness at the very end of the crane’s arm. He lay a few metres beyond the toppled structure, his upper body free of the harness but one ankle still cuffed into the wide steel clamp at its base. He recognised the creature as the last of the Four shells that Blake had completed. He was as heavyset as Blake’s bodyguard Rossiter, and of a similar deepened skin tone, but with a fierceness of face that the human lacked. A faint buzz of blonde hair on his round scalp, a neck that barely existed between broad shoulders, and a square, blunt jaw. Nothing of Azrael’s structural fineness remained here. The crane jerked forward, and the movement drew a stifled cry from Gren.
‘Did you Bind?’ Eron sought purchase on the underbelly of the crane, finding a handhold alongside the tractor tyre, trying to keep the machine still. ‘Does the mea hold the gallu?’
‘I’ve done what I can.’ Gren hauled at the piston, veins straining in his neck with the effort. ‘He is strong.’
‘The inhibitors are still not activated?’ Eron held fast, but the gallu’s movements jolted and shuddered through the metal. Each of the Syranians wore a slender white band at their wrist, designed to allow some sedative control over the gallu in the unlikely event that the telekinetic connection created by the mea stones was not enough.
Gren’s deep brown skin was blotched with rivulets of darker dirt, the Waters still glinting on his eyelashes. ‘They aren’t responding. He is not responding. He fights it. Fights the mea.’
The inhibitors had proved their strength time and again when used upon Azrael, felling him as though he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. Cym and Blake had found a way to effectively paralyse the gallu within the carapace, or at the very least slow them down considerably, like a human after a few puffs of marijuana. Eron stared at the creature writhing against his restraints. Clearly, this gallu was not remotely stoned.
First priority, though, must be to free Gren from the tangle.
‘I need to disconnect the harness from the crane,’ Eron said. ‘That will ease your discomfort, give you more strength in the Bind.’
‘He is strong, Eron.’ Gren’s voice was strained. ‘I fear he will slip from me. You must be ready.’
Eron nodded, shamed at the rush of exhilaration that came with Gren’s words. His brother was wounded, yet Eron thrilled with the idea of attempting a Bind. With a nod towards his fallen brother, Eron braced, waiting for a small moment when the gallu did not struggle so fiercely. There was little doubt Gren would suffer in the time it took for Eron to hurdle the machinery and cut the harness free, so he would bide his time, choose the quietest of moments.
Stillness.
Eron leapt over the low
heap of the fallen crane. The gallu’s stillness lasted no more than a second. He pushed himself to his new, unfamiliar knees and heaved forward. The crane made a terrible sound against the hard concrete. Eron allowed himself to believe the screech was entirely structural. That it was not mixed with Gren’s scream as it wrenched the piston through his gut and dug the crane into his legs. Pulling a knife from a holster at his thigh, Eron swiped down on the tangle of cable at the very tip of the crane arm, seeking to disconnect the harness from the crane itself.
‘Gren, are you still with me? Can you hold the Bind?’
Eron took another swipe at the cables. They snapped free and whipped back, barely missing Eron’s shoulder.
‘Gren,’ Eron called again.
No answer. He had to be certain. To attempt a new Bind now could disrupt whatever hold Gren may have – releasing the gallu altogether. The creature itself certainly looked to be free, though. He was on his feet, wavering there much like the intoxicated humans in the night-time establishments Kira had introduced him to. Much like Eron himself had done on more than one occasion. Breathing into that deep well in his mind, Eron reached out tentatively, searching for sign that Gren’s Bind with the creature still held. A void greeted him.
The gallu began to move, arms and legs showing little unification. The creature would have been a ridiculous sight if he weren’t also so dangerous. The gallu stumbled away.
Eron let out two short exhalations, seeking the cognitive pathway he required. It drifted like a faint memory, protected within its own cortex. An entity in his mind that moved of its own accord. He coaxed it forward, reached for it, and peeled back the folds. The mea connection opened. On his arm, at the stone’s locale, there was warmth and little else untoward. But in Eron’s skull, it was much like what the humans called a brain freeze. The neurological response of opening to the stone pained nerve endings throughout his face and skull. A headache. Quite unpleasant, if he was truthful.
