by Eva Brandt
“And what is your path, exactly? Do you even know, or are you lashing out blindly?”
The latter option was far more likely, since Selene had never done anything to harm them, and yet, she’d been singled out. Hylonome grinned, as if she could tell exactly what I was thinking. “We’re not the ones who are blind, Commander Trevor. This is vengeance, justice, and prevention, all wrapped up into one.”
“You may be right,” Prince Archibald intervened, “but you have to know I won’t allow any harm to come to that girl.”
“Right. Because she embodies your precious son,” another Centaur, this time male, said. “Yes, we know. That’s the whole point. Pegasus was always on their side, not on ours. That hasn’t changed.”
If Brendan and the others were confused by the exchange, they didn’t show it. Instead, they decided to use the conversation as a way to sneak closer to their Centaur opponents. I did the same, except I targeted Hylonome. When the screaming started, I didn’t let it deter me.
The chimeras were much larger than us and their disembodied forms gave them a versatility we didn’t have. But at the core, they were spirits imbued with the power of the gods, a power we’d been taught to manipulate. It was crazy to turn to such methods, but we had no other way.
Reaching for the very center of a Centaur was madness at best and suicidal at worst. It was like touching a Tartarus Diamond core barehanded. I did it anyway, all the while carefully monitoring my systems to make sure nothing shut down. My circuits and my flesh both protested against the strain of the onslaught of power, but I stubbornly persisted and tugged.
Hylonome laughed and didn’t even try to fight me off. “Oh, is that really what you’re going to do? Good luck with that. I look forward to seeing you cooked alive.”
“That won’t happen,” I replied, although I had no such certainty.
My body couldn’t contain all the energy I was taking from her, especially since she was making no attempt to stop the transfer. In fact, she actively fed more of her power through the link I’d been forced to open. It was a good strategy, based on the belief that I’d succumb to the unavoidable long before she was in any way affected. But I had a strategy too.
Tartarus energy had to go somewhere. I thought about the drones lying dormant in the walls and pushed.
I was no technopath, but courtesy of my implants, I did have a better feel of how machines worked and where they were at any given time. I’d also had a personal hand in designing and monitoring the drones, as they’d formed an integral part of the defense of Tartarus Base before the generator failure. But even with all that, I expected it to be harder to connect with the machines.
It wasn’t. The drones responded, stirring awake from their induced slumber and already scanning the base for intruders.
I knew better than to believe they’d make a big difference in a battle against chimeras, but even the slightest distraction could help us. Besides, the point of fueling the drones hadn’t been to resort to their aid for anything. I’d just needed a convenient place to deposit all the energy I was extracting from Hylonome, and the drones had provided it.
My method was successful enough that the Centaurid faltered in her previous approach. “W-What…? What are you doing? Stop it.”
“I won’t. You were warned.”
“So were you,” another Centaur said, manifesting by my side. He was older and larger than all the others, and he was clutching a burning spear in his hand. Most likely, this was Cheiron, the leader of the Centaur Herd. “Die, you—”
A blast of power struck him before he could finish the phrase. It wasn’t Tartarus’s Gift. It had an entirely different glow and that made the source easy to identify. August stepped closer to me, his body surrounded in a shield of photons almost as bright as the Sun’s corona. “Oh, I don’t think so. Go away.”
“Or better yet, stay here, for all eternity,” Prince Archibald corrected him.
I knew what that meant and I shut down my biological eyes, all the while making sure August, Pollux and Brendan weren’t facing Archibald. I had no idea if Archibald’s skill would even work on the Centaurs, but he definitely wouldn’t have any problems with flesh and blood humans.
It worked beautifully. The chimera didn’t have any physiological processes Archibald’s deadly gaze could stop. It didn’t have skin or a physical body to turn to stone. But when he pushed it, Archibald’s attack went beyond that. It originated from the power of the gods too and it shattered the tenuous link the Centaur Herd had created between themselves and reality. And so, over five Centaurs simply vanished, like they hadn’t been there at all. Hylonome was among them, although Cheiron managed to look away and avoid her grizzly fate.
Unfortunately, there were reasons why Archibald hadn’t tried this earlier. As soon as the Centaurs were gone, he collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut, blood dripping out of his ears and nose.
Brendan caught him before he could hit the ground. When more Centaurs appeared, he was there to protect his uncle.
August and Pollux helped, and the room came alive with a combination of tachyons and photons, all directed at the chimeras. Brendan’s eyes glowed as he took a blast that almost hit his uncle. The gash it created healed under my very eyes and fumes left his pores, filling the room with greenish smoke.
The fumes didn’t seem to affect the chimeras, but I suspected we wouldn’t be so lucky. I wanted to tell Brendan to tone it down, but I didn’t think it was something he could prevent.
My systems screamed, confirming my worst fears. “Levels of toxicity increasing. Red alert. Evacuate space at once to prevent temporary or permanent incapacitation.”
That dreaded voice showed up when things were most dire and I knew I had to follow its instructions. But the problem was that the blasted voice only ever appeared when a situation was hopeless and I could see no rational way out.
Right now, we were fighting impossible odds. Prince Archibald had earned us a mild reprieve, but his actions had also made the Centaur Herd angrier. We might have been able to push the Centaurs back with a final concentrated effort, but the toxic fumes removed that possibility.
To give Brendan credit, he was obviously trying to control the emissions, straining so hard against his own power that his complexion turned green. But it was still not enough, and Pollux had to move away and drag his mother aside.
August wasn’t as vulnerable to the gas as Pollux, so he tried to compensate for Pollux’s absence. But half-apsid or not, he was still just one man, and he couldn’t fight off a horde of rampaging Centaurs on his own.
Just as August blasted away two Centaurs, a third lashed out at him and hit him in the chest with its massive hooves. August went down like a rock and didn’t move again.
If August had been human, that blow would have killed him. It would have caved his chest in and possibly made his heart explode. A quick scan told me that his alien biology had saved him. But no sensors or implants could offer me a way to give him first aid when we were surrounded by foes. Somehow, I doubted his half-apsid nature would be enough to naturally heal him.
“August!” Pollux cried out, obviously as aware of the problem as I was.
Brendan cursed, a whirlpool of angry crimson light dancing around him, feeding on the Centaur who had attacked August. “Don’t touch him!”
The method worked and distracted the chimera from his original target. It also exposed Brendan to yet another enemy, making it even tougher for him to control his emissions.
Fuck. We were going to die here. I prayed to Tartarus that at least it wouldn’t be for nothing, that Selene and Knox would live and escape.
At the last moment, just as I thought all hope was lost, another blast of power swept through the room, targeting all the Centaurs in sight. It didn’t kill them, not like Archibald’s gaze had, but it did push them away from us.
I dared to steal a look toward the infirmary door, in the direction of the source of the power surge. I half-expected it to be
another chimera. The Grand Chimeras should have sensed we were in trouble and come to help us. But there was no giant robot there, neither friend nor foe. Instead, I found myself facing the glowing form of Jared Glass.
“You looked like you needed some help,” he offered, panting. His once fair skin had turned tanned, almost crimson, and his hair had grown white, but it was undoubtedly him.
The last time I’d seen Jared had been during the Mirror Trial at the tournament. To this day, I wasn’t sure what the king had been thinking when he’d organized the damn thing, but as an instructor, I’d mourned the passing of a promising student.
As a soldier, I’d asked myself some other questions. There had always been something about Jared that had unsettled me, although I’d never been able to identify what. This answered a lot and, considering what I knew about August, didn’t surprise me as much as it should have.
There would be time enough to address that later, though. The explosion, while powerful, wouldn’t incapacitate the chimeras for too long. Without a second of hesitation, I reached for August and draped him over my shoulder. Hoisting him up was awkward when I had only one arm, but I got by. The others followed my example, and within moments, we were all out of the med bay, running toward the hangars.
Hindered by injuries, we were moving too slowly for my liking. It didn’t help that most of us had to carry someone. Jared, who was the exception, had obviously been affected by whatever he’d done to fight off the Centaurs. His vital signs were all over the place and his breathing was uneven. I’d have liked to think it was just because of his unique ancestry, but I knew better.
In the end, we were forced to stop, but not just because of our fatigue. Halfway to the hangars, we ran into another, smaller group of Centaurs. They’d surrounded Knox and were currently trying to beat him into an unrecognizable lump of steaming flesh. But it didn’t really work. Knox Alexander hadn’t been picked as the pilot of the Cerberus for no reason. He’d fully unleashed his true, savage nature, and he was fighting them with everything he had. Parts of him didn’t even look human anymore, having turned lupine in a way that mimicked his chimera. His head looked just like that of a wolf and his limbs and spine had changed shape to accommodate a tail, claws, and a new fighting stance.
When he saw us approach, he howled, but didn’t acknowledge us in any other way. For a few seconds, I feared he’d lost all semblance of humanity. I should have known better.
The howl was a distracting technique and it kept the chimeras’ attention on him. It bought us just enough time to get closer. Jared took a deep breath, mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and once again, directed a blast of photons at the Centaurs.
Impossibly, it was even stronger and more focused than before. His knees went weak and he almost collapsed to the floor. But his efforts paid off and several of the Centaurs vanished. The others started to retreat, which unfortunately meant they picked the same direction we’d been headed in.
Before they could make their escape, Prince Archibald opened his eyes and fixed them with his trademark death gaze. He let out a choked gurgle of pain and shook in Brendan’s hold, but the attack worked anyway. The remaining chimeras dissipated, just like the ones in the infirmary had.
That bought us a little time, just enough to turn toward Knox and ask him the question that had been on my mind the moment I’d seen him. “Where’s Selene?”
“I told her to head toward the Venom. Something’s really wrong here. I can’t contact Cerberus at all.”
“I can’t reach Typhon either,” Brendan said, his voice tight with barely suppressed agony, “and it’s getting harder and harder to control my power. What is going on?”
“It’s your father, Brendan,” Prince Archibald said. “I’m afraid he’s made his move before we have and that leaves us trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.”
Technically, we had the tamers of the Scylla and the Charybdis here, so the prince’s words shouldn’t have alarmed me as much as they did. But at that moment, I knew he had picked them for a reason.
This wasn’t just about metallic shells anymore. It was about the souls encased in the cores of Tartarus diamond.
The time had come for humanity to finally pay the price for its choices, and we would be the first ones to face the inevitability of fate.
Fighting for Freedom
Knox
After having lived with Cerberus at the back of my mind for the better part of a decade, it was eerie to suddenly be unable to contact him. The bond was still there, but it felt distant, sealed shut, as if an unbreakable barrier was blocking our connection.
Logic stated that this should have helped me control my regular murderous urges, but logic had very little to do with the relationship between a chimera and his or her tamer. The madness I’d tried so hard to keep at bay throughout my years at the academy was emerging, twisting my body into unnatural shapes, threatening my humanity. I suspected the others weren’t doing any better. Brendan hadn’t grown a tail like I had, but the greenish tinge of his complexion, coupled with the distant chill in his eyes made it clear that he was drifting into dangerous territory.
But none of us were willing to let that deter us. Commander Trevor was still standing and fighting despite having lost a limb. We could do no less.
Taking a deep breath, I focused precisely on the part of me I feared most, the wolf. My senses became sharper once again, but this time, I wasn’t hindered by any pesky chimeras. My path was clear and I could track down Selene. Or so I hoped.
She’d headed toward the main hangars, just like I’d told her, but at one point, something had gone wrong, because I couldn’t feel her there. I couldn’t feel her at all. Oh, there were still signs of her sweet presence lingering in the air, but it wasn’t enough.
The others might not have had my skills, but they weren’t oblivious to the problem either. In fact, Jared knew even more about it than I did. “We have to hurry,” he said as we started to make our way through the corridor. “Selene might have run into the mind-controlled chimeras. She’s no match for them in her state.”
“Mind-controlled chimeras?” Pollux repeated. “What in Tartarus’s name are you talking about?”
It was a miracle he could even speak properly considering the fact that August was still out cold and so was Odette. Then again, maybe it was exactly his desperation that fueled him. Pollux had always been the calm one in our little group, but he had his limits, and if he reached them, we’d probably all have to start praying to Tartarus.
Jared had the answers Pollux was looking for, but it wasn’t anything we wanted to hear. “The king is here and he has some kind of device that allows him to control chimeras. He did it to the Lower Chimera Unit. I barely managed to get away with my life.”
“What kind of device?” Commander Trevor asked, scowling. “Your Highness, do you know anything about that?”
The question seemed addressed to Prince Archibald, since Commander Trevor very rarely called Brendan by his title. Unfortunately, Archibald couldn’t shed any light into the issue. “I’m sorry, no. If I’d known, he never would have gotten this far. I would have acted sooner.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Brendan offered sharply. “Worrying about the ‘what if’s won’t help us. We have to take steps to mitigate the damage.”
He was right, but he also didn’t look surprised at all. This time, I suspected his lack of expression had nothing to do with his regular, stony demeanor.
He had known. He must have. Even if they didn’t get along, his father shared a lot of information with him. Normally, Brendan didn’t keep it from me, but there were exceptions to every rule.
I didn’t mention my epiphany, though, and suppressed the growl of frustration bubbling in my throat. The others did the same and the whole group fell silent, choosing to focus on the potential battle ahead of us.
Our precautions were for nothing, because by the time we got to our destination, the hangars were empty and abandoned. Ther
e was no sign the king had been anywhere near here. Our chimeras were nowhere to be seen and Selene was gone.
This was all my fault. I’d been the one to send her through the vents, alone and unprotected. If anything happened to her, if she was hurt all over again, I’d never be able to forgive myself.
But this wasn’t about me and my remorse. After the disaster in Gaia’s Haven, it wasn’t news to me that I was bad for Selene. What mattered now was finding her.
The Centaurs were still right behind us. I had no idea why they’d shown up now of all times and what their connection to King Philip was, but I couldn’t afford to underestimate them. They wouldn’t give up just because we’d managed to blast them back in the infirmary.
August stirred just in time to confirm this. He cracked his eyes open and murmured, “Guys, we need to go. The herd is right on our tail. And Selene is gone. Hades… Hades Base.”
His voice was barely distinguishable. He was obviously in a lot of pain. I wanted to ask what had happened to him, but I held back.
“You heard him,” Brendan said. “Time to go.”
Fortunately, the systems of the Venom were independent of the academy itself, so we had no trouble getting inside Brendan’s ship. Brendan sat down in the piloting seat and started the preparations for take-off. Just as we were about to launch, the herd burst into the hangar, chimera fire blurring the air around them.
Brendan didn’t lose his cool. The shields of the Venom bloomed around the ship, absorbing the tachyon blasts. They wouldn’t hold under a concentrated assault for too long, but they didn’t have to.
The hangar gate opened and the Venom left the academy that had been our home for so long. The departure felt strangely final in a way none of our trips ever had in the past. I didn’t look behind. I could only look ahead, because that was where Selene was.
But I also couldn’t ignore my earlier realization. Pollux and I shared a look. “I’ll go see to everyone’s injuries,” he mouthed. “You talk to him.”
