She tossed off the covers, and rooted through the sheets for her clothes, then got distracted and kissed Sky’s navel. “Maybe it can wait a few more minutes.”
Sky’s knees were already locking, her stomach knotting with the urge to run. “Your people are monitoring Boone.”
“We avoid it regularly,” Honor said, cluing into Sky’s discomfort instantly, and lying next to her, pulling the sheet over them again.
“What happened up there?” Sky asked. “Why does nothing in the city grow?”
Honor made a face. “It’s those children. A boy and a girl.”
“Little red-head girl? Yes, we’ve met,” Sky nodded, her hands shaking. “How many survived the war?”
“I know only of the two endemics,” Honor sighed, a scowl marring her features.
“What do you mean endemics?” Sky asked, chilled by the expression.
“Earth-Aquia blends. The Drava have studied the science of endemic Aquian life, although they lack the information as to whether the local environment enhances certain epigenetic traits already present in Earth-based species or whether it’s a blending,” Honor explained, studying the lines on her palm, as though reading her own DNA. “We have learned that Boone was experimenting with selectively breeding certain traits into humans.”
“Traits, such as?” Sky prompted, biting her cheek because she already feared the answer.
“Anything they could use as a weapon,” Honor muttered. “The endemic markers were not contained on a single gene. The scientists never knew what they’d get. These two children—they masquerade as innocent survivors, but they are weapons. They are destroyers.”
“How can a child be a weapon?” Sky asked. “You think they turned that city to dust?”
“I know it,” Honor said gravely. “Every tribe that has ever taken them in is gone now. The Lansing. The Nunaq. They kill everyone they touch. They tend to get picked up in the forest just over the ridge, so we don’t go there. Even if that area does have the best food.”
Sky shuddered. She knew the Lansing. They’d had regular interchanges with the Drava. “What came out of Boone? Something small or something big?”
“We’ll have to put clothes on to find out,” Honor said, her hand running over Sky’s body. Sky reached for her shirt. She needed to find out.
Hawk was freaked out. It was one thing to be told that Liza healed the pain and infection in his gut. It was another to see her work her magic on Kerris to heal his wounded leg. She became the blue phantom right before his eyes again, and this time, he knew it was real! Her physical body dissolved.
Dashing out of the loading bay where they’d taken cover, Hawk glanced toward the bell tower, and decided to run away from that haunted building. He knew most of the bots would not follow him into the avalan quarry, and so he went there. The Dome got dark at night, and he used his Virp to light the way. He feared that if he could track Liza by the glow of her phantom form, she could track him just as easily. He hoped not.
“Captain? Captain, are you there? I’m trapped in the city,” Hawk said, sliding the device out of the glove mount, and ducking into the structure that housed the quarry. His Virp was the only light. He checked the projected screen, but it did not appear to be transmitting his location or keeping a map. Kerris had pressed some buttons so that it would talk in Lanvarian.
“Trade, please. Trade,” he whispered. The Virp responded and adapted the display language. Hawk activated the transmitter.
“Oriana? Someone?” Hawk called again, circling the quarry, tiptoeing past the machines they’d used to dig the clay. The machines weren’t active, but Hawk didn’t trust them anymore. The toys had turned against him. “Please help. I don’t know what to do.”
He picked up a shovel, using it as a walking stick, feeling sick to his stomach. The comms were down and he was alone, but he knew Tray wouldn’t leave him. Tray had taught him never to accept death as a fate and that no prison was inescapable. He had to shut down the droids so that Tray and the others could get in, and he couldn’t do that from the avalan quarry. Leaning on the shovel, he ventured into the street. Liza stood in the middle of the road, a creepy smile on her face.
“Oh, good. I thought I was going to have to go in after you,” she said. He heard her voice in his head, speaking Rocanese, and found that even more chilling. Her breath seemed to form a blue mist around her face.
“How do you do that?” he asked, responding in Rocanese. “How do you talk in my head?”
“Well,” she said, sauntering closer. Her clothes seemed to gleam like they were new. “We’re hybrids.”
“You are. Not me,” Hawk whispered. Even after all he’d seen, and all Sky had told him, the world seemed to become more unreal with that revelation. The stories of the magics of Rocan flitted through his mind, failing to match reality in any way.
“But you are,” Liza laughed. “I suspected you didn’t know about yourself.”
“Am I being held captive for breeding?” he asked, his hands tightening on the shovel.
“No,” Liza shuddered, clamping down on a dark memory that flitted through his mind. “No, I’m sorry about that memory. It’s part yours, part mine. They kind of collided when I was healing you, and we’ve been left with the worst of both.”
Hawk touched his belly.
“The crew on Oriana—did they mean to breed you, or were they using your power to fly the ship?” she asked. “Or was it both?”
Hawk stepped back, his mind flashing to that shared bed on the lower level of the ship.
“I know how to get past the drones,” Liza said. “I might even have a way to get you home, if you want to go there. Danny said your people needed medicine, and I’m a healer.”
“You can heal them?” he asked. “Just like that?”
“I can try if you want me to,” she said, taking the shovel from Hawk. “But first you have to help Kerris. He misses people. He wants to live among them again, and I’d hoped you could teach him. But if you’re just a slave, then maybe we should start our own community. You have children, right? They would be like us.”
“What will you do to my children?” Hawk asked, confused by the twists and turns in her ramble. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she didn’t seem afraid of being trapped in the city by the droids who had shot her brother.
“Let them live free. Free of the humans,” Liza said. “We don’t need to blend with them. We don’t need to pretend to be like them. We can live in the other realm as pure spirit!”
Hawk’s stomach dropped. “Where is Kerris? What did you do to him?”
“I healed his leg. He’s resting,” Liza grumbled, rolling her eyes.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Take my hand,” she smiled. “I’ll show you what it feels like to be a ghost.”
She dissolved into a phantom and her blue mist surrounded him. Hawk’s eyes were on fire, and there bursts of color everywhere. These were the eyes his mother had always told him to open.
26
The world flooded with colors and phantom forms. Hawk had thought walking fireballs and winged people were terrifying, but now he passed through the world where they were real and humans were the phantoms. Recognizing Kerris’ long arms, he grabbed hold, and felt himself pulled through an icy barrier into the physical world. Air filled his lungs assaulting his body with a force he hadn’t had the presence of mind to realize was missing.
What did she do? What did she do to you? Kerris murmured, squeezing Hawk hard enough to crush the air from his lungs. Hawk shuddered, hearing the voice in his head. But then he felt the warmth of a shield around his thoughts, and knew Kerris was protecting him. Liza appeared behind them and Kerris squeezed harder.
Oh, that was a trip, Liza panted, staggering over to him and petting his hair. The physical sensation of her skin to his was jarring when combined with her voice speaking Rocanese directly into his mind.
Liza, what did you do? Kerris accused.
“I don’t want to see this way anymore,” Hawk moaned, burying his face in Kerris’ shoulder.
That much is obvious, Liza griped. I thought you knew how to teleport. We could have lost our bodies. Were you trying to kill me?
“I don’t want to hear you in my head,” he said.
Kerris reached around, patting for Hawk’s hand until he could access the Virp.
“We’ll use the translator,” he said aloud. The Virp translated a moment later, the sound almost deafening to Hawk’s ears.
It’s so cumbersome, Liza complained.
“Don’t speak into his head,” Kerris ordered. “We were trained to use this ability from the moment we could speak. He wasn’t.”
Liza plopped down on a couch, still panting for breath. They were in a house—a house with dead, plucked birds hanging over the sink. “I guess that’s the secret to living among humans. Ignorance,” Liza grumbled.
“Staying out of their heads and not killing them also works,” Kerris said running his hands over Hawk’s back to calm him. It didn’t help. Every time Hawk loosened his grip, it felt like the floor disappeared from beneath his feet.
“He’s panicking,” she gasped.
“Hawk,” Kerris whispered, dropping his voice. “I need you to calm down. Do you understand?”
Hawk clutched his chest, feeling his heart pounding, his skin pulsing. The last time he’d teleported, it felt cold and dark. The air left his lungs for a split second, and then it was over. With Liza, their tour of the phantom world seemed to have lasted for hours.
“Liza, stop talking into his head. You’re scaring him,” Kerris accused. Hawk’s Virp translated the words to Trade, but he still felt as though his understanding came through their psychic link.
“Tell him to think of something he needs. Something to soothe his nerves,” Liza said, her breathing calming, her eyes closing as she entered a meditative state. Her hand turned, and a puff of blue smoke parted to reveal a flask. His flask. She held it out to him.
“Smoke and lies,” Hawk whimpered, backing away from her. He didn’t want to touch her or her illusions.
“Let me see,” Kerris said. He took a swig from the flask, then gagged and laughed. “That is strong.”
“It’s not real,” Hawk said.
“Suit yourself,” Kerris said, taking another drink, then coughing. Hawk could smell the gin from across the room, and it made him ache for home.
“What happened to Oriana?” Hawk asked. “Did the droids kill the crew? Did you see?”
“No, they flew off,” Liza said.
“How? They have no fuel!” His heart raced. He hadn’t checked the fuel himself. Oriana could have had the power to abandon him this entire time!
“They didn’t go far. Just over the plateau,” Liza said.
Hawk furrowed his brow, his eyes picking up something strange about Liza. Her ghost-form seemed to laugh gleefully.
“Did you know they could fly?” Liza smiled. “The droids, not the drones.”
“Droids don’t fly,” Kerris said flatly.
“They do when you lift them,” Liza smirked, rolling onto her side and waggling her brow at her brother.
“I didn’t lift them. I didn’t make them attack the ship,” Kerris said. “Liza, did you make them fly?”
“Maybe a little,” she sighed, dropping back to the couch. “I saw what they were doing to Hawk. I had to make them go away. But I was afraid that if I did it here, in the city, I would bring back all the evil I made go away the first time.”
“Bring back?” Kerris stammered, his voice catching in his throat. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what happens if I turn the same ground twice,” Liza said. “I never thought about it until Sky asked about the survivors, and the ghosts I see in some of the houses started to make sense. Sky’s dragon kept pushing her face into the oblivion, but she came back. Her heart was still beating. I think there’s a way I can undo what I did.”
“You can bring them back?” Kerris asked.
“For better or worse,” Liza said. “I still see them on the other side. Hawk sees them, too, don’t you? You call them ghosts.”
Frowning, Hawk shook his head. After Liza revealed herself, he’d stopped seeing ghosts in the city. It was all her and Kerris. “I see no one here but us.”
Liza sighed and stretched out on the couch. Hawk felt the need to care for her, but Kerris got up first, covering her with a blanket. Then he returned to Hawk and put an arm around him.
Hawk leaned his head to Kerris’. “I don’t want her to turn my friends to dust.”
“Friends! Ha! They’re using him. Treating him like the Praet treated us. Like we are nothing but a tool of war,” Liza said, her voice in a low growl.
“Lies,” Hawk repeated. He wasn’t sure what else to say, because he didn’t understand her accusation. But he knew Tray was his friend. Somehow, he could hold onto that truth.
“Liza, you’re twisting his memories,” Kerris said, the warmth of his shield growing stronger, allowing Hawk to find more of his own thoughts. “He’s not some ignorant human. You could damage his control. You could—”
“Turn him into a weapon,” Liza finished, sitting up and glaring at the pair of him. “They were hurting him, Kerris. And he can’t even see it!”
“I didn’t mean to pull you from the bell tower,” Hawk stammered. That was the moment he stopped feeling human.
“I know. Obviously, teleporting is not one of your strengths,” she carped, rolling her eyes. “You talk to machines.”
“I also talk to my dead child,” Hawk commented.
“You bring motion and function to the machines, even when the fuel is drained,” Liza said. “That’s why all the droids come to life around you. That Virp hasn’t had a charge since you got here, and it’s still translating every word, because you will it to. The mechanical bits, I understand, but the battery thing—I can’t see how you do it. Unless you’re leeching off the residual power of the Panoptica who died here.”
“It’s broken?” Hawk asked, looking down at his glove-mounted device.
“Don’t think that thought, or it might become so,” Liza laughed, leaning over the side of the couch until her fingers brushed his. “You fix machines the same way I fix people. You see it in your head, how they’re supposed to work, and you invite it to happen.”
Hawk slid the Virp off his hand and turned it over. The battery read half-full, just as it had all day yesterday and the day before. He flipped it over, looking at the sealed panel over the back circuitry. From day one, he’d wanted nothing more than to take this thing apart, but Danny told him not to. All he knew of the inner workings of the device came from pictures. He couldn’t invite something to happen when he had no idea what was happening. It couldn’t be true.
“So he conjures battery power the way you conjure good health,” Kerris summarized.
“I don’t conjure,” Liza reasoned. “The carrots were an accident. A fluke. I could have been channeling his power and meshing it with mine. Same with the flask just now. I made it from his memory.”
“What about all those trinkets you’ve saved over the years?” Kerris asked. “Bits of the past. Bits of civilizations destroyed that just show up in your pockets? He wasn’t around when you pulled all of those from memory.”
“I don’t conjure things on my own!” Liza insisted. “I don’t teleport on my own. That I get from him. I don’t make droids fly in the air. I don’t make the ground shake. And I don’t kill people. I see memories, that’s all!”
“And sometimes you disappear,” Kerris pointed out.
Liza flopped on the couch dramatically, and rolled facing away from them. “Sometimes, you want me to,” she pouted.
Hawk slid his Virp back into the glove mount. They were wrong about him. They had to be. “Why don’t you stop using the magic?” he asked them.
“You are not slaves to anyone. You don’t have to be something you hate.”
“Easy for you to say,” Kerris spat. “I can’t even grieve my dead wife without bringing down a building. This ‘magic’ comes out on its own.”
“Oriana is going to come back,” Liza said ominously, speaking into the couch cushions. “They’ll bring armies. I can see it in Tray’s mind.”
“Stay out of his head!” Kerris ordered.
“They’ll do anything to get their slave back,” she continued.
Hawk felt confused, hearing them argue for his safety when they were the ones who made him feel unsafe. They didn’t talk of their own gain, or how he might be useful. Their desire to save him seemed more sincere than he’d first guessed. They assumed Hawk was a slave on Oriana because of his hybrid ability, but they were wrong. He hoped they were wrong.
Kerris’ eyes narrowed, his freckles getting darker as his resolve intensified. “Let them bring armies. We’ve defeated armies before.”
“They only want me and I want to go. Let’s find a way past the droids,” Hawk said nervously.
“If we disable the drones and power down the droids, the nomads will take them. They will have machines that can hunt our kind and we will be made slaves again!” Kerris cried.
Hawk put his hands on Kerris’ shoulders and pressed their foreheads together again, taking slow even breaths until Kerris’ breathing slowed to match. “The technology must be destroyed. I will find a way,” Hawk promised. “We are not slaves anymore and we won’t be again.”
27
Morning brought with it a fresh coating of dew, soaking through Sky’s skin and clothes, although Sky’s biggest issue with the jungle was that it was filled with beetles, spiders, and little red bugs that left a painful bite. Honor had painted Sky’s exposed skin with green and blue stripes, which only made Sky’s skin itch more.
“The Nelka are not a single tribe; we are many,” explained Kraven, the strongest of the group. As near as there was a chain of command among the Nelka, he was the leader, and his foxtail sash was worn as a token of that leadership. The sash was passed from one person to another every other week. “We are a mobile labor force, bringing skilled labor and field workers to tribes who require assistance. None of our members are younger than fifteen, and many return to their native tribes or to a mate’s tribe when they are ready to couple.”
Hybrid: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 4) Page 24
