by Alex White
Orna’s nostrils flared. “No, sir. That’s Nilah’s doing, I’m sure of it.”
The captain shook his head and looked to Armin. “Any thoughts on what we’re looking at, Mister Vandevere?”
As they spoke, all Boots could think of was the captain’s words, “on the blink.” It was such an ancient expression, from the days of Origin, and Boots had seen more than a few old journals of engineers and scientists using the phrase. Originally, it meant a light bulb that blinked because of a short circuit.
“Malik,” Boots interrupted the debate, “does your scope have a shutter adjustment on it?”
“Uh”—the view shook nauseatingly as Malik prodded his device for a menu—“I, uh … yeah, just a … just a second. Okay, it does. It’s set to full analog capture.”
Boots stepped closer to inspect one of the lights. “Can you slow it down?”
The view shook, but nothing happened. “This is one thirty-thousandth.”
Boots tried to drum up her memories of an ancient machine language she’d once read about. Supposedly, the first automated factory in the colonies had gone insane and killed all its workers. She’d read the specs before cobbling together a legend about artifact storage and some other garbage. She’d used a shipping manifest and a single technical manual as her source, and they’d calibrated the ancient cameras to some shutter speed …
“Going to have to be much slower, Malik. And make sure you’re set to capture photons, not light fields. Like one sixtieth.”
The image of the Pinnacle grew brighter and dimmer as the imager’s internal processors compensated for the drastically increased light hitting the prisms.
“This is one sixtieth,” said Malik, but the building appeared no different.
“Not light fields. Capture photons?” asked Boots.
With the flip of a switch, the floodlights became shimmering sets of stripes along their lengths. The stripes alternated and jumped every half second, creating a vibrating effect around the perimeter of the installation.
“What the hell?” Cordell breathed.
“Son of a … Those stripes are binary data codes!” Armin’s voice broke into a shout, and he rushed to his bridge aggregator console to record the feed. “Keep the shot steady, Mister Jan!”
The projection stiffened, as though Malik were sitting up a little straighter on the other side. Armin twisted his data sphere this way and that, aligning disparate sources and simulation models. Boots had no idea how he did it, but she’d done her part in discovering the encryption.
A sentence appeared beside each of the lights:
THIS IS HUNTER TWO
I AM STILL ALIVE
MY COMPANIONS STILL ALIVE
LOCATION 43/0572950N BY 64/2020562W 435 ASL
IZAK VRABA ARRIVING IN [VAR SYSCLOCK INVALID REFERENCE]
“So my girlfriend isn’t the best programmer,” said Orna, a massive smile on her face, “but she’s a damned genius.”
“What? What do you see?” asked Malik. “I can’t see your overlays on my end.”
The captain ascended his dais and plopped down into his chair with a sigh. Boots watched in awe as all the stiffness melted from his muscles, transforming him back into the lithe man she’d grown accustomed to.
Cordell grinned. “Everything we need to mount a hell of a rescue. Mister Jan, I want you to hang back. Plan on providing exfil support. Miss Sokol, how do you feel about the prospect of an orbital drop?”
Orna inclined her head. “Never better, Cap. I need to build a shell for Charger, but he’ll be in fighting shape soon enough.”
“Then, Boots,” said the captain, “get rested up. I want a sortie in six hours. Let’s just hope Miss Brio can rescue some intel from their clutches before we drag her out of there.”
Every minute that Nilah wasn’t thinking of Elder Osmond, she was thinking of Sharp and his roster of the active Children. Getting the twins and herself out of the installation would be a hell of a trick. Getting Sharp out would be so much harder. She kept trying to formulate a plan around the coming rescue from the Capricious, assuming they’d show up at all. There was no way to know if they’d gotten her signal. When would they arrive? Where would she be? Would the twins be there? Would Sharp be nearby?
All of her plans came to: Step one—the crew arrives; step two—explosions happen; step three … step three goes here.
And if a rescue wasn’t inbound, she had to find a way to get out of the Pinnacle and survive in the frozen wastes of Hammerhead. For the first time in her life, she contemplated how she might need to commit suicide if everything else failed.
She pondered this, as she had for the past day and a half, by walking around the rotunda in total silence. She was on the far side of the room when the bulkhead ground open, revealing Elder Osmond and a retinue of dead-eyed thralls.
“Well, hello, hello!” he called to her as his servants furnished the table with yet another meal of sizzling meat—precut, of course. They’d never leave sharp objects to be used in an escape attempt.
Nilah pantomimed a groan and turned away from him, wandering back toward the couch.
Osmond caught up with her quickly and spun her around to face him. Every muscle in Nilah’s body urged her to smash his nose, then break him in half—but the thought of the coming rescue stayed her hand.
“You know, sweetheart, I just had to see you for myself, one last time,” he chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so lucky in my life.”
She grunted and slapped at his hands with limp arms. He brushed away her flimsy attacks and shoved her to the ground. Stone bit into her backside, but she controlled her emotions.
“Lord Vraba is so very, very pleased, you see,” he cooed, looming over her. He crouched down. “And with my lord’s favor comes another infusion of magic.”
Nilah bit back a question. She’d assumed Henrick Witts had divvied out all of his ill-gotten spoils from the Harrow, but what if he hadn’t? What if he could grant power to his cronies whenever he chose?
Osmond jutted out his lower lip and pinched her cheek, speaking as he would to a baby. “That’s why I came to check on my little race car driver. Wanted to make sure she was in one piece before I personally delivered her. You are in one piece, aren’t you, dear?”
She slapped at him again, her ruse twice as hard to maintain. “Kill … you …” she mumbled, and he guffawed in her face, his breath foul like a stinking animal carcass.
“Sure, sweetie,” he said, patting her on the head. Then he stood and added, “I’ll leave you four alone. He likes to work in silence.”
It was only as Osmond left that she heard the song.
She couldn’t quite work out the wandering melody that warbled through the hall. It might’ve been a woman singing, or the tune of some ancient flute.
When a man-shaped void of light walked toward her, she knew it was Izak Vraba. She stifled a shiver and regarded his approach, dead-eyed.
“Nilah Brio,” said the shadow, voice washing through the cavernous hall like shifting waves. “Not the specimen I was expecting.”
Five more shadows slithered from behind the arcade of columns to join the first, like a set of reflections between two mirrors. Their fingers dripped in unison, becoming long talons. The song intensified, rising and falling faster, though it refused to make any musical sense.
“When you brought back the Harrow, you were”—the shadow craned its head—“larger than life.”
His voice emerged from everywhere at once, booming through the massive chamber.
Two of the figures erupted toward her, enveloping her in tenebrous goo, while a third plowed into her gut like a crashing transport. Nilah buckled backward, wheezing, while the twins receded into whatever corners they could find.
She couldn’t restrain the scream that clawed out of her mouth, nor the presence in her expression.
“How feisty. And here the elder told me you’d been drugged.” Vraba laughed. “He’ll have to be punished for hi
s oversight.”
“Which drugs, mate?” she gasped. “I do a lot of them so you’ll have to get more specific.”
“I don’t have time for jokes. I have a ship to command. I see you’ve found our errant twins.”
Jeannie and Alister exchanged glances—they must’ve wanted to help, but the shadow kept them at a distance. Nilah tried to give them a reassuring look, but her eyes watered from Vraba’s devastating hit.
The shadows craned their heads, and those hands that held Nilah faded away. “Don’t look so surprised, Theta and Sigma. How many times have you cast your marks within my little palace? It was only a matter of time before we guessed. Two readers in perfect sync? Your mannerisms betrayed you.”
“Go to hell,” said Alister.
“But isn’t that where you were born, Theta?” asked Vraba and the shadow melody shivered like a chorus of violins. “In hell? You’ve escaped, so why not claim your reward in heaven? We could care for you. Talk some sense into him, Sigma.”
“I slit the throat of the last woman you had caring for us,” said Jeannie.
“Yes,” Vraba sighed. “I saw the videos. I’m impressed by your resourcefulness.”
Alister stood defiantly before one of the shadows. “Why don’t you show up in person? I’d love to get my hands on you.”
The silhouette talking to Alister bent and stretched into a long talon. “Be careful what you wish for.” Vraba’s intrigued voice was like the drawing of a cello’s string.
“Oi,” said Nilah, pointing to her eyes, “you’re talking to me, Vraba. I’m over here.”
The shadows squared up against her, multiplying across the room, peeling out of every crack like swarms of spiders. The melodic warble became discordant noise. “It’s been a long time since someone failed to call me ‘Lord Vraba.’”
Nilah snorted. “Why? Are you landed nobility? How did you come by your peerage?”
The hail of blows that fell upon her from all sides brought Nilah to her knees. In the Special Branch Archives, he’d been all teeth and blades, but here, his blunt instruments played her rib cage with all the skill of an orchestral percussionist.
The Pinnacle’s camera network had no long-range transmitters. She’d checked when she hacked it, because she would’ve used them to call for help. Vraba’s ship had to be close—just a short jump away, if not already in-system. She needed to keep him talking, to learn what she could.
When Vraba had attacked her in the archives, he’d relied on distant cameras to orient himself. The real spellcaster was on a battleship somewhere, guiding his magic through the images before him.
“Look, mate: I’ll get straight to the point,” coughed Nilah as the shadows let her stand. “Surrender to the authorities and help us hunt down the rest of your kind. If you’re lucky, they’ll just break your connection to magic.”
The shadows froze in place, like pieces of software suddenly unattended. The amount of concentration and magic Vraba employed to keep them going was impressive.
“You’re grasping at straws, Miss Brio,” said the shadows.
“I mean, if it was up to me, I’d put a single lancer through your skull, but I’m not exactly a war crimes prosecutor.”
“There is no crime in taking what’s rightfully yours,” Vraba replied. “We don’t prosecute the lion who eats the lamb.”
“No, but we bloody well put people in jail who eat other people. Isn’t that what you did to Clarkesfall? Cannibalize it to increase your own power?”
The shadows pondered the question, placing their taloned thumbs to their chins. “I prefer to think of it like a salvage operation: taking something derelict and extracting the only remaining value from it.”
It was so strange to hear him proud of being one of the worst mass murderers in history.
“That’s some sorry logic,” she spat.
“I have a proposition for you,” said Vraba. “And before you speak, you should know that I have held the lives of millions in the palm of my hand. I have ended so many. I command thousands more with unquestioned loyalty. There is nothing sacred about a human life; we have entirely too many of them.” The shadows receded, giving her a tiny amount of space. “So know my mind when I say that you are worthy to join us … by contract, of course.”
Nilah coughed once, her body singing from Vraba’s punishment. “There’s more to life than magic power.”
The shadows dripped together in mercurial strands, forming a titanic humanoid, rising over her like a statue in an ancient temple. “Indeed there is. There’s more to life than life itself. There is an existence beyond this flawed, delicate shell.” He ran one of his massive claws over the top of her head, and she felt like a mouse about to be smashed.
“The afterlife?” asked Nilah. “Your assholes on the Link were prattling on about that, too.”
“How naive,” he chortled, his voice distorting and chorusing to the symphony of his magic. “The quintessential distraction of the human experiment …‘What happens after we die?’” Vraba straightened, his head almost touching the distant roof. “Humans seek to control the time and place of their demise, or whether it happens at all, but blithely accept all the rules attached to the game—that death must inevitably come for us all.”
Her easy breath had finally returned, and looking at Vraba’s mass, he’d been gentle with her. “So what? You want to be immortal? Big deal. Lots of usurers basically live forever, and—”
The shadow’s giant hand reached down and Nilah dodged out of the way as it flicked at her. When it missed once more, it melted into a wall and slammed into her, sending Nilah sprawling with the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. When she rolled onto her back, she found herself pinned by a nightmarish silhouette, its head a split row of long teeth.
“Human immortality is a fool’s endeavor. How can sentience be limited to this disgusting arrangement of cells? No matter how brave, your history will disappear. No matter how immortal, your mind will break. No matter what you do, the universe will one day plunge into utter darkness, freezing away everything that ever was in the march of entropy.” With each word, Vraba’s voice rose higher and louder, until his toothy maw pressed against her cheek, huffing. “You have no answers. You cannot save the best of humanity from the coming tide of oblivion.”
“Everything dies one day,” Nilah grunted.
The grip of the beasts loosened. “You’re accepting the rules of the game again.”
“And you’re a genocidal monster, so your opinion is worth bollocks.”
A flash erupted from behind the shadow, and Nilah peered around its form to find Jeannie with her hands against the blackness. She’d cast her mark while he’d been distracted, though Nilah had no idea if it’d work. The manifestation of a spell was far from a real person.
“Naughty,” said Vraba, dissolving into a giant hand and striking her to the ground with a vicious slap.
Nilah waved her arms to get his attention. “Over here, you overgrown puppet!”
Vraba’s form went through several tortured metamorphoses before returning to an array of shadow men. “You’ll come around, Miss Brio … which reminds me of what I was here to do.”
Once more, the shadows fanned out to flank her on every side, and Nilah responded in kind by ramping up her dermaluxes to full blast. Unlike at the archives, however, these shadows showed only tiny signs of erosion at her light. The frightful dirge that accompanied them became a hurricane howl.
“I’d rather not risk any … incidents when I meet you in person,” said Vraba, closing the circle, “so I’ll be separating your cervical vertebrae, as well as your spinal cord. If you’re useful, we’ll fix that later.”
The shadows lunged, and Nilah whipped her arms about in a frenzy, punching anything she could. The viscous darkness closed around her forearms, but couldn’t secure a proper grip through the pulsing lights. Nilah ripped her arms free and spun to flee, but found a rising tidal wave of singing black sludge.
With a r
unning leap, she vaulted it, only to come down on unsteady feet on the other side. The beatings, the starvation, and the cold had all taken their toll on her, but with her life on the line, Nilah would muster every ounce of strength she could.
“Run!” she called to the twins, and Vraba’s laughter barked through the cavernous rotunda.
“To where?” the shadow bellowed, swelling to fill the center of the room and sloshing outward.
He was right. The exits were all locked. Jeannie had scarcely picked herself up before the roaring darkness bowled her over once again. A lash of ink caught Alister, knocking him to the stones. Hundreds of tiny claws latched onto his legs, pulling him deeper into their depths. Only Nilah was spry enough to remain free, and that couldn’t last.
She needed to get back to the center of the rotunda, where she could be seen by all the imagers and trigger her hack—except Vraba’s titanic spell was occupying her spot.
The shadows distorted and bloated, bursting into sticky threads like syrup. Nilah dashed between them, calling on every ounce of her reflexes to carry her through the net. She swept aside the thinnest strands with her strobing forearms, and to her delight, she sheared right through them.
Jeannie’s and Alister’s screams were silenced as the shadows poured into their open noses and mouths. They surfaced once like drowning victims, then disappeared into the ink.
“Over here!” Nilah shouted, and he lunged for her with his tremendous mass, splitting into a dozen thick roots.
She weaved through the web of his body, bound for the center of the room, where she could flash her pulse code and shut down the imagers. She was so close—
—and then something wrapped around her leg and threw her to the ground.
Darkness poured over her, coating every inch of skin like tar, and even her dermaluxes couldn’t free her from the rising tide. Her head spun from the hit, and she tried to get her bearings, but the world refused to reorient.
“Let’s get a better look. Wouldn’t want to be a careless surgeon,” mumbled Vraba, barely audible over the haunting cries of his spell. He lifted her toward the nearest imager and pulled her collar from the nape of her neck.
