by Carysa Locke
Finally she could hear what sounded like moans of pain. She gave Reaper a questioning look. He leaned in close, his lips beside her ear, and said so softly she barely caught the words, "Three of their number of injured."
Ah. She wondered what they'd run afoul of.
"Shut him up," someone hissed. It sounded like they were passing right in front of the building she and Reaper were hiding in. She risked a look out through a narrow crack in the building's mechstone. With the vines climbing over it, it was unlikely anyone would notice her peering out.
Slavers, she though immediately. Or a really rough crew of mercs. But given the shape the slaver ship was in, she'd bet this lot went with it. They wore mismatched armor that had seen better days, poorly patched and covered in dirt and what looked like dried blood. All of them were men, and some were in decent shape while others sported large bellies too big for the armor they wore. This was not a disciplined group.
One stretcher and three stasis pods trundled behind them on a hoverglide. The stasis pods looked like cut crystal, rectangular edges catching the light and gleaming, despite the overcast day. Two of the pods held human shapes, while the third was distinctly not. There was something vaguely feline about the body inside it. The stasis had caught it in mid lunge, and she could see the bunch of powerful muscles beneath fur covered flanks marked with stripes of lighter and darker fur. Color was less easy to make out behind the faint blue of the stasis pod. The creature’s odd, triangular muzzle was open, rows of huge predatory teeth visible.
She shivered, glad the thing was safely locked in stasis. What were the slavers planning to do? Sell it?
"He's hurting and we're out of meds," another man complained, his voice whiny enough to make Mercy wince.
"Well, if you hadn't used our last stasis cube to trap that fucking beast, he could be nice and quiet, snowed all proper."
The first man blanched white. "An' if I hadn't we'd all be fucking dead!"
Someone else hissed at them to shut up. "You want to bring another of those things down on us?"
"Why not?" countered another. “All we got to show for this trip is two dead, at least two more dying, and one fucking moron too stupid to stop whining. The creature will fetch coin as a curiosity, but not enough to offset our costs. We're losing money on this fucking planet."
Mercy could not believe people this colossally stupid bought and sold other human beings for a living. How had someone not shut them down yet?
In the dark, she saw the flash of Reaper's eyes, the way his hands flexed. He was tempted to take them out, but doing so could draw more attention. She shook her head at him. The last thing they needed was a search party to come looking for their dead friends.
The group continued past the building, their voices fading. Mercy relaxed. She and Reaper waited a few minutes more, and finally he signaled for her to go. She'd just stepped outside though the hole in the side of the wall when a bloodcurdling scream rent the air. It was quickly followed by a sound no human throat could make, a roar that echoed off stone walls and chilled the blood in Mercy's veins.
What the fuck was that?
More screams came to them, the sound of weapons fire, panicked yelling, and ripping and tearing sounds punctuated by growls and hissing roars. Reaper tapped her shoulder, and indicated a direction away from the sounds. She nodded, and together they started climbing over debris, keeping off the remains of the road so they could stick to the shadows of buildings and use the scraggly bushes and trees growing here and there to stay hidden.
They'd made it perhaps twenty feet when a man came streaking down the road, running faster than Mercy would have imagined possible for someone so out of shape. He tripped and fell as he came abreast of them, and then a creature seemed to come out of nowhere to land on his back, a huge snout full of teeth grasping his skull and crushing it with a sickening crunch and wet sounding squelch.
Bile rose in Mercy's throat, but she didn't dare close her eyes and look away. She and Reaper crouched frozen against the wall, a few spindly branches from a much too small bush waving in the breeze in front of them. Reaper's hand had closed on her arm the moment the creature appeared, as if telling her to stay still. He needn't have worried. She was under no illusions what running would do, and she had no desire to draw the attention of the beast to them.
It tore into the man's shoulder, rending muscle and flesh from bone. It was clearly the same species as the beast in stasis. The thing was five times the size of a man, with a long, muscular body covered in tawny fur and darker, red stripes. It has a long tail with a tuft of tendrils at the end, and it lashed the air with it as it fed. The feline impression was even stronger watching it move, although that comparison ended as soon as you got to the head. It's head was oddly flat with a long snout that gave it a vaguely triangular shape. More tendrils like the tuft on its tail stood up from its ears, wiggling as though each one smelled the air.
Oh, Mother. Mercy hoped the thing wasn't searching by scent. She stared at the branches of the bush in front of her. Were they downwind? Upwind? She couldn't tell. Her brain was too terrified to focus.
They sat frozen like that for what seemed like hours while the thing fed, ripping chunks of flesh off the slaver's body and gulping them down. Blood streaked its snout and down the front of its chest. It's great paws held the body in place as it continued to crouch above it. Mercy tried to direct her eyes skyward without moving her head so she wouldn't have to watch. She took shallow breaths through her mouth. The thing stank, smelling of rot and offal. Or maybe that was a combination of the creature and the dead body. It didn't matter. Every few seconds, her gorge rose and she had to swallow back the need to vomit through sheer force of will and a determination not to draw the thing's attention this way.
Finally, the sounds stopped. She risked a look over and the creature sat cleaning its paws, for all the world like a cat after a meal.
She was never going to be able to look as Rasa again and not think of this moment.
Lifting its head to the breeze, it closed its eyes and seemed to be enjoying the moment. Or maybe it was searching for more prey. Hard to tell. It sniffed at the air, and the tendrils above its ears undulated and wiggled like worms. Mercy swallowed hard.
When it lumbered to its feet, Mercy's entire body tensed. It paced around the bloody mess that was all that was left of the body in the street, growling low. What was it doing?
Then something skittered over the rocks beside her hand and Mercy jerked before she could stop herself, her heart leaping painfully in her chest.
A creature the length of her arm swept by, tiny claws digging into stone as it made its way out into the street. It was moving towards the body. More creatures, sinuous with short legs and long tails, covered in spiny growths that looked sharp, came out of the rubble and made their way to the body. The larger beast snapped its teeth at a few who ventured too close, growling and pacing. They stayed back, and eventually the beast turned and leapt, powerful haunches sending it in an incredible jump high into the air. It vanished, and Mercy had a moment of panic as she realized she didn't see where it had gone. Was it leaping on buildings, following the crumbling roofline?
The smaller creatures descended on the corpse.
It was the longest, most horrifying few minutes of her life as they waited, listening to the creatures chitter and feed. Finally, Reaper squeezed her shoulder once, and a moment later seemed to melt into the deepening gray shadows around them. The sun was beginning to go down.
Mercy shuddered. She realized her knees ached where she'd knelt against the ground, and her body had grown stiff and cold despite the warmth of her clothing. It was the kind of cold born of horror and terror.
As bad as the simulations had been, they hadn't been like this. Slowly, she rose to her feet. Her legs felt a little shaky. She forced them to work, taking one slow step at a time as she moved down the length of the building. When she reached an open space between one pile of rubble and the next, she had to n
erve herself up to dart across it. Her body prickled with awareness the whole time, but nothing came roaring out of the shadows to get her.
The next building had an actual doorway, the door itself long gone. She ducked inside and leaned against the wall, tremors making her weak as she caught her breath and tried to calm her racing heart. She felt more than heard Reaper come to stand beside her.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
Nope. No, she was not. She forced a nod. “Yeah. Fine. I just need a minute.” Or an hour. However long it took to get over what they’d just witnessed.
“So I guess we can cross the slavers off our list of threats.” The knowledge didn’t make her feel any better.
“That group, at least,” Reaper agreed. He waited a beat. “This building is clear. We should mark it and move on soon.” His hand touched her back, running up and down her spine in a comforting movement. Mercy appreciated the effort. She closed her eyes and tried to order her thoughts back to the business at hand.
The sooner they found the archive, the sooner they could get off this hellhole of a planet. Opening her eyes, she dug out her datapad and made the notation.
“All right,” she said, replacing it in her pack in case they needed to run again. “Let’s get moving.”
Chapter Eleven
It took at least twenty minutes for the residual tremors Mercy felt to stop. Reaper, of course, had no such issues. They checked eight more buildings in that time, moving more slowly than before as they scanned the area for more of those predators. It was clear the slaver party had run into them more than once, with one of the creatures locked in stasis and at least one more stalking and killing them.
Mercy wanted to reach out to the other teams and check in. Had they run into similar problems? Was everyone all right? It was too risky to contact them just to ask, but she struggled with the temptation.
She and Reaper had checked nearly a third of the buildings in their assigned area. Even though there were still many more to go, she couldn't help but feel that their chances of finding the archives diminished with each building. A few had resonated with underground structures, but all so far had collapsed inward and filled with rubble. None had the kind of fortitude the enclave was supposed to have. And none had been large enough to house the kind of archives they were looking for. Thousands of years of scientific research took up a lot of space.
Ahead of her, Reaper climbed up a dilapidated set of stairs that crumbled more with each step and ducked into the next building. She stopped outside and crouched in the shadow of an overhang. It was so covered in vines, only a glimpse of the original structure was still visible. Runners from the vines hung down over the edge creating an alcove of shadow just big enough for a person.
She scanned the area, listening for all she was worth. All she heard was the rustle of the wind and a few lonely bird calls. That was a good sign, right? Birds usually went silent if they noticed a threat.
Now that her horror and fear had receded to manageable levels, she had to wonder: what were the odds those slavers would land here, in this city, in this quadrant, at exactly the same time she and the others happened to be coming here?
Arcadius V was a big planet with a lot of land mass. Even considering this was the erudite district, there was no way this was coincidence. Slavers, interested in scientific discovery? Not likely. They had come here now for a purpose.
It made Mercy wonder about the rest of the planet's visitors. The scientists, if they really were after Ascension War-era tech, could just be a coincidence. Maybe.
But the mercs? The Bennethans?
No, she didn't think so. It made her wonder if Feria had betrayed them. Knowingly or otherwise. How many people in Veritas knew about this trip? Had Feria mentioned it to someone? Shared the details of where they were going, and why? Maybe others wanted to beat them to their goal. The secrets around the origins of the Talented were a priceless commodity, especially now.
Or, like the slavers, they could just be after an easy payday. The bounties alone made the pirates fat targets.
She didn't want to believe it. She felt that she and Feria had turned a corner on this trip. They might not ever be friends, but they were at least uneasy allies. Or so Mercy thought.
But what about Cannon? He was an empath, arguably the hardest type of Talented to lie to. Surely, if Feria was keeping secrets he would have picked up on it. But maybe he had, and that was why they were paired up, so he could keep an eye on her.
Did she just want to believe that because she didn't like the idea of Feria and Cannon together?
Ugh, her thoughts were just going around in circles.
A sudden awareness had her tensing in the cold wind. Something was wrong. She didn't know what had alerted her, but alarm had her heart thudding hard in her chest. The wind stirred her hair, tugging at the strands that had escaped her braid and blowing them into her eyes. Crouched, she stayed still, and listened.
Nothing. Just the moaning of the wind.
Then she realized. The birds. They'd gone silent. Fear tightened her throat. Where she sat hunkered down, she would be nearly invisible. Behind her a fallen portion of wall rose up at a steep angle, a giant, jagged knife thrusting up into the sky, towering several stories into the air. Nothing could come at her from that direction. The overhang above and its wrap of snaking vines draped down, obscuring her hiding place even further. Her clothing adjusted itself to match the colors and patterns of her surroundings. Someone would have to know where to look to spot her.
Unless it hunted by scent. Then, she was screwed.
The silence of the birds bothered her. And Reaper was taking an awfully long time in this building. She had to wonder if something had happened. She strained, but could hear nothing suspicious.
Across the street, a flash of movement caught her eye, there and then gone.
Mercy sat still, staring as hard as she could. She was afraid to even blink. Nothing, just broken streets, crumbled buildings, and the vegetation rapidly taking over the remnants of the city. Each leaf the wind sent skittering across the ground drew her gaze, but none of them matched the movement she'd seen before. It had been taller. Bigger.
More…human.
Inside the building, a shockwave went off. She felt it reverberate through the earth beneath where she crouched. The building shook and for a frantic second she thought the overhang might come down. It held.
Reaper. She kept the thought internal, tightly bound behind her shields. What was that, some kind of grenade?
A voice sounded only a few feet away, and a man stepped into the street, a plasma rifle trained on the building. He was closing on it with slow, deliberate steps. Further down the street, she could see two more men doing the same.
She unclenched the hand she hadn’t even realized was tightened into a fist, and triggered her bracelet. Lilith still wasn't talking to her, but the soul blade the unit housed worked just fine.
She felt a little better with the faint hum of its presence in her palm.
It was a risk, but she eased the restraints on her passive Talent just a little. She'd been holding it in an iron grip since they touched down on Arcadius. Loosening that hold was such a relief she nearly gasped. It was like she'd been seeing in black and white, and now color rushed back into the world.
She felt Reaper immediately. He was no longer in the building beside her, but above it and a little more forward. He must have climbed up onto the same overhang sheltering her. It stretched across the length of the building, a remnant of when the behemoth of a building had come down. It was probably a chunk of wall that had landed on the lower floors.
Reaper had to have climbed up there long before the shockwave or grenade had gone off. He’ probably seen or sensed the presence of the mercenaries before Mercy.
Reaper was hunting.
His wasn't the only mind she felt. One, two, four, eight, ten. They pinged her awareness one after the other, too subdued in color to be Talented minds
. These were nulls.
She barely suppressed a gasp. One was standing just outside her hiding place, sheltering in the overhang's shadow, just like her. It was probably sheer luck he hadn't considered stepping into her little alcove.
These were professionals. Silent, careful stalkers every bit as dangerous as a beast.
With the dim glow of their minds came a handful of loud surface thoughts. She didn't have to actively use her Talent to sense these, but could pick them up passively because some of these people were thinking them so loudly.
Several things became clear very quickly.
One, this group knew who they were hunting. Two, this was one of the mercenary groups. Three, they were after the bounty, but only because someone had tipped them off and started them on the hunt.
Disappointment burned. She didn't pick up any names, but who else could it be? The only people who'd known their destination were pirates, and Veritas. If it wasn't Feria, it was still someone she worked with.
One of the ten minds suddenly snuffed out, the light dimming until it disappeared. Reaper.
With his Talent, he could have killed them all at once, but he wasn't going to do that. Not and risk one of those things — or something worse — sensing it. But taking them one by one was a risk.
The tension inside Mercy grew. Another mind disappeared. He was working his way along the outer edge of the group, taking those on the furthest edge of their formation. Down to eight.
The three men who had closed on the building disappeared inside. Soon enough, they’d realize Reaper was no longer there.
Somewhere not far away, a groan sounded in the stillness. It was small, almost imperceptible. Down to seven. The man nearest her stirred, and his voice spoke low and quiet, barely carrying to Mercy's ears.
"Samuel, check in."
They were using imps to communicate. Wolfgang had one, an implant just beneath the ear, barely detectible. It had multiple frequencies, encryption, and range. A versatile communicator for any situation, as long as the rest of your team had them. She'd heard an AI could even send subvocal communications to them that the brain recognized, almost like telepathy.
