Venturers

by Bella Forrest

  Our high energy remained as we headed back out into the temple clearing, knowing we were almost on the homestretch. Angie was teasing Bashrik about his outburst during the ceremony, but he shrugged her jibes off with ease.

  “You’re just envious because you couldn’t possibly understand a divine connection like that. I felt something, deep inside me,” he insisted.

  Angie snorted. “I’m sure you did.”

  Only Lauren seemed to be in poor spirits. She was holding the vial of blood up to the light, after taking it from Navan. He’d given it to her so she could examine it. However, from the look on her face, things didn’t seem good.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Lauren sank to the ground, clutching the vial, shaking her head slowly.

  “Lauren, what’s the matter?” Angie pressed as we came to the ground beside her. I reached out to touch her leg, but the gesture only made her more upset.

  “The blood won’t work,” she wheezed, tears glittering in her eyes. “The texture is all wrong—it’s already starting to clot in the vial. If it isn’t soluble, it isn’t viable. This stuff would probably poison a coldblood instead of giving them eternal life. It’s no good.”

  My stomach lurched as I understood why she was so upset. After everything we’d been through, and knowing what lay ahead of us, we were going to have to return to Brisha emptyhanded.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  We approached the Vanquish in solemn silence. Lauren still held the vial to her chest, as though there might be something we could do with it, but we all knew it was hopeless. If she said there was no way to use it, then there was no way to use it. She knew enough about these things to be certain.

  To be honest, I didn’t know whether to be glad or worried. I was more than relieved that the blood wasn’t viable to use in the elixir, but I was concerned about Queen Brisha’s reaction. We didn’t want her cracking the immortality code, but we still needed her to be on our side. Without her protection, as unstable as that might be, we were sitting ducks. I had no idea if this hiccup in the mission would be enough for us to lose that fragile protection. After all, it’s what we’d come here for. She’d put her trust in us finding the key ingredient, and we were going to have to return with nothing.

  “Is everything all right?” Freya asked, her arm still holding Cambien’s.

  I forced a smile onto my lips. “Everything’s fine. We’re just sad to be leaving,” I replied. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Departing Zai was a bittersweet prospect—there was so much more I wanted to know about this planet, but we didn’t have the luxury of time. We weren’t explorers; we were on a very specific mission. A mission that we’d failed to complete.

  “It has been an intriguing distraction, having you here,” Cambien chimed in with a grin.

  “All things must end,” Freya added, evidently eager to see the back of us. After all, she had a holy site to rebuild, and I imagined they’d get on much better without us hanging around as a reminder of what had happened.

  Bashrik was already in tears, sinking to his knees in front of Freya and Cambien. He gripped Freya’s hands, looking up into her eyes.

  “Please don’t banish me,” he begged. “I’m so confused, High Priestess. I feel myself to be one of you, and yet I’m pulled toward the ship, as though I’m supposed to be on it.”

  She smiled, freeing her hand to touch his face. “Your fate lies elsewhere,” she said.

  “What does that mean, High Priestess? Am I never going to return here?” Bashrik asked miserably.

  “A future is never fixed,” she replied.

  “I think it would be best for all of us if you didn’t come back here for a very long time, if ever,” Cambien interjected. “With any luck, your memories will come back, and you will forget you ever thought you were one of us.”

  Bashrik sobbed heartily. “But I am one of you! Please, gracious leader, do not send me away!”

  “Your friends need you. Go with them, and see if you change your mind,” Cambien encouraged, helping Bashrik to his feet. “I have a feeling you will,” he continued, slapping Bashrik on the back.

  Bashrik staggered toward Angie, who had her arms outstretched, ready to comfort him. “It’s all going to be okay, Bash. We’re going to take good care of you,” she promised, leading him toward the gangplank, which Navan had released.

  I smiled, watching the two of them. Hopefully, Cambien was right, and it wouldn’t be long before Bashrik returned to his usual self, although the teasing he was going to get when he did revert back was almost painful to think about. Angie would have a field day, and I, for one, couldn’t wait to spectate.

  Even so, I felt a mixture of emotions stirring up inside me at the thought of leaving Zai. Here, we were somewhat safe, now that Pandora was out of the picture. Beyond this planet, only hardship awaited us. We had triumphed in healing the sacred stone of the Draconians, making up for decades of Vysanthean wrongdoing. Plus, we had prevented them from packing up their planet and heading for Earth, which I was particularly glad about. However, we’d failed in our main mission; we were returning to Queen Brisha with nothing to show for our escapade, and I just knew she wouldn’t be happy about it. Brisha and bad news didn’t exactly mix well.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure,” I said, stepping up to the two Draconian leaders, who were still arm in arm. “We’re sorry for the damage we caused—we hope you can rebuild and thrive again. As a gesture of goodwill, we’ll keep the cure a secret, so you may have your planet back with no fear of a fresh invasion.”

  Navan walked up beside me. “We will not breathe a word of it. It’s about time the Draconians had peace, free from the grip of my kind,” he added, taking Freya’s hand and placing a kiss on her scales.

  She smiled. “Go in grace.”

  “We will,” I replied.

  Lauren was the last to say her farewells. She was just offering a low bow to Freya, when Ginji bounded out of the shadows and launched himself at her. She laughed as the young Draconian wrapped his scaly arms around her, gripping her tight, apparently more comfortable with physical contact than he’d been before. With a wry smile, I wondered if we were a bad influence on the kid.

  “I will miss you all!” Ginji sobbed, overcome with emotion. “I thought about sneaking on board your ship, but I know my place is here.”

  “We will miss you too, Ginji,” Lauren said, peeling the Draconian off her as gently as she could.

  Freya looked surprised by her son’s behavior but said nothing as he went around to the rest of our group, giving us each a warm hug. Not even Bashrik and Navan could escape his tight embrace, though Bashrik looked especially awkward. With his mind still mostly believing he was a Draconian, I imagined his views on such things were in turmoil.

  With all our goodbyes given, the five of us found our way aboard the Vanquish. The bay doors slid up for the very last time upon the view of the temple entrance. Cambien, Freya, and Ginji were standing in front of it, looking up at the ship like parents waving farewell to their child who was just about to drive off to college. The sight of them gripped my heart, making me think of Jean and Roger, who would never be able to replicate that image. I wasn’t there; I wasn’t going to college—I was on the other side of the universe, heading back into the jaws of danger.

  At this point, it would be a freaking miracle if we ever got back to our home world, with Orion, Brisha, Gianne, and countless others standing in our way.

  Bashrik took to the ship’s controls, with Navan taking up the position of copilot. Angie, Lauren, and I remained in the cockpit, wanting to be near each other in this time of shared disappointment. It seemed weird to be taking off without having something positive to take back. I just prayed Queen Brisha would understand, when we delivered the vial to her, that we’d done our best. We’d done as she’d asked. It was just unfortunate that the blood was no good.

  Vibrations rippled through the ship as Bashrik fired up the engines, the Vanquish rising into the sk
y, taking us away from the verdant landscape of Zai. I kept my eyes on the front windshield for as long as I could, until the temple and the jungles, and the minute figures of Cambien, Freya, and Ginji, disappeared into nothing more than a green smudge. It really was sad to say goodbye, even with my hand clasped around the chunk of opaleine that Cambien had given me. After all, there was no way of knowing if we’d ever be close enough to victory for me to call on him again.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said quietly, my voice cutting through the morose atmosphere. “We should get the bad news out of the way before we reach Vysanthe. That way, we can judge Brisha’s reaction before we’re too close to do anything about it.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Lauren said. “She knows I’ve got a good grasp on these things, so I’m hoping I can persuade her that it wasn’t our fault.”

  Angie put her arm around our friend. “If anyone can talk her into believing it, it’s you.”

  “We can explain that we’re really doing her a favor,” Navan added. “If she just puts that blood into the elixir, without us warning her, who knows what might happen to her test subjects?”

  Bashrik nodded. “Even with synthesis, it would be a disaster, and I don’t think I could watch faces melt again.” He shuddered, glancing around to see our smiling faces. “What are you all grinning about? You think melting faces are funny?” he asked, his own face twisting in a grimace.

  “You remembered,” Angie murmured.

  “Remembered what?”

  She grinned. “You remembered something from Vysanthe. You remembered watching the last test of the immortality elixir. Your coldblood memories are coming back!”

  Bashrik sank down into the pilot’s chair, running a hand through his hair. “This is all getting very confusing. One minute, I’m one thing, the next I’m something else. It’s all a bit foggy in here, to be honest,” he admitted, tapping the side of his head.

  “Well, while you’re recovering the lost part of yourself, why don’t we give Brisha a call?” Navan suggested.

  Angie nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, maybe the sound of her voice will bring it all back to you!”

  “Yeah, let’s just make sure we keep what happened to Bashrik under wraps. Nobody ever needs to find out about it,” I said firmly, knowing they all agreed. The last thing we needed was the Vysantheans finding out about a cure for the coldblood plague. If they found out, they’d be back mining opaleine as soon as their ships could get there.

  Navan opened a communication channel directly to Vysanthe. I waited for the familiar crackle to bristle through the speakers, but it never came. There was the low hiss of white noise, but nothing more. Navan tried a different channel, but still nothing happened. On the screen, a single line moved across the task bar, the spikes and troughs of any sound completely absent.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, coming up behind Navan.

  He shook his head. “It looks like our entire communication network is down.”

  “How?” Lauren pressed, peering at the control panel.

  “It’s been tampered with, by the looks of it,” Navan replied anxiously. “I can’t even get a channel open to local devices, like the ones in your ears. There’s just… nothing.”

  I wondered if this was Pandora’s doing. If she’d overheard everything I’d said to Cambien, instead of the small amount she’d claimed to have eavesdropped on, then cutting the comms would have been the perfect way to ensure we didn’t fulfill our plans. Without a means of communication, we couldn’t contact the Fed, or any nearby civilizations, to come and help us. If we wanted assistance, we’d be forced to fly down to the surface of local planets with no way of announcing ourselves first. Moreover, it meant we’d have to return to Vysanthe, to tell Queen Brisha what had happened in person. Even from beyond the grave, Pandora was taunting us.

  “Wait… I think we can receive incoming transmissions, but we can’t respond,” Navan grumbled. “Let’s just hope no passing ships take it as a sign of rudeness and decide to open fire.”

  “They’d do that?!” Angie exclaimed, her face aghast.

  Navan nodded. “Out here, with no one around for lightyears, it can be a case of shoot first, identify the victim later.”

  “I say we get to the quarantine facility as soon as possible, before we have the chance to bump into anyone unsavory,” Bashrik said, his hands darting across the screen. Despite not being able to understand much of the control panel, I could tell that the quarantine zone seemed to already be logged into the navigation system. Bashrik found it easily and plotted a course.

  “How far away is it?” I asked.

  Bashrik sighed. “Six hours.”

  Navan glanced down at the navigation map. “Yeah, but it’s on our way to the Fed outpost. It shouldn’t be too much farther from there.”

  “How do you know?” Lauren asked.

  “It’s a place I’ve passed before, on previous exploratory missions,” he explained. “I never dared get too close before, but I know it’s not far from the quarantine facility.”

  “Speaking of which, our rock zombies should be awake by now.” Angie groaned at the prospect. “You were in that opaleine two seconds, Bashrik, and it did enough damage to you. I dread to think what state these poor bastards will be in.”

  Navan stood from his chair. “I suppose we should go check on them.”

  “You want me to come with you?” Bashrik asked.

  “Yeah, I might need some extra muscle if any of them have broken loose,” Navan replied. “Riley, can you stay in charge of the control panel, in case it goes off autopilot?”

  I shook my head. “No way. I’m coming with you. I’ll take a gun if I have to, but I’m not staying here while you go and check on them.”

  “Fine,” Navan said, evidently not in the mood to argue. “Lauren, Angie, will you stay on the controls while we go to the med-bay?”

  “Absolutely,” Angie said. “No way you’d get me within a hundred feet of those things! They are going to be so pissed!”

  Lauren smiled. “If you need any more hands on deck, come and get us.”

  With that, the three of us made our way through the ship, heading toward the med-bay. We were all armed with guns, though my palms were sweating on the handle, my trigger finger trembling. If a coldblood came toward me, I wasn’t sure I could even fire the damn thing. Then again, adrenaline would probably take over if another life-or-death situation presented itself.

  We paused outside the locked door of the med-bay, and Navan punched in the code. As soon as the hatch rose, a chilling sound greeted us, sending a shiver up my spine. On every bed, the stone shells had crumbled away from the bodies of the coldbloods, and they were writhing in the debris, harrowing screams rising from their throats.

  One coldblood was straining so hard against his restraints that the veins were bulging out of his head, his eyes looking about ready to pop. The whole bed rattled as he pulled against his bonds, but they wouldn’t budge. Even so, it was enough to terrify me. With each yank, I thought he was going to snap the restraints, and my neck shortly afterward.

  “Kill me!” another one howled, her eyes desperate.

  “Forgive me for my sins,” another whispered miserably, repeating the mantra over and over as tears ran down his face.

  Every single one had a wild look in their eyes, their tortured minds struggling to deal with the trauma of being locked up inside themselves for years, able to see and hear, but unable to speak or move. At last, they had been freed of their prisons, but that didn’t take away decades of suffering. Some didn’t look like they knew what to do with their limbs, their expressions shocked by the freedom of movement. It was coming back to some quicker than others, but the pain that followed was something none of us could have anticipated.

  “It burns!” a coldblood female screamed. “Make it stop! It burns so bad!”

  I realized it must have been like recovering from the worst case of pins and needles ever, though that didn
’t even begin to cover it. These people had been frozen in one position for years, the blood only now returning to parts that had been starved of oxygen and nutrients. On some coldbloods, I could see that it was already too late—dead limbs had blackened, turning slowly to ash, as agonized screams tore from the throats of the new amputees.

  “Is there anything we can do?” I gasped, the roar of their pain deafening.

  Navan shook his head. “Only the doctors at the quarantine facility can help them now. I’d administer some drugs to try and ease their suffering, but I don’t know what would work.”

  “I hate to say it, but this really is horrific,” Bashrik murmured. “I would rather be killed outright than have to endure what they have endured.”

  I had to agree with him. This was awful. I wondered if Cambien and the Pyros had known the full extent of the torture they were inflicting on the coldbloods when they infected them with the virus. If they had, it tainted them in my eyes. Then again, it always came back to the same thing: the Vysantheans hadn’t given the Draconians another choice. Right now, my moral compass had no idea which way was north.

  On the floor, a cluster of antivirus insects lay in a small heap, their wings stilled. They had done their job, but now they seemed to be dead. I didn’t know if the distance between here and Zai had cut off their power, or if they relied on solar energy, or if something else had made them stop. Whatever it was, they were no longer functioning.

  Thinking quickly, I snatched a metal box down from one of the medical shelves and went over to the dead nano-insects, picking them all up and dropping them into the container, before hurrying back to the med-bay entrance, the coldbloods’ screams echoing in my ears.

  “We should keep this door locked and stay away until the doctors can come and help. The quarantine facility isn’t far—we can let the medics feed them when we get there. I don’t want to risk getting too close,” Navan insisted, ushering us back out of the med-bay and closing the door behind us, punching in the emergency quarantine code once more.