by Conner, Jack
Janx grabbed him by the front of his shirt and wheeled him around. The big man’s eyes blazed murderously, and his face had locked into an expression so savage it would have chilled Avery at any other time.
“No,” Janx said, and it was truly a growl. “You can’t be thinkin’ what you’re thinkin’. You can’t go after her. You can’t.”
“Unhand me.”
Janx only gripped tighter. “You can’t, Doc. You’ll fuck up everything.”
“Unhand me.”
Janx gritted his teeth. “If I do, will you see reason?”
Avery jerked violently backward, almost tearing his shirt. Janx released him, but the whaler stood tense, ready to pounce.
“You can’t go after her,” Janx said, and it was clear that he had to force the words out. His throat was locked up, seized by the same mood that had overtaken the rest of him. A vein bulged on his forehead, and his face had turned red. His jaw muscles worked so violently that Avery wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the crunch of bone. “You can’t,” Janx repeated. It seemed the only words he was capable of saying, a desperate mantra of reasonability.
But Avery was in no condition to be reasoned with. A biological imperative had overtaken him.
“I must,” he said.
“No.”
“I must!”
“No, damn you! I oughtta—” Janx started to growl something more, then stopped, his mouth open. Something had occurred to him. With new energy, he said, “Don’t you get it, Doc? It’s a trap.”
“What ... ?”
Janx nodded grimly, his eyes boring deep into Avery. “You think it’s a coincidence Ani’s here, right in our path?”
“But ... but ...”
“And I’d bet you a night in Paradise it means that bitch Sheridan is around, too. She’s the girl’s guardian, right?”
“No. Janx, you’re wrong.” Ani’s getting away! “You’re wrong.”
“You know I’m not. Ani’s the cheese, you’re the mouse, and Sheridan’s that bar of steel comin’ down on your neck.”
Gods damn him, he’s letting Ani go! Ani . . right in our path ...
Janx must have seen the change in his face. “That’s it, Doc. Use your head. Fight it. Don’t do what that bitch wants you do to.”
“Ani ...”
Desperately, Avery looked for her, hoping she hadn’t slipped away. For a breathless moment he couldn’t find her. But there she was, striding between the guards, midway down the bridge.
“I have to go to her,” Avery said.
“You know it’s a trap.”
“Yes.”
“So what do you mean to do, Doc?”
* * *
Avery ran to the staircase and hurried down it. His heart thumped heavily in his chest, and sweat stung his eyes. This is idiocy, he thought. Janx is right, I’m risking everything. I should go back. But he could not stop his feet from carrying him forward. Ani, he thought. Soon, after four long years, he would hold his daughter in his arms.
By the time he’d descended, the soldiers and Ani had nearly crossed the bridge. Avery all but sprinted to the span and over it, ignoring the looks of those around him and only slowing as he neared Ani’s party. He could just see the faint white scars on the back of her neck below her short dark hair. Could it really be her? Perhaps it was some trick, a double. But his heart told him otherwise. From the way she moved, from the way she reached up to scratch the monkey on her shoulder—Hildebrand, it was Hildebrand—Avery knew the girl was his daughter.
He tried not to look at them as he followed. He didn’t want them to feel his stare. They passed down a broad corridor between buildings, then turned down another. His heart beat faster with every step.
It’s about to happen. He wished Mari were alive to see it.
Of course, it wouldn’t happen with all these people about. Perhaps, if they entered a building, he could waylay them somehow. He counseled himself to be cautious and not loose any rounds unless forced to. Not only would the gunshots draw attention, but Ani could get hurt. This had to be a peaceful handover.
Please, he thought, and it was a prayer, though he didn’t know to whom, go somewhere private. Somewhere ...
The soldiers turned off the main course. They shepherded Ani into a narrow lane between buildings, almost an alley. There was no other activity here, and Avery saw his chance. Can it be this easy?
His hands trembled, and his legs shook as he followed them. Get it together, he told himself. He drew in a deep breath, held it, and summoned what courage he had left. When the soldiers had gone far enough away from the main avenue, he unholstered his gun and aimed it at the taller soldier’s back.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The soldiers turned. When they saw the gun, they lifted their hands away from their own weapons and stepped back, faces impassive. Curious, Ani wheeled about. Big dark eyes stared out of a narrow face, with black hair parted down the middle, sweeping like two raven wings to either side. A long, straight nose. Wide, thin lips meant for impish smiles. There was no question at this distance. It was Ani.
Her eyes met his. For a heartbreaking moment, she didn’t recognize him, and his stomach twisted. His striations, his uniform, he wished them all gone. But then her eyes widened.
“Papa!”
His heart nearly stopped.
Though unaccountably tense, her little face lit up with the biggest grin he’d ever seen, and she flung herself at him, almost knocking him over.
“Ani.”
She sobbed against him. “Papa ...”
“It’s okay,” he said, careful to keep the gun trained on the soldiers. With his free hand he stroked her head. He wanted nothing more than to gather her up in his arms and smother her with kisses, but that would have to wait.
“You’re here,” he said, his voice strained.
She continued to cry against him, almost uncontrollably.
Suddenly he grew nervous. “What?” he said. “What is it?”
She tilted her face up, and he saw her huge dark eyes filled with tears. “It’s ...”
“Yes?”
“She means it’s a trap,” came a voice behind him, and he spun to see half a dozen soldiers emerge from a cross-alley, guns leveled.
How long have you bastards been marching her up and down?
“Drop your weapon,” the captain of the soldiers ordered, and Avery complied. “Put your hands on your head.”
They proceeded to search him and cuff him.
“I’m so sorry,” Avery told his daughter.
She sniffed and shook her head. “I love you, Papa.”
Something lurched in his chest. “I love you, too.”
Once cuffed, they marched him back to the main concourse and up several broad streets. Airplanes flew overhead, and he remembered that battle might be joined shortly. Maybe ... in the confusion ...
If nothing else, Ani walked beside him, looking at the same time elated and despairing. The same look must be on his face as well.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The soldiers didn’t answer, but Ani did: “Aunt Jess. It’s time for my treatment. Past time.” The idea clearly unnerved her.
“Treatment?”
She nodded, biting her lip, but she didn’t expound. Avery supposed he would have to wait to talk with Jessryl Sheridan to find out the answer, but he was wrong. As they were passing a certain fountain in a main plaza, Ani began to tremble. Her face turned even paler, and her eyes fearful.
“No,” she said. “Not now ...”
“Damn it,” one of the soldiers said. “It’s happening again. We walked her too long.”
“We had to,” another said. “The psychics picked up the Bitch’s presence.”
“W-what’s going on?” Avery said.
Before anyone could answer, Ani collapsed to the ground, her limbs shook and her eyes rolled up in her head. Froth gathered at her lips, and her heels beat a tattoo against the floor.
; Some sort of epileptic fit? She had never shown signs of epilepsy before. Avery knelt beside her, awkward with his hands behind his back. He wanted to take her pulse, to hold down her tongue so she wouldn’t swallow it, anything, but the cuffs prevented him, and though he begged the soldiers to release him, they ignored him. Ani thrashed and shook, helpless against the fit, panic in her eyes, and the soldiers just waited. Avery could never remember being so afraid in his life. Please, he thought. Please, gods, spare her.
He had to wait long minutes before the seizures passed, and she lay gasping and sweaty on the ground.
“Ani,” he said. “Ani. How do you feel?”
She was too weak to reply, but she nodded to let him know the worst was over.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded of the captain. “What have you done to my daughter?”
“Get her up,” the captain told his men. “We’re almost there.”
They continued on, and Avery’s questions went unaddressed, but at least Ani seemed better now. She was shaken and scared, but otherwise all right. The treatment, Avery thought. Ani said she had been late to the treatment ...
They entered a certain tall building and marched Avery and Ani up the stairs to the fifth level. She held his hand tightly behind his back. Looking around him, he noted the black lances and long-barreled guns the troops carried. They were hoping for bigger fish than me, he realized. Sheridan asked to be alerted as soon as psychics felt Layanna board the Over-City, then set the bait. Thank the gods Janx is smarter than I am.
Two soldiers waited outside a certain door. One nodded to the troop captain and opened the door while the rest ushered Avery and Ani inside a large, opulent suite. The lights had been turned down low so that vague green alchemical illumination lit the three-tongued, carnivorous manatee head that adorned one well, making its five eyes glimmer. Handsome leather furniture lurked regally in the shadows. The air smelled of incense.
A familiar outline stood framed against a window. The drapes had been drawn, but they were thin and admitted a ghostly light, enough to silhouette Sheridan. Her posture was straight, her shoulders squared, but he knew her well; he could sense the tension in her, perhaps even the sadness. She had not wanted this, for them to meet again as enemies. But Avery was too furious to feel anything but contempt for her.
He seized the offensive. “What the hell did you do to Ani?”
Sheridan gestured, and the door slammed behind them.
“Yes, I was informed about her episode.” As she spoke, she took two items off the counter beside her—she was in the eating area off the kitchen, with what would be a nice view of the canyon beyond if the drapes were pulled back—and Avery started to see a vial and syringe. His gaze fixed on the needle. It looked very long, very sharp. “I’m sorry you missed your treatment, dear,” Sheridan said as she plunged the syringe through the top of the vial and filled it with fluid. “But a little pain has netted you a father, hasn’t it? Now come.”
Ani began to step forward, but Avery, who still gripped her hand behind his back, did not let go.
“What do you mean to give her?” he said. He was horribly aware of the half dozen soldiers at his back. Hurry, Janx.
Sheridan moved toward them, and the green glow lit her handsome face, throwing shadows upward. The shadow of her nose devoured her right eye, but the eye gleamed in the darkness.
“Several days ago I administered a nerve toxin to Ani.”
“You what?”
“It’s fatal unless I give her just a little dose of the same toxin several times a day, like an addict must have his substance. If she doesn’t receive it ...”
His mouth went suddenly dry. If his hands hadn’t still been cuffed, he would have lunged forward and tried to strangle her.
“And the antidote?” he managed.
“Oh, I have it, rest assured.”
“Why would you do this?”
Sheridan’s face was solemn, and her eyes held genuine sadness as they regarded him. “So that you would do what I’m about to ask you to, Francis. I’d hoped Layanna would come with you to rescue Ani, but I prepared myself in case the goddess did not. You may be blinded by the eyes of a father, but she—”
“Papa, I need my shot,” Ani said, and he could hear the desperation in her voice.
Reluctantly, he released her and she stepped forward. Sheridan lifted the girl’s sleeve, swabbed the flesh with alcohol and stabbed the needle into the meat of Ani’s upper arm. Avery winced at the drop of blood.
“There,” Sheridan said. “You’ll be fine now.”
Rubbing her arm, Ani returned to Avery’s side.
“You ... bitch,” Avery said to Sheridan, unable to help himself. He was trembling in anger.
“I do what I must. As will you. You will return to Layanna and lead her to a place of my choosing. My team will secure her there, and Ani will be cured and returned to you.”
He stared at Sheridan in disbelief. He had thought he’d known her, known what limits she was capable of.
“Your own daughter’s death destroyed you,” he heard himself saying. “How can you endanger mine?”
For a moment he imagined that doubt passed across Sheridan’s face, but he must have been wrong because she said, without emotion, “You will do what I say.”
Ani was sobbing against him. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t do what she wants. She’s bad, Papa.”
More than anything in the world Avery wanted to tell Ani everything would be all right and that friends were on the way, but he could not alert Sheridan and her troops.
“What then?” he asked Sheridan. “Ani’s cured and free, but what happens after? Is she to be imprisoned here for the rest of her life?”
“She—and you—may go wherever you like, and on a generous stipend. But only after the Device is activated. It will be soon, have no fear. I was just about to select which dress uniform to wear to its firing.”
Good, Avery thought. It was as he’d suspected. On the other hand ... “You’ve already reversed its functions?”
“Almost.”
“And the Ghenisan battle group?”
“They are no match for us, and we will swing wide around them besides. By the time we do face them, the Device will have been activated and they will fall with the push of a button.”
Please, Janx, you’d better get here fast. I don’t want Ani to see me betray everything I’ve stood for, even if it is just for show. She won’t know that.
“How many times do you think you can use Ani against me?” he said, stalling for time. With Ani leaning into him, he could not say that he would never yield. He felt the temptation to do so too strongly, and he knew it would reflect in his voice. “Do you think my answer will change if you ask enough times?”
“Yes,” Sheridan said simply. “I do. And this time the stakes are much higher. Before, in Cuithril, I only threatened to send her to the labs—which I did, although I admit I could have taken the gloves off and given the scientists unrestricted access. In Ayu, the issue was only whether you would be reunited with her. This time it’s her life at stake. Can you, as a father, with her right there, condemn her to—?”
The door exploded inward and Layanna poured in, her other-self drawn about her. Strange lights filled the room, along with the stench of ammonia. Layanna’s limbs tore into the soldiers, ripping them apart in gouts of blood or shoving them into her sac. None had time to get off a single shot, as they had been facing the wrong way and turned about too slowly. Layanna charged forward, Janx and Hildra pouring in behind. Colonel vun Cuvastaq, standing over two bodies in the corridor, helped Janx pull the bodies inside and then kept watch without.
Layanna, huge and swollen, approached Avery and Sheridan, who dropped the syringe and lifted her hands away from her pistol. Ani, who had been too startled to move at first, shrieked and fled into a side room. Layanna saw her go and released her other-self, but it was too late.
Glaring, Janx approached, fists bunched and b
loodied. One held his revolver. Avery joined him facing Sheridan. The captain-admiral-colonel-spy looked very alone pressed against the window, but she did not seem worried. Is there anything that can move her? Avery wondered. The woman was like stone.
Janx stalked forward, tossed the kitchen table aside so that it overturned and crashed noisily, scattering papers, grabbed Sheridan by the throat and heaved her upward, smacking her against the wall. Her eyes bulged, and her face reddened. Both her hands wrapped around Janx’s wrist and dug in. She made no move to kick at him or claw him, though her heels beat against the wall.
Avery moved around Janx to come on Sheridan from the side. He disarmed her and passed her gun to Hildra, who was rooting through the bodies for weapons and setting aside the extradimensional ones. That done, Avery returned his attention to Janx, who still throttled Sheridan.
“She can’t breathe,” Avery said.
Janx glared hatred into Sheridan’s face, his jaws bunched and the vein in his temple throbbing again. He seemed ready to tear her limb from limb. He held Sheridan up with his left hand, his gun with the right. He shoved the gun through the waistband in the small of his back, freeing his right hand, and reached down to his right foot. He wrenched out the massive knife there, and pressed it to Sheridan’s neck just above his left hand. He shoved it against the tender flesh just beneath her jaw, and a trickle of blood welled out. He looked quite capable and happy to cut off her head with that huge blade, just like slicing the head off a mushroom and likely with as little effort.
“I should kill you right now.”
She wheezed at him, her face strained and red.
“She can’t speak,” Avery said. “Please, loosen your hold.”
Reluctantly, Janx did so, just enough for her to gasp in a lung-full, then another. With the inhalation, her throat flexed, pressing into the blade, and more blood ran over Janx’s fingers and down the front of her shirt. He withdrew the knife, just a fraction.
“Bitch. All this is because of you. Ayu, everything.”
Sheridan stared back at his furious face with the same lack of fear or emotion she had shown so far.
“I didn’t take me into the heart of the Black Sect,” she said.
