by Ann Aguirre
With Hex and Redmond dead, Jael in captivity, Tam and Martine out for recon, they had more than enough beds, so she sent the others to the dorm. No point in everyone losing sleep. She amused herself by fiddling with the handheld. Vost had gotten it running, as promised, and there were all kinds of interesting tidbits.
Skimming through the files, she found a video diary and tapped to play the last entry. This unit, despite its age, had projection, and a holo image appeared in the darkness. The woman looked vaguely familiar though why that would be the case, Dred had no idea. Her translucent features were strong, but she was sad-eyed and staring off into the distance instead of at the handheld recording her commentary.
After a long silence, the woman sighed and spoke. “This is the last time. The decision is final, they’re closing the facility. But I won’t go. I know this place better than anyone. I don’t care what they say about P&L, this is my home.”
That was all. The vid ended, and the machine went dark. She was about to call up the earlier entries for some context when Tam and Martine appeared on-screen. Dred leapt up and raced to let them in. It’s about time, I’m ready to gnaw my own arm off.
“How is he?” she demanded as soon as the force field went up and the blast doors shut behind it.
Martine let out a huff of breath not quite long enough to be called a sigh. “We need to get him out before Silence kills him.”
“So he’s alive.” Relief surged through her.
“For now,” Tam said.
“Then we need to move fast. What intel did you bring back?” Reverting to the Dread Queen was easier than being the woman desperately worried about the man she—
“Even with those Jael killed on his raid last time, she still has at least fifty. The ones we saw were drugged, and we hid from three different teams on patrol, five each.”
“You’re sure they weren’t the same group?”
“Positive,” Martine said.
“So we’re looking at sixty-five, at least.”
Tam nodded. “It could be more or less depending on command structure. The ones roving the station don’t seem to be drugged like the ones back at base. But she’s increased guards at multiple checkpoints, so that what happened before doesn’t happen again.”
“Are those guards counted in the fifty you mentioned?”
Martine cocked her head, probably doing the math. “Yeah, fifteen sober guards, thirty-five chem-heads. It’s the former that will give us trouble.”
“Damn. We can’t take Vost with us.” She lowered her voice in case anyone else was awake. “He’s still pretty jacked up from one of our firefights.”
“I thought he was pale.” Tam didn’t seem surprised.
“Calypso will be on board, not sure about Duran or Keelah.”
The alien female slipped from the shadows. “I’ll come, of course.”
“Anyone else awake?” Dred asked.
Keelah shook her head. “Not yet. Since Katur died, I don’t sleep much.”
Dred led the way to the control room and checked the time. Hours didn’t have much meaning inside Perdition, except for up and down cycle. Without sleep, they’d all go crazy. Some might argue the inmates of such a place didn’t have far to go.
“We need to formulate our strategy,” she said.
Tam and Martine nodded as Keelah curled up behind the door. Dred noticed the advantage of that location straightaway. While it might look like Keelah was being humble and unobtrusive, she was actually positioning for a guaranteed back strike. And such innate caution spoke of a lifetime of being hunted, survival at any cost.
She’s going to make it.
“The way I see it, we need a distraction team and main strike force. Two people can cause big damage near enough to Silence’s turf that she’ll have to investigate.”
“As soon as she does, the rest of us rush in, pushing to Jael, no matter how heavy the resistance is,” Tam finished.
Dred nodded. “He may not be able to walk, so I’ll need someone to cover me while I carry him. I won’t be able to keep up with the rest.”
“We should scatter in retreat,” Martine added.
“Giving them more targets to chase makes sense. Now that we have a fortified position, we don’t have to worry about secrecy as much.”
“No, we just have that moment of vulnerability when we’re waiting for someone inside to let us in.” Which was another reason for Vost to stay here. He’d disabled the external access they’d used—now the only way in came via the control panel inside.
It wasn’t long before Duran and Calypso joined them, both bleary-eyed.
“Somebody call a staff meeting?” the merc joked.
“Something like that,” Martine answered.
Quickly, Tam filled them in, then Calypso slammed an open palm against the wall. “I’m in. They took one of ours, and I’m taking it personal. Dred, count me in on watching your back. I’ll kill anyone who gets close.”
“I volunteer for the distraction team,” Duran said. “Explosions are my specialty, and as long as I don’t have to worry about how much damage I cause, how it impacts overall station performance—”
“See, this is why I chose you,” Calypso cut in, patting his cheek.
“You like that, huh?”
“I’ll go with you,” Martine said. “I’m not bad at that myself.”
Tam and Calypso shared a look, but Dred didn’t get involved. She cared only about saving Jael, not about momentary partner swaps. They had the plan hammered out and fine-tuned when Vost finally got up, looking a little better than he had the day before.
“What’s going on?” the merc commander asked.
Dred told him and finished up by saying, “Don’t argue. Your role is holding down the fort.”
Stretching, Calypso got to her feet. “Then let’s do this. Fifteen to five, 3:1. I don’t like those odds.” She flashed a devilish grin. “For them.”
• • •
JAEL lost track of how long he had been in the suspension rig. He hadn’t seen the scientists in a while; the lab was oddly dark. Usually, there were assistants and techs working at all hours. A boom echoed in the distance, then red lights came on, along with the blaring Klaxon of an alarm. Other subjects stirred around him, but he couldn’t move.
A completely inflectionless voice announced, “Perimeter breach in sector five, fire detected. Facility emergency protocols in place. Please proceed to the nearest exit in a calm and orderly fashion.”
Another explosion, this one much closer, rocked his harness, and one of the straps broke. He was woozy from whatever they’d been feeding him through the tubes, so his head felt weird and fuzzy as he worked his left arm free. Surely, this couldn’t be happening. Dr. Landau or one of the others would be here soon to tell them what to do. But nobody tried to stop him as he wrenched the tubing from his body. The holes stung, and fluid trickled out, but within seconds, the wounds closed. Reaching over, he snapped the fastenings on his right arm, then he only had to lean down to unbuckle. Jael dropped from the suspension rig, unsteady on his feet at first. His surviving pod mates—only three now—stared at him with mute terror. One of them protested as he unstrapped her from the machine.
“We have to go now,” he said to JL490. With dark hair, eyes, and skin, she didn’t look anything like him though they were pod mates. He wasn’t sure why. “Or we’ll die here.”
At first, he thought she wouldn’t move but then she went to the next suspension harness, allowing Jael to free the last subject in the room. The four of them crept toward the main exit, which he’d used exactly one time since his creation. His failure with Dr. Parvati haunted him.
She brought me back, because I’m not a person.
But he ignored that echo in his head as he pushed buttons at random, trying to figure out how the door opened. At last he got the ri
ght combo, and they moved into the dark hallway. He heard people screaming, running feet, and he smelled something dark and gritty that burned his throat. The robot voice had said “fire,” which meant this was probably smoke. He’d only seen those things on the vids, but he knew they weren’t good.
“Where are we going?” 490 asked.
“Out. Away.” That seemed to be enough for the others.
But she paused outside Lab B. “Should we set everyone else free, too?”
He nodded. “Split up. We’ll check all the labs. Then come back here.”
One of the subjects didn’t return, but 490 and another did. The male still hadn’t spoken, and his eyes were wild. Jael didn’t like the look of him, but he didn’t know what to say. So he kept moving. The other two followed him. Getting out had become the only thing that mattered.
They pressed on.
Jael stopped outside the room marked LAUNDRY. “If they see us with no clothes, they’ll take us back. We have to look like them.”
490 nodded and went inside, returning with gray shirts and pants and jackets. Some of them didn’t smell good, but he would wear anything—do anything—to make this stop. He dressed quickly, along with everyone else. Jael didn’t know the facility, but people should be running toward the exit if the situation was dangerous. So he followed their footfalls.
Security doors stood open, overridden due to whatever was going on, and it let them pass all the way outside. There were people everywhere, men in uniforms, voices booming, lights flashing, and the sound of weapons being fired. Someone grabbed his arm and yanked him away from the front doors.
“Get back, there’s a bomb inside. Some crazy activist group has decided that the Sapient Rights Coalition didn’t investigate properly, so they’re protesting our lack of ethics.”
“By blowing up the building with everyone inside? How does that help?”
“Exactly.” The man laughed, as if Jael hadn’t intended it as a serious question. “These people are insane.”
As the scientist turned away, the mad-eyed Bred subject went for his throat, screaming at the top of his lungs. Jael’s eyes met 490’s, and she nodded. Together, they slipped away from the facility. He’d never seen it from the outside, a large, sprawling complex of interconnected silver domes. The stars were beautiful, and the air tasted different outside, both fresher and dirtier at the same time. He sucked in great, gasping lungs full of it.
“Should we have helped?” 490 asked, once they left the chaos behind.
“No. When did they ever help us?”
She had no answer.
And he had no idea where they were. Lost. The word floated up from the bottom of his mind, but it wasn’t bad, especially when he paired it with Free. Jael had no idea how long they walked. The world was so much bigger than he’d ever imagined; vids couldn’t convey the vastness of it, such wide spaces and roaring machines.
They hid as they moved, avoiding other people. But, eventually, 490 turned to him. “We should go alone from now on.”
“Why?”
“Because two of us will draw too much attention. We’re different from them.”
I don’t care. I don’t want to. But he didn’t say those words aloud, and she left him.
From there, he stumbled and fell, down, down, all the way down, into that place of stone and chittering echoes. There was never any light, never a human voice or a touch. He lost himself there, a dragon inside an egg threading in and out of a needle. Jael dwelled in darkness forever.
And pain. There was always pain, a crooning sort of anguish, each slice a tapping, tapping, all the way down to the bone and back again. Something is devouring me, bite by bite.
He could not scream.
14
More Than Life Itself
The teams were in place.
Dred had Tam, Keelah, and Calypso with her; Martine and Duran were set up and ready. When the big boom sounded, that was their cue; a mass exodus followed. From her hidden vantage, Dred counted twenty killers of sound mind heading out to investigate. She signaled the attack phase by circling her hand in the air.
This time she had her chains; she’d risked retrieving them from Queensland on a solo run. Silence had left blood graffiti all over the place, probably in answer to Jael’s message. But it didn’t change anything. This time, she was fighting for the person who mattered to her most.
She led the strike personally, slamming her chains into the first sentry’s skull. Being the Dread Queen wasn’t all bad, she thought, as the enemy’s head caved in. Lashing out, she disarmed the one next to her, then whipped her chain around his neck. With a twist, she broke it, smiling as she stepped over the body. There were more guards coming, but Keelah had her knife out and was fighting low, as she preferred, going for hamstrings and Achilles tendons. Tam used two blades while Calypso had a massive bludgeon.
Reminds me of Einar.
The other three fought tight, but Dred needed room to swing her chains. She couldn’t worry about the rest; the only thing that mattered was cutting a path to Jael. “Where is he?”
Tam pushed forward, spinning away from a garrote from behind. Twin slashes of his blade dropped his opponent. “This way. Stay close.”
Silence’s stronghold was worse than she’d remembered, and it was bad before. Now, however, it was like the rituals had taken over all semblance of human life. Blood and viscera lay everywhere, more like Priest’s and Grigor’s realms. She’s devolving. Before Silence was strict with her followers, demanding utmost skill and sacrifice, but now there was only death.
“This is all kinds of fragged up,” Calypso said.
Keelah nodded, glancing over her shoulder for opposition. “The smell is overwhelming.”
Eight killers struck as they pushed forward. Dred squared off against three, easy enough with her chains. None of these acolytes showed any sign of being drugged, unlike the others. Which made them a tougher fight. But it didn’t matter how many people she had to kill.
She crisscrossed her chains before her to form a defensive perimeter. One of the assassins struck; she broke his arm with a twist that also pulled the knife out of his hands. Dred kicked the blade away with a clatter, conscious of how strange these enemies were. They didn’t cry out in pain or even flinch.
It’s like they don’t feel anything anymore. How’s that possible?
There was no chance for theories, however. The next rushed at her, undeterred. Silence’s downfall would be the fact that she’d only taught her people how to work in the dark: one strike, one kill. And they had no idea what to do afterward—in actual combat versus assassination. They couldn’t analyze a fighter’s style or predict movements.
Clumsy, she thought, and killed another one.
Soon they had eight bodies on the ground, and Tam directed them onward. “He’s in the center of her territory. She doesn’t have a bedroom per se. I’d call it more of a . . . playroom.”
Dred’s stomach twisted into knots. Don’t feel that right now. Just breathe. He’s alive. We’re coming.
After a while, she lost track of how many they killed. Once they cut past the guards with all their faculties, the silent followers were chemmed to the core, as Tam and Martine had said. That wasn’t a fight, more of a slaughter. Dred’s arms were red to the elbow, her chains sticky with blood and gore, by the time they got to the room where Silence was keeping Jael.
The three sentries posted went down fast. Keelah took one, Tam the second, and Calypso beat the third one to death with a relish that Dred completely understood. Almost there. She braced herself, for she already knew it would be bad, but nothing could’ve prepared her for how utterly ruined Jael was. Fillets of flesh were just . . . missing, and his face was unrecognizable. He barely seemed to be breathing.
Calypso spat several sharp curses. “I was hoping that bitch would be here, so we could en
d this, once and for all.”
“No such luck,” Tam muttered.
“She probably went to check the damage,” Keelah guessed.
The alien averted her gaze, but Dred couldn’t. She took in every wound, done over hours of painstaking cruelty. She will die screaming, silent no longer. If I have to die making it happen, so be it. Silence will suffer for this. The others couldn’t even look at him, but she went in quick, desperate strides. His skin was red from head to toe, though she couldn’t be sure if it was from how grievously he had been tortured, or if Silence was enough of a monster to make him wear his own blood as some kind of badge.
“Help me get him up,” she ordered.
Between Calypso and Tam, they draped him over Dred’s back, and she took his poor sliced arms, wrapping them around her neck. Though she would’ve guessed he was too far gone, in too much agony, he held on somehow, as if he recognized her. She reached back and touched his hair, pressed a kiss to his forearm and tasted copper.
“He has such a strong heart,” Keelah whispered.
“No shit.” Calypso flanked Dred, ready to defend.
Dred said, “Keelah and Tam, you two take point until we get out of here. Then it’s a dead sprint to the docking bay.”
Tam nodded. “If we get there first, we’ll keep the paste warm for you.”
Somehow, she managed a reassuring smile, though the odds weren’t good since she couldn’t crawl into the ducts carrying Jael. She and Calypso would be in the open, taking main corridors, vulnerable all the way back. “Please don’t.”
“Good luck,” said Keelah.
And the race was on.
• • •
A gentle touch breached the haze of endless pain. A hand on his head, a kiss. And then he was borne upward. His throat felt too dry to utter a sound, and his mouth was raw meat, but he flexed his fingers in silent thanks. Someone came for me.
“You’ll be all right,” a woman whispered to him.
I know her. Don’t I?
The world blurred around him. Sometimes, he was moving; at other moments, the walls were too close or the floor spun up to meet him. Voices came and went, sounds of violence. Then he lost the thread completely.
