by Ann Aguirre
Next, she realized her body was covered in open sores. Some had scabbed over, and others were still oozing. She’d never felt worse in her whole life. Her aching throat demanded water, so she rummaged through the bag until she found the bottle. From the look of it, neither one of them had had anything to drink since they’d eaten the paste. When was that? She sipped, then put it down, worried about Jael.
Rolling him over took most of her strength. At first glance, he looked dead. His face was skeletal, eyes sunken with dehydration, and new lines had formed on his dried skin. He, too, had the sores all over him, and she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Dizzily, she leaned down, setting her ear to his chest. The thumps were so slow and faint that it took her a couple of minutes to be certain it wasn’t her own pulse echoing in her ears.
Supporting his head, she tipped some water into his mouth and rubbed his throat so he’d swallow instead of choke. At this point, she’d taken care of him more than anyone in the world, but it was mutual. We just keep saving each other. This time, however, she couldn’t see the way out. They didn’t have the supplies for a complete recovery, and climbing down while they were so weak seemed like suicide. Likewise, they weren’t strong enough to break through the blast door, either. She couldn’t fathom a solution to this problem.
Dred didn’t know how long it was before he stirred in her arms. He had the same trouble with his eyes, but once they opened, she could tell he was lucid. Wincing, Jael struggled upright, and she knew too well how sore he felt. Just this much exertion left him shaky, and fury flashed in his blue eyes over the unaccustomed weakness.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered. “They’re rodents.”
“The better question is how to get out of this.”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew.”
“If we pop the panel, will cutting the right wire make the door disengage?”
“Hell if I know,” Jael said. “But it’s worth a try.”
He struggled on his hands and knees, then made it to a standing position. She handed him her boot knife. After a little tinkering, he managed to get into the panel, but it didn’t look like she expected it to inside. Beneath, there were no loose wires, just the smooth metal of pressure chips. Security wasn’t her specialty, but she felt fairly sure that they needed current to open the door. Dred stared up at the flickering emergency light.
Jael sighed and rested his head on the wall. “We’re stuck.”
“We could try pulling the emergency light down and touching the live wires to the inside of the panel.”
“Whoever does it will probably be electrocuted.”
“It’s my idea. I’ll—”
“Forget it,” he said. “Hand me your chain.”
She did as he asked. Maybe she should protest his determination to take all the damage, but since she didn’t even know if she could stand up, it seemed wrong to offer false assurances. As Dred watched, he slammed the emergency light, so sparks sprayed out, and the bulb shattered. On the downside, the landing was plunged into complete darkness. Jael cried out.
“Shit, are you all right?” Somehow she was on her feet, wobbling toward him blindly.
“Stay back.” The words came from between clenched teeth. “Don’t touch me.”
She heard him thumping at the wall, then the crackling of a live wire. Electricity sprayed in an arc from the tip of the broken wire, highlighting his features. His mouth was a flat white line, but he kept pulling. Please don’t let the cable break. Please let it stretch far enough. He pulled and pulled, getting closer to the panel. Then the wire just . . . stopped. Dred just knew if he forced it, he’d yank it out entirely, and it wouldn’t work.
Without asking his thoughts, she grabbed his arm and pulled it straight. The shock nearly made her open her hands. No, I’m doing this. If he can take it, I can. After that first jolt, numbness flooded her, which was probably worse. Her body felt like it was filled with hot metal, and her arm weighed a metric ton. Yet even as her shoulder screamed, she raised it and leaned, leaned, then, at last, she slammed her palm onto the pressure plate.
The door snicked open.
Dred let go, collapsing before the glorious crack, and she bathed her face in the rush of cool, fresh air. Jael fell over next to her, pulling the gap wider. She couldn’t tell how badly he was injured, but he must be burned. Reaching out in the dark, she took his hand and got another little shock. His fingers were curled; he couldn’t seem to open them. He pulled away before she could explore the extent of the damage.
“Let’s go,” he said hoarsely. “The others have probably given us up for dead by now.”
She picked up the bag and found it almost heavier than she could carry. “They have more faith in us than that.” Bravado was all she had as she pushed through the door.
• • •
IT took some wandering before they found the stairs. Jael recalled fighting his way down them when the mercs were after them, but now it was as much as he could manage just putting one foot in front of the other. On the next level, a surviving sector directory told them it was another five flights to Repair at the bottom.
“How are we going to carry everything back?” he asked quietly.
Dred didn’t answer. Her breath came quick and fast, pained little pants, as she stumbled down the steps after him. His chest hurt, too. Everything did, really. It would be so easy to fall down and not get up. Tired. Hungry. Thirsty. The litany of silent complaints occupied him for another flight. There, he took the bag from Dred and dug out the water bottle.
“Rest break,” he said, taking a swig.
“Last time you said that, we passed out for Mary knows how long.”
“I’ll be stricter this time. No lolling around on my watch, Devos.”
In the flicker of the emergency lights, he saw her smile flash. “I’m surprised you remember my last name.”
“I remember everything when it comes to you.” She didn’t seem to realize that he had a hard time forgetting anything but for once, his freakish recall made somebody happy. “Right, moving on.”
She seemed grateful that he didn’t linger over the emotional revelation. Mary, I don’t have the energy. Pushing forward required all his reserves, and by the time they got down to the level designed for repair, he was shaking all over. Between the residual sickness and the electrocution, Jael couldn’t believe he was still upright.
You know this is for you, yeah, love? You’re always making me do impossible things.
Jael hoped like hell they didn’t run into any of Silence’s killers. He didn’t have the speed or the strength to drive them off, and Dred was no better off. They both needed a week of good food, clean water, and uninterrupted sleep, but this was Perdition, so they’d be lucky to get a day and a half of rest, a packet of paste, and to escape drinking their own urine. Which is most assuredly not sterile.
His vision sparkled with the lights and darks that meant he was close to passing out. So he paused, ostensibly to let Dred catch up. She leaned on the wall for support as they finally left the stairs and stepped into the internal corridors again. The repair bay stood open, courtesy of their last raid. And he doubted anyone else had been down here since the slaughter in the upper reaches of the station.
“I don’t even remember what we came for,” Dred whispered.
“Glad Vost made a list.”
Focus. This is what we need to get off station . . . it’s the last step.
The bay seemed cleaner down here, less close than it had been in the ducts and definitely the lift shaft. He fiddled with the circuits and managed to reroute power, so the main lights came up. Dred let out a relieved sigh, but the brightness also let him see just how sick she was. Her lips had cracked with dryness, and she had the look of a living corpse. Open lesions mottled her arms, probably beneath her clothes, too. A quick inspection assured him he didn’t fare any better bene
ath closer scrutiny.
“We look like hell, huh?” she said ruefully.
“More than. On the bright side, by the time we lug all this junk back to the docking bay, we should be past the infectious stage.”
Dred touched her forehead, then his. “The fever’s broken, along with the lumps. So, hopefully, we already are.”
“That would be a bright spot, yeah?” Seems more likely we’d carry the plague back and watch the others die, given how our luck’s been lately. But apparently he’d internalized Martine’s superstition about not predicting awful things out loud because he ate that thought.
She nodded. “I’ll take this side of the bay. Anything we locate, call it out, so we’ll know to stop looking.”
“Sounds good.”
What should’ve taken only a little while stretched into a momentous endeavor because they kept needing to rest. Sucks when bending over makes you winded. Dred didn’t complain, though, so he didn’t, either. Somehow, her opinion of him had become more important than anything else. That should’ve scared the shit out of him . . . and once it would have. Once, it might’ve even driven him to betray her to Vost or even to Silence, because Dred could hurt him in ways that superseded the physical. This woman had the power to scorch and salt his soul so that nothing could ever grow.
But she won’t.
There was no science to explain his surety. But he would’ve taken this conviction to the bank for a loan. He caught her eye as she tumbled forward on hands and knees, trying to pick up something Vost needed. An abortive moment—his first instinct was to help, but her icy glare said that would be a mistake. On her own, she struggled and hauled the part to the center of the bay, along with the small pile of junk they’d already identified.
Sod this. How the hell can we get back like this, hauling gear? The return would be a gauntlet—all those stairs, the corridor they had to cross, then the ducts? Forget it. With this much junk, it would be open hallways, the whole way. He was tempted to say frag the whole mission, but then their chances of getting off Perdition went down dramatically. Each time they popped out of the docking bay, they risked Silence’s taking them down.
“What the hell is that for?”
She shrugged. “If I knew how to build a shuttle from scrap parts, I wouldn’t be doing grunt work to pay for my ride off station, would I?”
He laughed. “I love how honest you are.”
“You know what they say—the truth is a weapon too sharp for most.”
“I never heard anyone say that.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t get out much. For the last hundred turns, you’ve been touring all the best prisons.”
Jael was about to joke back when a noise jerked his gaze to the door.
23
Last Resort
Silence’s trained killers stood watching. There was a tentative air about them, and Dred wondered why they’d given up the advantage, showing themselves instead of trying to attack from behind. She glanced around.
Well, we’re in the middle of the room, lights up. They probably had no chance of a silent kill. Frag. The only way this could be worse is if Silence steps out from behind them.
Laughable. On her best day, she could take this many on her own. Now she’d be hard-pressed to end one before they disemboweled her or cut her throat with their fine-wire garrotes. I’m too weak to use my chains. Jael took two steps forward, putting himself between her and them.
Not again. They take you over my dead body.
“Don’t,” she said.
“If this is my time, so be it.” He offered his sharp, lovely smile. “I’m not even sorry I was sent here when I tally everything I’ve lost and gained.”
“Bullshit.” She planted herself beside him, pretending her knees weren’t full of water and that a cold sweat hadn’t broken out on her brow just from that movement. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Maybe they have orders to take me alive, like that first group.”
“Doesn’t explain why they aren’t coming after me, though.” An idea came to her, ridiculous and far-fetched as it could possibly be.
I’ve never done that before. Never tried.
But physical conflict resolution was out of the question. And I’m left with the last resort. Closing her eyes, she called up all her mental reserves. First she read the watching killers and found not the red of rage but the yellow of sickness. Jael shone with it about the edges, blue for calm inside, but at the heart, he’d turned a rosy pink. Sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.
But she didn’t think he’d mind in the name of survival.
She gathered all the softness, every gentle and tender thought she’d ever entertained. It swelled at the core of her, white-hot with sweetness, then she let it go like a balloon grown too big to hold. Since she’d never used her gift this way before, she had no control and no certainty. But these emotions should broadcast the same as hate and rage.
Right?
She opened her eyes, half expecting to find herself bleeding out and Jael taken.
But, instead, they were all staring at her with wide, glassy eyes, mouths gaping and slack. Her head pounded so hard, she could barely hear herself speak. She had no idea how long this would hold, if it would be enough to get them back safely. But for now . . .
“I could use your help,” she said carefully.
The killers all understood universal; she could tell by the way their heads cocked. Dred strangled a half-hysterical laugh. I’ve stolen Silence’s minions. Unfortunately, she’d also robbed Jael of his free will, too, because he was gazing at her with that same rapt attention, as if she were a goddess incarnate in human flesh. None of them reacted, however, apart from waiting for her next words.
“I’m looking for some things. If I tell you what they are, would you help me find them?”
All six of the eager acolytes nodded. She listed off the remaining objects, and the killers ran with incredible alacrity to do her bidding. Maybe that wasn’t such a surprise; Silence had them conditioned to follow orders. Jael moved slower because he was weak, and she tried to get him to stop but he shook her off with a bright smile.
“I want to help.” His eyes were terrifying and blank and shining with something that was definitely not love or joy.
Her stomach churned. He’ll snap out of it. Of course he will. I’ve seen him shake off tons of damage that would’ve killed anyone else, and the rioters never had brain damage.
Well. That I inflicted.
A gloomy voice whispered, But those were physical wounds. What do you know about his mind anyway?
“Okay then. We’ll work together,” she said gently.
His expression lit up like sunrise, but there was an awful emptiness to it. She’d received smiles from him before, and they felt nothing like this. But with so much assistance, it didn’t take long at all until they located all the gear. Every minute, she kept waiting for them all to shake it off; and then she’d have to see if she had enough juice to put them under again.
So far, so good.
“I have a lot of things to move. Could you carry them for me?” Keeping her requests, or commands, rather, simple seemed like the best move.
In response, the Silent gathered up all their parts and waited. Jael tried, but she put a hand on his arm, and whispered, “Not you. Just walk with me.”
He beamed at her.
So sorry about this, you have no idea.
She’d used her broadcast abilities very little since becoming the Dread Queen, mostly because she couldn’t control the rioting. Until meeting Jael, it would’ve never occurred to her that she could also use it for peaceful ends. Since she’d overwritten their free will, it was still fairly disgusting, but better than ending up with her innards splattered on a wall. Plus, Silence had already wrecked these poor bastards anyway.
Yeah, keep rationalizing.
She took one last look around and couldn’t see anything that would be remotely useful. So she said, “Let’s go.”
They moved out as a unit and started the long march up the stairs. Dred set the pace, so it wouldn’t tax Jael too much. And if she was being honest, she had no breath to spare. Her lungs felt tight, and by now, even her hair hurt, like it was too heavy for her scalp.
It made her nervous, leaving the Silent at her back, but if they shook her emotional control, they’d make a hell of a lot of noise dropping all the junk to get at their weapons.
That gives us ten seconds, max.
• • •
THE last thing Jael remembered, they were in the repair bay, about to fight a losing battle. Next thing he knew, he was shambling along a hallway with Dred using the Silent as beasts of burden. She wasn’t paying him any attention until he said, “What the hell.”
“You’re back.” A long sigh slid out of her. “Sorry about that.”
“What?”
“For sapping your free will, mostly.”
“Holy shit.” The throbbing in his head reminded him of the worst hangover he had ever suffered. Generally, liquor didn’t affect him much, but once he’d swilled some crazy alien booze and wound up in a coma for half a day. And when he woke, well, his skull felt about like it did now—as if somebody had scooped out his brain with a spoon, put it in a food mixer, and poured it back in.
“So . . . they’re on our side?” He studied the killer closest to them, and the sod did seem to be completely docile. The group marched two by two, with Dred and Jael bringing up the rear.
“Right now they are. I’m not sure how long it’ll last. But it got us up the stairs, and from what I can tell, about halfway to the docking bay. I’m not sure the good feelings will survive fighting their cohorts, though.”
“You’re amazing,” Jael said.
