by AJ Super
“The machine,” Nyx gasped. “I have to stop the machine.” The wails in the corners of her mind crescendoed into a dissonance of semi-conscious pleas for help. She and Matthews were strapped to the mind-stripper tables, half-aware and in pain. Matthews’ screams had shattered the barrier between the white room and the physical world.
He nodded, head bowed. “You have to stop the machine. I know you do. But it’s too bad. I was looking forward to a wee nap.” He rubbed his temple. “As painful as getting to that nap was going to be.”
Nyx stood and wheeled around the room, no doors, no windows, no way to get out. “How do I do that?” She gasped. There was nothing here she could do. No way to escape. She couldn’t help the man, and she couldn’t help herself.
“You walk out. Nue had full control of her construct. You do too. It’ll just take practice.” Matthews cringed. “But whatever you do, if you want to save yourself, and us, you’ll need to do it quickly. You won’t survive this for long either. If you have half the abilities your mother had, you still won’t be able to survive having your brain fried.” He put his hands to his head, squinting. “And neither will I.”
If this was in her head, a safe space in her code, her blood, she should be able to create a door and walk out. She had to save Matthews. He was the only one left, and he had so many answers that she needed. She couldn’t let him die. There had to be someone left for her, to teach her, to connect with her.
Nyx closed her eyes. She imagined a door in the wall by the divan.
Matthews collapsed next to her, writhing with his hands to his head, moaning. The machine was beginning to break through the safety of her construct and work through Matthews’ brain. It wouldn’t take long for it to begin to do the same to her.
Nyx’s eyes unfocused on the darkness of her eyelids. She tasted blood where she bit her cheek.
She opened her eyes.
A simple arched doorway rose next to the side-table and divan, glowing with white light. Long tendrils of smoke hovered and flittered across the frame. Each of those wisps meant pain, the doorway meant pain. Getting through the doorway would conquer the machine, overloading its circuits with a backflow of data, her whole brain passing through the circuits, too many memories to process at once and too much code to translate. Conquering her pain meant she would have to embrace the flow of her power, each ethereal breath, the embodiment of the code in her blood. She would have to jump.
Matthews squirmed on the floor, fetal. Materializing the door let in the rest of his pain. She needed to get him up and out with her. She bent, wrenched one of his arms loose, and pulled it over her shoulder. Heaving him upwards, Matthews cried out.
She wrapped her arm around his waist and yanked him forward, his weight dragging her down. She couldn’t leave him behind in this blank room in her mind. He would be fine here, yes, but he would be lost, his life-energy turned to meaningless code in her operating system.
Nyx stared at the glowing door. Reaching a hand forward, a kaleidoscope of smoky tendrils floated from the exit. They encircled Nyx’s arm, whirling around in a storm of white. Nyx touched the door. The wisps lifted off the frame and swirled around her. She pushed it open.
White light covered her in slowly evanescing pearlescent wisps. Pain shot through her like a starship colliding with a sun. It flared, burned, peeled her skin, tore her muscles, broke her bones. She stutter-stepped through the door, lost her grip on Matthews and fell to her knees. Crimson fire flashed behind her eyes, blinding. She gripped her head, pain crushing her skull. The tendrils of flame shot through her veins, traveling through her blood.
Nyx struggled to her feet. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep going. Feeling blindly for Matthews, she gathered him up. Fire in her veins, she dragged his paralyzed body through the door. Her stomach roiled and vomit bubbled up her throat.
The conduit above her showered sparks. The dim blue lights flickered, and the air smelled of burning plastic and ozone. Smoke rose above Nyx in a thin white wisp, curling around the wires and conduits twisted above the padded chrome tables.
Joshua pulled his ponytail out and ran his hands through his hair, then pulled it back, and put it into a tail again. He punched at the console. “Something’s wrong. The mesh isn’t working. The memory download is… huge? Mes Étoiles? Shoving that much code into a system this small. It’ll overload… Gotta get it out. Gotta unload the…” He turned around and kicked the lock off of the table and stood Nyx upright. He pulled the pins from the mesh helmet. A trickle of blood blossomed on her forehead and temples. Joshua’s fist grazed her bloody temple as he unclipped the head restraint.
As soon as he touched her, he glowed a faint apricot. Nyx weakly glanced around the room. No one else reacted to his lightly burning orange iridescence. Only she could see the whorls of light. She was conscious of the tendrils of white stretching out from her, reaching for his soft glow. The fire in Nyx’s veins ignited a bright white as she connected to the spirals of apricot. Her powers worked.
Joshua unclipped her wrist, waist, and ankle restraints and swept around to Captain Matthews as Nyx collapsed in a puddle of limbs at the base of the tilted chrome table.
Malcam pulled his pistol and waved it at Joshua. “What are you doing? Does she remember yet? Finish the job.”
“I don’t know. Whatever is going on, my system is fried. I can’t do anything without burning them up. Literally. You wanted them alive. I don’t want to crispify them on my equipment,” Joshua spat. “If you want them dead, I suggest you kill them yourself. Besides, if you want her to remember, I can’t get this to work if they’re dead. It would be a waste.”
Joshua’s apricot spirals beckoned. She pulled a little. They slithered to her.
Joshua stopped in his tracks. “It’s late. Curfew is past. I think you should leave,” he muttered. “And take your, uh, prisoners with you.”
Nyx pulled a little more, dimming his pale orange light. Joshua slumped.
“Nyx?” a hoarse whisper sounded from behind her. “He had blood on his hand.”
Nyx leaned against the table. She turned weakly to Matthews. “Why does he glow?”
“Energy. You’re seeing his energy. Turn it off. Don’t see it anymore. Let him go. Do what you need to do to stop, or you’ll kill him.” Matthews slid to the ground with a whoosh of air from his lungs.
Nyx stared at the glowing Joshua. Kill him. There was only one person in this room who deserved to die. She unwound her white tendrils from Joshua’s apricot radiance.
Nyx glimpsed Malcam’s blue light. It pulsed. Matthews said she could kill Joshua with this power, so all she had to do was kill Malcam instead, and this would be over. If she coiled her airy white vines into his blue whorls, she could kill him now, be done with it. All she had to do was twine her light with his and… she wasn’t sure. Do what she did to make him old, maybe?
She had to pull, pull his light until it went out. But there was something under his light, a strong white flame feeding his brilliant blue miasma, making it pulse with the rhythm of the white light swirling around her.
The sleepy fingers of her light expanded. Her light contracted, a cinching knot. The white flame within Malcam responded with her breath.
The wrinkled, gaunt Malcam caught her staring at him. “What?” He waved his gun. “Get up.”
She crawled to her feet.
Joshua sank in the seat by the console. He poked at the display, eyes drooping, shoulders down, woozy.
“How did you do it?” Malcam shoved the gun at Nyx. “How did you break the machine?”
Nyx glared. His blue waves washed towards her.
Matthews crawled to his feet. He stumbled towards Red, her rifle trained on him.
“Stay,” Red ordered.
As she raised the rifle, Matthews lunged and swept the barrel to the side.
Nyx ducked as the bullet pinged off of the chrome table behind her. Matthews was being reckless.
Red pushed him away. He clung to the g
un, dragging her down on top of him. Malcam swung his pistol towards the commotion. Nyx jumped forward, barreling into Malcam. His gun spun from his hand. She connected with his blue glow and pulled. His energy flowed into hers, and flowed, and flowed. It wouldn’t stop. The white fire below fed his blue light, pulsating with her every breath.
Every pull of the entwining blue incandescence made his white fire grow, feeding the blue brightly.
Malcam’s face filled out, became less gaunt. It wasn’t youthful, but it wasn’t aged to decrepitude. His hair greyed, darkened, became the same dishwater blonde with a few wisps of silver.
Malcam pushed her off. He turned his once knobby hands in front of him. No longer liver-spotted and thin skinned, they were rough and worn, young again. He flexed them. “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up, Nyxie. You’ll make me invincible yet.”
She unwound her white light from his blue and recoiled. What she was doing was having the opposite effect she meant. She wasn’t pulling the life from him. The power made Malcam younger by stoking the white flame feeding his blue aura. She clung to Malcam, struggling on the damp, dusty floor. She couldn’t make people invincible, could she?
The white flame was the key. It breathed with her breath, beat with her heartbeat. Matthews had said she left a bit of herself when she infected someone, this must be that bit. She willed her white wisps around the little white flame feeding Malcam’s blue tidal fires… and pressed down, smothering it.
Malcam’s grip on her loosened, and his cerulean eyes drooped. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not going to let you kill us,” Nyx hissed. She glimpsed the gun laying on the ground and slithered out of his grasp.
Malcam turned his head lethargically, reaching for the gun.
Nyx’s fingertips grazed the smooth wooden grip. She fumbled it towards her. His outstretched hands feebly gripped her wrists, and she ripped them away, pulling the pistol closer.
Rolling over, Nyx leveled the gun at him. She writhed away from his stretched form, pressing her tendrils into the white flame, smothering it out.
Matthews stood over Red with the rifle pointed down. The woman sat with her hands at her head. “Took you long enough.” He smirked.
Nyx breathed hard and pushed away from Malcam, muscles shaking. He wasn’t invincible, and they would get away from these two. They would find a way off of Elysion. They would live. She would figure out what she was. Matthews would help her. She grit her teeth and tightened her finger on the trigger of the weapon.
Malcam coughed and lay sprawled on the ground. “So much for keeping promises,” he whispered and closed his eyes.
A chime sounded in the room.
Joshua looked up from his console.
“What?” Nyx said, knees up, pistol aimed at Malcam between her legs. She glanced around the room. Malcam’s flame was almost out, nothing more than a spark.
The chime jingled again.
Joshua grinned tiredly. “That’s the authorities wanting to find out what fish they caught in their little net. I did say they were watching this place. But no one listened.” He keyed something on the console without looking at the display.
“Is there a back door?” Nyx scrambled to her knees and scanned the room for an exit, tendrils untwining from Malcam’s faded blue eddies as she lost focus. “A way out?”
Joshua snorted. “Back door is in the other room. This is just supposed to be a closet for storage.”
Matthews snorted. “Awful big closet.”
Nyx looked at Malcam. How was she supposed to get out of being arrested with Malcam? He was the captain of the Medusa now, after all. Would the Queen’s Guard see Matthews and her as the victims of a kidnapping and torture plot if she played it right?
Malcam groaned softly.
Nyx peered at the door. It didn’t matter. Malcam had tortured her and Matthews, and had nearly killed them. He had killed Kai. He had killed the Thanatos and everyone on her. He had killed Erebus. He was going to die.
Nyx tightened her finger around the trigger and pulled. The gun went off with a soft pop. Blood saturated the front of Malcam’s long grey jacket. She’d shot him in the chest.
She wobbled. She had just shot their only way off of the planet. The Queen’s Guard wouldn’t let Matthews and her go without a viable scapegoat, especially without them being physically on the mind-stripper to prove they had been tortured. At the moment, they didn’t exactly look like they were the ones who were in distress.
The door clicked open.
Nyx turned her head, preparing to aim the gun at the person standing in the doorway. She needed a way out, and if she took an authority figure of some kind hostage, she might be able to save Matthews and herself.
Her breath stopped.
Kai stepped into the dim blue light of the room.
26
Nyx swung the gun at Kai, a low roar building in her chest. Kai stood squarely in the doorway, his broad shoulders shadowed in the dim, flickering light. His fine, squared jaw set, and he scowled.
The air left Nyx’s lungs in a giant rush. Kai was alive. He was alive. Her legs tensed to run to him. She wanted to fling her arms around his neck. But her muscles stiffened, finger on the trigger of the pistol. He had killed her mother.
“I forgave you,” she whispered. “You couldn’t just stay dead. Stay forgiven.”
Energy poured off of him. She could see it, if no one else could. He shone a fiery red with a little white flame sparkling within the glimmering tendrils. She must have done something to him. Infected him the day he was shot on the Medusa. He shouldn’t have survived, but because of her blood, somehow, he did. The gun quivered in her hand.
She glanced back at Malcam, his mouth grim, bleeding slowly on the floor. “Why are you alive?” Nyx asked breathlessly.
Kai ran a smoky-bronze hand through his dark hair, eyes hard as he stared at Malcam. “What’s going on, Nyx?”
“Answer me.” She trembled.
“The Thanatos jumped away as soon as the torpedo hit the Calliope.” He turned to Nyx. “I had a crew to save,” he said, regret in his voice. “I couldn’t stay.”
He hadn’t even been conscious when she had last seen him. He had barely been breathing. There was no way he could have ordered the Thanatos to do anything. “You were dead,” she whispered.
“I was? Don’t remember that.” He cast his gaze around the dank room. He tilted his head. “I… came to save you…” He flicked his gun lazily towards her. “Why are you aiming that at me?”
Falak squeezed through the doorway, pushing Kai aside, pistol held in two hands and at the ready. Elizabet followed him. They both scanned the room.
Nyx’s heart stopped. They were all alive. The entire crew of the Thanatos. She opened her mouth and closed it. She wanted to ask where they had been. If they had been tracking the Medusa. If Erebus had tried to let her know that they were coming for her. She wanted to know so many things.
Malcam sputtered in the corner, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Wish I had died before I knew I hadn’t killed them all. Putain de vie.” He chuckled and coughed. “Putain, the princeling should be dead. You know that, right? Tyco shot him, point blank.”
She gaped at Kai. He was right. They all should be dead because she had failed them.
The Thanatos crew had come back to haunt her.
Malcam sat up against the wall, panting. “You know that gunshot hurt. But I’m feeling pretty good now.”
Nyx waved the pistol at him. “Shut up. It’s probably just shock.”
Kai smirked. “Are you just going to stare at me?”
Nyx pulled her lips tight. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. He had killed her maman, and she couldn’t forgive that.
But she already had. She had absolved him of his guilt not long ago.
Her finger tightened on the trigger as he took a couple steps towards her. The gun went off with two quick click-bangs. Kai ducked as the bullets hit the doorframe above
his head.
“Stay there.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. What was she supposed to do with the two men who killed her parents? She could twine her energy with Kai’s and put out the little white flame feeding the red conflagration around him. She could do the same to the part of her left in Malcam’s fiery blue tide. But what would that make her? She would be no better than the two men before her. Nothing but a killer. A pirate. No better than the two liars who had kept the truth from her for her entire life.
Kai put up his hands. “Well, this is turning into an interesting rescue.”
“Why’d you come?” She nodded to Betty and Falak helping Matthews with Red. She understood bringing the lithe, platinum blonde markswoman. Betty was good with a gun. She didn’t understand bringing Falak. He was inexperienced on a ground team. Though, he could probably come in handy with the operation of something like the mind-stripping equipment, if necessary.
“I thought you’d need help.”
“We’ve got it handled,” Nyx ground out.
“You’re a little late.” Matthews grimaced and said simultaneously, nodding to Malcam bleeding out on the floor. “We were expecting someone else.”
Kai raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Matthews shrugged.
Nyx blinked, still holding the gun on Kai. If he, Falak, and Betty were alive, that meant… Erebus… Her hand sagged.
Kai strode to Nyx and holstered his weapon as he stripped the pistol from Nyx’s hand. He snapped at Betty and pointed at Malcam. The woman came to attention and aimed her pistol at the gasping man. Falak pulled a couple plastic ties from a bag at his waist, and Matthews grabbed Red’s wrists to bind them.
Kai wrapped his arms around Nyx. She buried her head in his muscular chest, his black jacket covering her face. His warm body surrounded her.
Kai smiled, lopsided. He smoothed his hand across her cheek. “It’s a good thing that Erebus infected the Medusa. Made it really easy to track Malcam here.”
