by K. B. Wagers
“Why does she need Mia?” Fasé asked.
“Because her brother stole something from us and I want it back.”
I pushed Mia and Fasé behind me as I turned to face Thyra. “Well, that’s not happening.” I gestured at the tubes. “Who are your friends?”
“The next evolution.” Thyra’s smile was a thing of horror. “The ones you saw above were the previous attempt. Failed, as you said. These are my triumph. I’ve collected samples for years and perfected it into this.” She spread her limbs wide. “Not just for an army, though, it was meant to be liberation for us from this planet.”
“You’re trapped here,” Fasé whispered, but her words echoed.
Thyra smiled, baring her teeth. “We couldn’t risk leaving Faria. Not only because our descendants might have found us, but because to be that far away from Faria was to risk going to sleep and never waking up.”
“This is not going to end the way you think it is,” I said.
“I could say the same of you, Star of Indrana. Since you refused my generous offer. I have no further use for you beyond a final test of my creation.” She tapped a limb to the panel on the tube, and the fluid inside started to drain out. “If it works, we’ll wake up all of them. They can take care of this problem and I can get back to work on the final piece of the puzzle.” She pointed a limb at Mia. “Figuring out what it is about the Shen that’s interfering in my immortality. What they stole from us when the Cevallas revolted and murdered my people.”
“Dark Mother.” I already knew the gun in my hand wouldn’t hurt Thyra, but it was worth it to fire a shot at the creature. Just to even the odds I shot at the tube and it shattered, glass flying through the air.
A scream filled the air as the top collapsed and the creature was crushed between the heavy metal and a jagged piece of glass. It thrashed a moment, grayish blood spraying outward, and then went still.
There was a moment of stunned silence.
I pushed Fasé and Mia. “Run.”
Thyra’s scream ripped at our ears as we sprinted for the doorway. I herded the pair through it and slapped the panel on the side, breathing a slight sigh of relief as it slid closed.
Thyra hit it full force, putting a dent in the metal, and I cursed, backpedaling away from the door. “Move, we need to move.”
We dodged through the smaller room, running past unknown canisters and cargo boxes as Thyra continued to hammer at the door, lost to her rage. There was an exit at the back of the room and I whispered a thank-you when I discovered it led to another hallway.
We slipped through and I shut it behind us, firing the Farian weapon into the panel. It sparked and fizzled and I prayed it was enough to jam the door permanently closed.
I was doing a lot of praying lately; either it was going to help or the gods would take notice and strike me down for my hypocrisy.
“I’m sorry, I have to rest a moment,” Mia gasped, doubling over. I reached a hand out and touched her neck; the same wall greeted me when I attempted to give her energy. But it felt weaker, less stable.
“Fasé, do you know how to get us out of here?”
“I don’t, Majesty. But there has to be an exit.”
Unless there wasn’t. A chill ran up my spine at the thought. Thyra and the others could teleport. They wouldn’t have any reason to tunnel to the surface.
“I want you both to go,” I said, touching their faces. “Find a way to the surface.”
“Hail, no.”
“I can’t fight these things and keep you safe.” Not only the creatures, but Thyra as well. She would release more of them once her rage settled, and the silence from behind us was telling me she’d calmed down enough to think. My brain was spinning, trying to come up with a solution.
I needed a fucking minute to think and I didn’t have it. I looked around the hallway, opened the closest door, and gestured them inside. “You hide, I’ll lead them off. You can double back to the river.”
“No.” Fasé’s refusal was calm and Mia shook her head. “We won’t leave you. We’re stronger together.”
“Please—”
“Hail.” Mia reached out and touched her fingers to my lips, silencing me. “We’ll do anything you ask, except leave. Now think.”
“Okay.” I dragged in a breath, and then another, some of my panic receding, and continued down the hallway at a jog. “I don’t know anything about these creatures. We can assume the gun won’t work on them.”
“But it will work on other things. Like the door panel,” Fasé said.
“Yes.”
“You could shoot something out of the ceiling on it. That seems extremely effective.”
I gave Mia a flat look. She grinned and Fasé unsuccessfully hid her own smile behind her free hand. The laugh that bubbled free from my chest was surprising and I pulled both of them into a quick hug.
“I can’t go back to that room and just shoot them all as they’re emerging,” I said as I let them go, and then paused. “Wait. You might have something.”
“I was teasing, Hail.”
“I know, but listen.” I snapped my fingers. “Basics. The gun won’t hurt Thyra and likely won’t hurt them, but regular electricity might.”
“The generators,” Fasé said.
“What do you want to bet the generators power the incubators?” I said with a sharp grin that the women echoed. “How do we get back to the river without running headlong into Thyra?”
“I don’t think we need to double back, this hallway is curving.” Fasé pointed. “Let’s keep moving and see where it dumps us.”
I exhaled. “I want you two to keep going, I’m going to cover our retreat.” I smiled at the identical looks from the two women. “I promise I’ll follow. All right?”
“You’d better,” Mia said, and though she was smiling I could see the worry in her eyes.
I sprinted back down the corridor. The silence at the jammed door was both reassuring and nerve racking as I waited for Thyra or her creatures to burst through. I wondered briefly why she hadn’t just teleported in and tried to kill us when I realized it was because she couldn’t tell where we were.
I filed the information away, ducking into the first room on the right and pulling open the cabinets to search.
Wire. Buckets. A bottle of chemicals my smati took an agonizing minute to decipher.
Iza’s voice was in my ear as I pushed myself into the far corner of the room and lined up a shot on the window facing the corridor. I covered my eyes with my other forearm and fired.
“Hail!” Fasé’s voice was clear on the coms despite my ringing ears.
“I’m all right. Just leaving a few presents.” My shot had taken out one window in its entirety and damaged the one on the other side of the hallway. I used the butt of the gun to knock the glass from that into the bucket and then stretched two lines of wire from one window to the other.
It had been funny when Iza had done it to Indula. The wires had been harmless rubber tubes that did little more than land my BodyGuard on his ass when he came sliding into their quarters. These probably wouldn’t kill anything following us unless we got lucky, but it would hurt and it would slow them down.
I slung the weapon over my shoulder, grabbed the bottle in one hand and the bucket in the other, and headed for the next bend in the hallway.
“It’s dangerous, Majesty.” Kisah’s voice had echoed up in my memory when I’d seen the chemical name. “It’ll burn through skin, clothing, concrete if given enough time. If you can dump it on an enemy, you can do serious damage, but even just pouring it out for them to walk through will slow them down. All the better if they slip and fall in it.”
I opened the bottle with a sleeve-covered hand and laid it carefully on its side, watching as the clear, slightly viscous liquid chugged out and spread across the white tiled floor.
I caught up with Mia and Fasé. It was hard to tell if Mia was improving or if she was just as determined as I was to stay ahead of the things
chasing us. “Rest a moment,” I said, and set the bucket off to one side. “I want to look at something. Fasé, do you have a knife?”
She pulled one out of her pocket with a smile. “I asked Johar for one before we left. I thought you might need it.”
I took it and flipped it open, prying away the casing on the Farian weapon. “You know what I like about energy weapons?” I asked. “No one gets fancy with them. These innards look the same as any of the human models and as any of the Shen ones. We got it from you, or vice versa, it doesn’t even matter.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to overload the power. Kaboom.” Grinning, I tipped my head at the bucket. “Even better with it jammed into that bucket. The energy from this gun can hurt Thyra and her creations with a little help from the glass.”
My com fuzzed in my ear as if someone were trying to get a hold of me, and I looked at Fasé. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes.”
“Emmory, this is Hail, do you copy?”
There was only silence. Then a crash and the sound of metal screaming in protest echoed down the hallway.
“Go,” I said to Fasé. “I have to guess at the timing on this and I want you two as far away as possible. Get to the generators. I’ll meet you there.”
“Hail—” Mia broke off at the screams that rent the air.
“That was one,” I said. “Go.”
They ran. I waited, listening for the sound of the second set of screams as Thyra’s creatures hit the chemical spill, and when that came I turned back to the gun. Three wires, pulled free and twisted together. A minute, maybe less.
I remembered Portis’s terrified look the first time I’d shown him this and smiled as I jammed the nose of the gun down into the glass shards.
I was sprinting down the corridor when the gun went off, the explosion shaking the hallway around me, and I allowed myself to hope that at least one if not more of the super soldiers had been injured in my impromptu explosion as I slid through the open doorway in front of me.
I was on the opposite side of the river. Fasé and Mia were nowhere in sight, a fact I was grateful for when the blow hit me from behind and sent me flying.
I hit the ground, rolled, and came up on my feet, the knife still in my hand. Thyra rushed me, furious and bleeding.
“You killed them!”
“Oh, thank Shiva.” I had the chance to breathe out the words just a split second before she hit me again. I felt the knife strike something and thrust my arm forward; her yelp of pain and sudden backpedaling gave me just enough room to scramble free.
Straight into one of the creatures.
Fuck, she’d been smart enough to wake up more than one to send after me.
The extra energy from the river was still humming under my skin, but I didn’t want to be distracted in a fight with this creature. I dodged, but not fast enough to avoid Thyra’s super soldier, who grabbed me by the arm and flung me into the air. I flew across the river and crashed into one of the generators, hitting it hard enough to leave a dent before I slid to the floor.
“Only two left?” I spat the blood out of my mouth as I staggered to my feet, staring at Thyra and her creatures on the other side of the river. “You should have woken them all up.”
“I am going to take you apart myself,” she snarled. “Find the Shen. Bring her back to me.”
The soldiers jumped over the river in a single leap. I knew better than to watch them and dragged my eyes away just in time to see Thyra take her own leap and land in front of me.
Jo’s never going to let you live this down if you lose this fight.
The irrational thought made me laugh and I could see the confusion flash across Thyra’s face before she lunged at me.
Everything fell away. All the pain. My worry over Fasé and Mia and the two creatures now hunting them through the rows of generators. My fear that this was it, the final moments of my life if I couldn’t avoid her second strike.
I discarded it all to fight the way Aiz had taught me.
Ducking under Thyra’s swing, I brought my right hand around with the knife and plunged it into her side just below the first wound.
A wound that was already closing.
I remembered Thyra’s scoffing reply about healing and knew I couldn’t afford to let this fight go on for any length of time. I jerked my hand up and Thyra screamed. Her limb hit me right in the face and I staggered backward.
She was faster than me and a searing pain cut through my chest. Thyra yanked her limb free with a wicked smile and for a second I thought she’d killed me with her first hit. But then my heart beat a painful tattoo against the inside of my ribs and I coughed, blood flying into the air, spattering over Thyra’s grinning face.
“Don’t get so focused on the weapons in your hands, Hail, that you forget you are the weapon.” The memory of Aiz’s advice was barely a whisper over the pounding of my heart, followed immediately by Mia’s words. “This can save your life, don’t hesitate to use it. Especially where the Farian Hiervet are involved. It may be the only thing you have left to fight with when the time comes.”
I dropped the knife and caught Thyra’s limb with both hands before she could impale me a second time. The pain was rolling through me—collapsed and punctured lung, hole front to back, broken nose, wrenched shoulder, too many other things to catalog. The energy from the river surged through me, mixing with my pain, and I pulled on it all, focusing it out of my hands into her skin.
The noise she made was indescribable, nearly drowned out by the sudden, booming explosion deep within the incubator room, and I held on as she tried to get free.
“I need you to remember,” I said as she dragged us both to the ground. “You chose this. I tried to save you. I offered you a better way and you chose this.”
My smati was screaming a hundred warnings at me and I ignored them all.
“You are an abomination,” Thyra gasped. “A thing that should not exist.”
“Sybil knew I was your death from the beginning.” I could taste the hot copper of my own blood on my tongue and could feel the flickering of her life like a candle in the darkness. “I am the Star of Indrana.”
It took no more than a thought to extinguish her, and her wide eyes closed as she went limp beneath me.
Oh Dark Mother, what have I done? I staggered away from her, dragging a breath into one lung as the other was useless. The pain spiked through me and I went down on a knee.
Two more. There are still two more. Get up, Hail.
The voice in my head. My father’s voice. Or my mother’s. Emmory’s. Aiz’s. Hao’s. Gita’s. Johar’s. I wasn’t sure who it was. All I knew was I wanted to obey, but I couldn’t.
I tried, sobbing, for another breath that wouldn’t come. Heard my own smati flatline and the strange buzz of my com before I collapsed, facedown on the ground next to the river.
44
Hail, wake up.”
The voice cut through my nausea and the bitter tang of blood filled my mouth and nose when I inhaled, rusted iron and the awful smell of death. For a moment I floundered, lost in a memory that seemed so far away.
“Easy there, Hail. We’ve got you.”
I blinked up at Johar and Gita in confusion.
“That was exciting. I think I just saved your life,” Jo said with a smile. “Don’t move, I just patched the worst of it. Someone who’s better at this needs to do the heavy lifting and they’re still a minute out.”
“Those creatures, Fasé, Mia—”
“They’re fine. It’s taken care of. Seriously, Hail, keep your ass down.” Johar pushed on my chest with a little more force and the pain made me see stars. “You did some damage in here when you all blew things the hell up. Sybil’s got the place locked down from above. We’ve got Captain Zov’s people and some Selan doing a sweep. I want you to hold still.”
“Not me, Fasé and Mia blew it up. Where are they?”
More pressure. More pain. I coug
hed and Johar lifted an eyebrow.
“Mia and Fasé are fine,” Gita replied. “They’re on the other side of the river. It’s all right, Majesty. We’ve got it under control.”
Her reassurance finally sank in and I let my head fall back against the stone floor. The alarms were still screaming in my head and I turned them off with a thought.
It was done. I could scarcely believe those words. The weight of the prophecy and everything it carried lifted off me and I blinked back the tears of relief welling up in my eyes.
“Majesty?”
“I’m all right.” I felt about for Gita’s hand, laughing as the absurdity of that statement hit and then cursing as the pain followed. “Hai Ram, she got some good shots in.”
“She stabbed you, Majesty.”
“Oh yeah, that was her fucking limb. That’s twice.” I reached up and rubbed a hand over my forehead. “I don’t want to ever do that again, Gita. Next time tell me fighting genetically engineered super soldiers is a bad idea.”
“I believe I told you this time.”
I was alternating between laughing and wincing from the pain when Aiz appeared, Biea at his side.
Relief was hotter than the blood oozing out of my chest. “Look at you, Aiz Cevalla, not dead after all.”
“Sybil found me. I’m starting to agree with your Ekam, Hail,” he said, kneeling at my side and putting a hand over the gaping wound still throbbing in my chest. “You end up covered in blood far more than a human should.”
I reached a hand up to his face, surprised not only by my shaking fingers but the fresh tears in my eyes. “You’re really not dead.”
“I am really not dead. Neither is Mia and neither are you. I knew you could do it.” He smiled and then the familiar jolt of energy streaked through my system like lightning. I gasped, letting go of Gita to grab his wrist as my vision whited out for a moment. “Breathe,” Aiz murmured, leaning down and touching his lips to my forehead.
“I killed her,” I whispered. “I snuffed her out with a thought.” I heard Gita gasp and I was gripped by a sudden and desperate fear. “Take this away, Aiz, please. I shouldn’t have this much power.”
