by C. R. Jane
I was becoming a monster.
Shivering, I made myself peek back over the trunk. I had to look. I had to know what I was becoming.
In the darkness, I couldn’t see anything. Hades had stopped lighting up the night with his silver, though I could still hear the howling and the occasional yelp of pain. Who was winning? How many had attacked? Where was Kharon?
Then it dawned on me.
One of those shifted animals had to be the other alien. One Thracian, against a mass of six or seven enraged monsters. Maybe more.
Another pulse of liquid moonlight poured over the snarling fight. It was weaker, as if Hades’ weapon was almost out of juice, but it was enough for me to get a better count. It was bad. Ten. Maybe more.
The man who’d pulled me out of a mass grave was in that biting, clawing pile. Ten to one. Even with Hades trying to help him, he was losing.
They needed help.
I felt around on the ground, trying to find something to use as a weapon. A stick. Anything. Someone had tried to break into that trunk earlier… There. My fingers wrapped around cold steel. A crowbar. It was better than nothing.
Keeping low, I raced closer, trying to decide how I could help. A simple distraction wouldn’t be enough. I had to get all the beasts to focus on me so Kharon could at least escape.
I was dying anyway. I might as well make myself useful.
“Hey!” I yelled, wincing at the raw sound. My throat and mouth were so dry. Just moving my lips made them crack and bleed. “Get out of there, you mangy beasts! Leave him alone!”
The snarls changed to high-pitched yips that made me think of hyenas. Of course, the fuckers were laughing at me. The stupid, helpless woman. A hapless human with no shoes, no food or water, no shelter. No weapon but a crowbar.
Rage pulsed in me.
I hated feeling helpless. But more, I hated feeling useless.
A sound rolled out of my chest that scared the shit out of me. A bellow of fury that no human throat would ever make. I charged forward, swinging the crowbar left and right. Blindly. Wildly. I couldn’t see much in the darkness, but I could hear their panting breaths. I could smell them. A sharp, dangerous musk that no natural animal would have. That scent made the hairs quiver on my nape.
I need light. I need to see!
Brilliant blue light swept across the ground, illuminating the closest beast. I swung the crowbar with all my strength at its head. All my rage. All my fear. The senseless unfairness of billions of people suffering and dying. The horror of waking in a mass grave. All of it.
My arm thudded, the crowbar digging into my palm. Dark, wet fluid splashed me. Bone crunched. The high-pitched yip turned to a squeal of pain. A warning to the others as its head caved in.
I staggered off balance, overpowered by the might of my swing. Something fiery hot raked over my ribs. Whirling toward it, I pushed more power into the crowbar arcing through the air and connected with another body. Another heavy thud. A strangled howl of pain.
I lifted the crowbar again, cocked over my shoulder like a baseball bat.
I definitely had their attention, though three or four of them still had Kharon down on the ground. He was bigger than all of them, but they’d pinned his wings, trapping him. Wings. Holy fuck. They battered against the ground, trying to break free. So at least I knew he wasn’t dead yet.
“What the fuck are you?” The nearest beast asked in a garbled voice like metal shrieking on a chalkboard.
This wolf-monster had once been human. He still possessed enough intelligence to communicate and speak, despite the mutations in his body.
Something flipped in my mind. A light turned on, illuminating a corridor lined with three-ring binders. Years of research.
My research.
“You’re nearing stage four,” I said calmly. “It’s impressive that you’ve managed to retain your speech for so long. Most subjects lose that ability during stage three.”
As if he didn’t have vicious claws and teeth that could tear me in half, I stepped closer to him and looked into his eyes. “Interesting. Your pupils have enlarged considerably. Are you mostly nocturnal? Or have you adjusted to daylight, unlike our alien friends?”
“Sun. Hurts.” He shook his head up and down vigorously. “Still go.”
More of the beasts edged closer to me, away from Kharon. Perfect. Though he was still down on the ground. I didn’t turn my head and look for Hades, but I could only hope he was smart enough to figure out that I was trying to make a crude diversion.
:I am.: His musical voice tinkled in my head. :You forgot your shields.:
:Sorry. Get him out of here.:
:What about you?:
Ignoring him, I focused on the beast crouched before me. Even hunched over on all fours, he towered over me a foot or more. His shaggy, misshapen head ducked down closer, making my heart leap up in my throat. But I kept talking in my calm doctor’s voice.
“Your pulse is quite rapid. Are you feverish? It feels like your body temperature has risen at least three or four degrees. I wish I had my medical equipment to run some tests. Do you know when you contracted the virus? How long have you been in stage four?”
The beast reared up on his hind legs and roared. “No tests!”
I shrank back a step before I caught myself. If he was mostly animal now, then I couldn’t risk showing any fear. Not until the aliens slipped away. Two of the beasts still had Kharon pinned on the ground. One on each of his wings. :Are you alright?:
He huffed out a disgusted groan. :I’m afraid my pride is in tatters, but I can port us to safety.:
I had no idea what that meant, but with a snarling, slobbering beast glaring with red beady eyes, I didn’t ask for an explanation. “No tests, no tests,” I said soothingly, lifting my hands. “I only want to help. Did you see some doctors before?”
“Cage,” he growled, shaking his head back and forth. “Bad.”
“How long ago? Do you know where you were?”
“City.”
Hope soared inside me. A city—with people. Scientists. Maybe we hadn’t lost everything yet. If he’d been in a cage before reaching stage four… that could have been recently. I still had too many gaping holes in my memory to pull up all the statistics on the virus yet, but I knew it acted quickly. “Which city? Are there still people there? People who aren’t sick?”
“Dead.”
That quickly, he destroyed my hope that somewhere, civilization still existed.
:Come closer to us,: Hades whispered in my mind.
I shook my head slightly. :That’s not how diversions work.:
:It’s not a diversion. It’s an escape.:
“Why were you hurting my friend?” I asked the beast.
“N…” He grimaced, showing a dark maw of ginormous stained teeth. “Na…”
Growling with frustration, he snapped at my face. I gritted my teeth, refusing to back down. If I showed fear…
Instead of being buried beneath dead bodies, I’d be at the bottom of a snarling pile of monsters.
Silver suddenly flooded the space in front of me, searing my eyeballs. The monsters howled with pain. Something grabbed me. I didn’t realize it was Kharon—back in his human form—until he growled out, “Navigator, motherfuckers.”
And then the world fell away from my feet.
Chapter 4
Time stopped. Here, in this perfect moment, nothing mattered.
I stood in the eye of a hurricane, only it wasn’t winds circling around me. I caught glimpses of places, even other planets. Red skies, purple waters, giant green trees… mixed with deserts and ice, burned out cities and shimmering oceans. I had a sense of entire worlds so far away that my mind couldn’t even comprehend the distance. Time seemed stretched out before me, a road to travel. Go forward in time. Go back.
Infinite possibilities.
Futures. Pasts. Lives that didn’t—couldn’t—exist in my current plane. It was like standing in a funhouse and seeing myself proje
cted hundreds of thousands of times, over and over, with slightly different mirrors. Only instead of taking my image and distorting it, these mirrors were openings.
:Parallel universes.: Kharon’s distinctive low, rough voice was already familiar, even in my head. :Gateways to the unknown. Maybe one’ll dump us into a boiling lake of acid on a distant planet with an unbreathable atmosphere. Or maybe just a cave in the mountains that’s relatively safe.: He huffed out a laugh. :Only the navigator knows which door to use. But you’d better have enough juice to hold the door open, or it’ll suck you into an endless black hole.:
I’d only known him and his friend a few hours, but I held on to his voice like a life preserver in a raging sea.
He’d been willing to dig through a stinking pile of infected, mutated corpses to save a stranger. That sealed it forever for me. I could trust that he wouldn’t turn his back on me when things got bad, because what could be worse than that mass graveyard? He’d already braved that and told a joke while doing it.
I couldn’t see Hades, but I felt him in the void. Pure silver light and music, against leathery wings and fur.
Something else was here with us. It bled a deep indigo light around me, flowing between iridescent purple and blue. For some reason, it reminded me of wings. Not Kharon’s dragon-like wings though.
:Like I said before,: Kharon drawled. :I don’t know what the fuck you are, but you aren’t human. No human has ever stood in the Spiral. Let alone radiated a power signature like a Nyxosi.:
My mind ground and skipped like a junky, rusted-out jalopy. :What are you talking about? Me? That light is me?:
:It’s beautiful,: Hades whispered like a wind chime. :I’ve never seen this aura color before.: His silver flowed closer, and I could feel it gliding through the indigo light.
As if that light was an extension of my body.
My knees trembled. I clenched my jaws, fighting back a sob or a scream or a plea. I wasn’t sure which. My mind buzzed with static, too fast. Too high-pitched. A generator approaching a red-line explosion.
I was in the white room again.
But it was different. Colder. The light was so damned bright. Tears kept leaking from my eyes, even when I kept them squeezed shut. I was so cold. I was going to shatter my teeth if they kept chattering so hard.
The light shifted away, letting me see through watery eyes. It took me a moment to realize I was on my back.
I was on the table. Looking up at the doctor. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew him. His name was right there… slightly out of reach. I knew him well. Someone I trusted.
Then why did my stomach clench so hard? Why did I fight the straps holding me down?
Because I would rip off his face with my teeth if I could.
Falling. The whirling hurricane swept me away into a roaring deluge. I windmilled and tumbled, sliding ever further into infinite space. A black hole had me. I was lost forever.
But… I gritted my teeth, straining to right myself. I can’t. Fail. Not until I’ve had my revenge.
I had no idea why it was so important to me.
Only that I couldn’t give up. Not yet.
Something warm caught me. Soft fur. Kharon. He smelled like leather.
:And you smell like a fucking corpse,: he growled in my head.
I didn’t even care. I didn’t have the energy. With his warmth wrapped around me, I couldn’t seem to open my eyes. I couldn’t lift my head. I had no idea where we were going. What had happened? What the fuck was the Spiral thing he mentioned? The aura?
The blue light had seemed a part of me. I didn’t know what that meant.
He shifted me and something else filled my nose. I inhaled deeply, trying to place the scent. It was familiar, but foreign. It triggered a reaction deep inside me, as if I’d smelled it before, even though I’d never met Hades until they’d pulled me from the grave. So how could I recognize his scent?
He smelled… woodsy. Like a man’s typical aftershave, but no tree scent that I’d ever smelled before. It was musky, spicy, but also herbal and fresh. I really had no idea what it was, other than he smelled good, as good as his friend.
I finally managed to crack my eyes open, somehow surprised to see that we still stood in the center of the swirling worlds. The way my stomach had dropped and my head had spun, I had been falling. I was sure of it.
Hades held me in his arms, while Kharon manipulated the spinning worlds. Hands up, palms out, he worked his hands in front of him, pulling the mirrors closer and then sending them away. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but finally he let out a low grunt of satisfaction and turned to face us.
:Take my hand, Thanatos. See through my eyes so you know what you’re capable of.:
I laid my fingers against his.
The spiral of worlds suddenly stilled, frozen in place. The mirror shimmered before us, large enough to step through. I couldn’t see much but a dark interior on the other side, but as Hades stepped closer to it, the mixture of silver and blue light bled into the space, illuminating rock walls.
:This place is only known to me,: Kharon said. :It’s where we’ve been hiding out since we escaped MedCorp.:
That name made my stomach heave and my skin crawl.
:Now you know where it is,: he continued. :You know how to get there from anyplace in the universe. The door is open to you.:
:How? I don’t understand.:
Squeezing my hand, he stepped through the mirror, Hades carrying me right beside him. :You’re a navigator too.:
:With a Nyxosi power signature,: Hades added. :A human with both alien powers.:
The world snapped into place around us, though my mind lagged, stuck back in that whirling hurricane. For a moment, I existed in two places. There… and this distance place. It felt like hundreds of miles stretched between, while my brain struggled to reconcile the two.
Kharon grunted, a soft growl that echoed in the cavern. “Somebody cooked up a human mixed with not one but two alien species’ DNA. No need to guess who.”
My head swam. I wanted to vomit again. I couldn’t breathe.
Bodies were stacked on me again. Miles and miles of dead.
And I was at the bottom.
MedCorp. I had been there. I had been their lead scientist. All the tests and trials and simulated recombinants.
I had been there. I had fucking led the vaccination trials.
Me.
Chapter 5
Sick and weak, I faded in and out over the next few hours. Days. I wasn’t sure.
I tried to tell them. Warn them.
I was guilty.
I was a monster, worse than any of those poor unfortunate creatures who’d attacked Kharon. But I could only manage incoherent mumbles.
I still couldn’t remember everything, but I knew that I had been at the heart of MedCorp’s research. How I had been contaminated and left for dead in that mass grave, I had no idea.
I carried something inside me that was even worse than the pandemic virus that had decimated Earth’s population. For all I knew, I was still contagious. I could be the equivalent of Typhoid Mary, sent out into the few last stragglers trying to carve out a place of safety in a savage world of contaminated human shifters who were losing their humanity day by day. I carried a ticking bomb inside me. A cocktail virus of alien DNA.
If Hades and Kharon contracted this new strain from me…
I woke from a fever dream, drenched in sweat. So weak I could barely turn my head. I was still changing. Hyper-aware, I could feel cells firing up inside me. Others dying. Killed and devoured by the virus ravaging my body.
I had to get away from them. Before I killed the two people who’d saved me.
It took all my strength to roll over. Panting softly, I lay there in the darkness, listening. My senses were heightened. I could feel body heat radiating to my left. I turned my head slightly, and in the darkness, I could see the heat flaring up from the two men’s sleeping bodies. It was like I’d put on thermal-ima
ging goggles. Kharon ran hotter than the other man, bright red and orange against purple blue. They were wrapped together, legs entwined. Hades’ head was on the other man’s chest, his hair spilled out like a silken blanket.
Looking at them made my throat tighten. Tears burned my eyes. They were so fucking beautiful. They’d risked everything to drag me up out of that gorge.
If they knew what I was… what I had done…
A sob escaped my cracked lips.
I have to get away. Before it’s too late.
I inched forward on my stomach. My arms trembled, so I didn’t try to push up on my hands and knees. It was pitch dark. No strange blue power. Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing.
I don’t know how long I slowly made my way across the rock floor. Long enough that sweat dried. I started to shiver again. Pausing a moment, I laid my cheek against the cool stone and rested.
“Hey.” Hades gently swiped hair off my face. “Where are you going?”
“Away,” I croaked. “I have. To go.”
He rolled me over and cradled my head, so Kharon could tip a slender cylinder to my lips. “We’ll help you.”
Water. Sweet and pure and good. I hadn’t seen any fountains, rivers, or drinking faucets anywhere, so I knew it had to be a precious commodity. I tried to take only a few swallows, but it was so good. Better than any medicine. I instantly felt better, enough to sit up without much help. I looked back where we’d been sleeping and wanted to scream with frustration.
I’d only managed to make it a couple of feet away.
“I’m sorry,” Hades said. “We should have given you water immediately. Drink more. We have plenty.”
I glanced about doubtfully at the cave. I couldn’t see much other than their heat signatures. While I was grateful for shelter, I didn’t imagine they had many resources here.
“For fuck’s sake, Thanatos.” Kharon pressed the cylinder into my hand. “Drink the whole fucking thing. I can port us anywhere on your miserable planet in a heartbeat.”
