by Julian North
“Daniela, you need to help too.”
The mind of the speaker was protected—a highborn. I could not read his mind or destroy it. I focused on his face, neither helping nor resisting as he pulled my body into a sitting position. My head ached; my vision was clouded.
“Are you Daniela Machado or not?” He sounded anxious, almost angry.
I struggled to move my mouth, to form the words. “Who—” I coughed. Pain stabbed through the rear of my skull. The world went black again.
Strong arms caught me before I fell off the bed. “Are you okay?” There was no mistaking the man’s concern.
I blinked several times, willing my vision to return to normal. I searched my memory for the face before me. The answers I needed were locked away deep in a recess of my mind—behind a durable mental barrier that shielded my memories. Why had I needed that protection?
Other noises filtered into the room. Banging. Voices. They sounded desperate.
“Time is up. Either you come back now, or this is over for both of us.”
I believed him, even if I didn’t remember who he was.
The barrier protecting my memories, the essence of my being and soul, lifted. Sounds and images flooded out of the vault. I went blind for half a dozen frantic heartbeats as I processed it all. Those strong arms again kept me from falling. Until, finally, I was whole again.
“Rhett?” I asked. “What the hell is going on?” My voice was raw.
“I’m getting you off this mad scientist’s platform of horrors, that’s what.”
The extraction platform. My lips contorted at the horrible memory.
“How much do you remember?”
I remembered it all. But one image was foremost. “Anise.” I spat the name. “She betrayed us. To Havelock. He’s chipping people… with something new...” I sucked in a sharp breath. My hand shook as I raised it to the base of my skull, where the stabbing pain had come from. Dread surged in my veins. My finger probed my neck and head—there was dried blood there, but nothing solid. I wasn’t chipped.
“What happened to me?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. They chipped you, or tried to. You… you did something to the people who tried.”
I searched my memory. I had no recollection of anyone trying to chip me, but I remembered the voice in my head, urging me to protect myself. I had done that, lashing out at the mind of anyone who came close, anyone who dared touch me. Any person who I sensed in this room, whether I was awake or drugged, I had fought.
“A medevac transport landed two days ago. I think that was when they first tried to chip you. A lot of people were hurt. They knocked you out after that and isolated you. That man—Havelock—was among those evacuated. After that, no one seemed to know what to do with you.”
“Two days ago… How long was I out?”
Rhett pursed his lips. “A week.”
A week. Jacks of hell. What had happened to my friends while I lay here?
“Where are—”
An explosion shook the building. A moment later an acrid odor seeped into the room. “They have entered the complex. I dealt with the guards and jammed the doors from the inside. The power is down too, but we need to move. Can you stand?”
I slid off the bed, lost my balance, and almost toppled onto the floor. Rhett caught me. The sound of boots echoed in the distance.
“I think they’ve reached the door on this level.”
I looked at Rhett. He looked like hell. I doubted my appearance was any better, but his eyes were haggard, and he was far thinner than when I’d last seen him.
“How are you here? Havelock told me they knew about you. He had men looking for you.”
“Long story, but they turned this frakkin’ place upside down for three days searching for me. Eventually, they must’ve thought I took my chances in the ocean and drowned.”
“But you never left. Where were you?”
He rubbed the exterior of the black skin suit he wore. “The best dive suit available, Anise told us. It can withstand heat or cold and extract oxygen from water. She told the truth about that, at least. I hid in the one place where no sensor could ever find me and no sane person would ever try to search: inside the boiler of the fusion power station.”
My mouth opened.
“It’s just a big steam engine. Fusion causes heat, heat boils water, water produces steam. But no one would willingly go inside the tanks. I dumped the other suits before I hid, and I guess Anise never mentioned them to anyone. I took breaks when I could. Once they gave up hunting for me, I reconnoitered the station, learned their patrol routes, spied on them until I could arrange our escape. I knocked out the power lines tonight—their defense grid is down. But this is our one and only chance to get away.”
Something hard crashed into a piece of durasteel nearby. The echo made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Instinctively, I drew on the cold force of my will. The dizziness vanished. I was whole again, and ready to fight. I wanted to fight. You can destroy their minds, whispered the voice inside me, and I knew it was true. At least for those who weren’t highborn.
“Daniela?”
Again, Rhett’s voice summoned me back, its tone reassuring. The rush of cold strength faded slightly. “What?”
“Your face went blank for a moment… something in your eyes. It gave me the chills.” He looked concerned. “Can you walk?”
“Where is Alexander? And Nythan? I need to find them.”
Rhett hesitated. “We can’t get to them.”
He was speaking nonsense.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know where Nythan is. They flew him off in a v-copter three days ago.”
Something sharp stabbed at my heart.
“And Alexander?”
Rhett shook his head. “I had to make a choice. I couldn’t reach both of you. You were the logical decision. We can’t help him. We need to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without Alexander. And I’m not leaving until I know where to find Nythan. First, tell me where Alexander is.”
He sighed. “The level below. Which, as you can hear, is packed with soldiers coming for us.”
I looked into Rhett’s eyes. He meant well. But he didn’t understand, not really. He didn’t know what I was, what I could do. Blood always takes care of blood.
“I’m going to get him. And someone here knows where they took Nythan. I intend to find out.”
“There are two dozen soldiers out there. If I’d have known you were crazy, I wouldn’t have spent three days getting boiled in a fusion reactor! We’ve got one chance to get off this damn thing or I’m dead and you’re going to end up a chip zombie.”
My answer was laced with burning ice. “That won’t happen. Let them come.”
I walked out of the room into a corridor lined with metal doors built around what looked like a control room. Screens and terminal stations were arrayed in a semi-circle. There were two bloody bodies on the floor near the entryway door. It was unexpectedly quiet.
I pointed to the dead men. “Is that your work?”
“Yes. They had guard duty on this level. Look, Daniela, that door is durasteel, but they are probably laying explosive charges right now. We’re on the seventh level. There is a command room above us. The occupants are dead already. We need to get to the roof. That’s where the rescue team will pick us up.” He glanced at his viser. “We’ve got less than two minutes. They won’t be able to wait for us.”
“I’m not worried.” It came out cold, arrogant.
His eyes grew wide. “You are mad. Whatever they did to you…”
Was I mad? I didn’t think so. But Kristolan hadn’t thought she was mad either.
“I do not fear them. They will pay for what they did to my friends. Havelock will pay as well.”
“I have a force pistol with enough power for four more shots. You can barely stand.”
My eyes, afire with the hunger for battle, m
et his. Rhett stopped talking and drew his pistol, aiming it at the doorway. He wouldn’t need it.
I was a blizzard of angry will. I was vengeance.
There were ten men outside that door, people who knew about guns and violence. Two were highborn, the rest nopes. My mind found the one setting the explosives. His mind had no chance against me. I trilled as I ran races—with desperation for complete victory.
Beyond the durasteel barrier, a young man who had once been the most loyal of soldiers turned on his own. He set the explosive charge as he had intended, its timer set to explode in less than five seconds. But instead of placing it on the door’s hinges, he tossed it into the middle of the assault team behind him. The explosion was punctuated with the terrible screams of the dead and dying.
A thin smile came onto my face.
“What just happened?” Rhett asked.
His face was bewilderment and fear. I returned to what I had to do. Alexander was down there, waiting for me.
I trilled again. The sound of gunfire followed as I set one of the survivors against his fellows. Let them kill one another. That was fitting.
“Can you open the door from this side?”
Rhett shook his head, as if trying to wake from a daze. “What is going on out there? I know this is connected to what happened to those men who were taken away on the medevac. What the hell are you, Daniela?”
“I’ll explain when I have Alexander, when I know where to find Nythan. Can you open the door or not?”
Rhett hesitated. He thought he had unleashed a monster—perhaps he had. But he answered anyway. “Yes.”
It took Rhett several minutes of working with the manual lock to get the door to open. I continued to seek any mind that came within range of my trill. I ordered the approaching soldiers to kill, and they did. I gleaned from the mind of one guard that a distress signal had been transmitted. More soldiers would be coming—an elite response team. There would be highborn among them, and worse. I had only bought us some time.
The door opened and Rhett led me downstairs, through the gore that covered the floors of the stairwell. Emergency lights had clicked on, but the passages were still dim. This floor appeared to be a replica of the one where I had been kept. I pushed ahead of Rhett, knowing with certainty where I would find Alexander. Rhett took far too long opening the door of Alexander’s prison, each second an eternity. Despair welled inside me. The cold of my will faded. My knees trembled. I knew what I would find even before we got inside.
Alexander was encased in a glass cage, as I had been. I screamed as I ran toward him, a cry of anguish that rivaled any I had uttered before. It had been so long since I’d shed a tear, I’d forgotten how they burned into my skin. I forced myself to look at him.
An ugly control chip was embedded into the base of his skull.
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