by Amy DuBoff
The female warrior took a sharp breath. “Was that coincidence, or…?”
A second later, the Ava-Hochste rounded on Chancellor Heizberg, staring straight into her eyes.
Edwin shook his head with disbelief. “Stars, it is still her!” He looked at the syringe in his hand. “I think we can find a better use for this.”
His companion nodded.
The two warriors ran toward the chancellor, leaving Karen alone by the wall. She looked on as they and their third warrior companion converged on Heizberg. Edwin thrust the syringe into the chancellor’s jugular and emptied the contents.
Heizberg swayed on her feet for a moment, then fell flat on her back.
Narrowing its orange eyes, the Ava-Hochste stepped forward to stand over the chancellor, one leg to either side of her hips. She stared down at the prone woman. “No more games.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ava knew she wasn’t herself, but she swore to control the rage that had overflown from her only moments before. It didn’t need to be channeled toward destruction. Instead, she could use it for power.
I am stronger than the darkness, she told herself. Its presence doesn’t change who I am.
Though others the aliens had encountered may have been easily swayed, Ava sensed she was different. She recognized how the gifts she had possessed since birth were a byproduct of these aliens. That linked her to them, in a way. They couldn’t fully possess her because she was one of them.
The realization came to her slowly as she grazed the surface of the chancellor’s mind. The answers were locked away, just out of reach. She had to find them, so she could not only get in touch with her new self, but to save the innocents she had sworn to protect.
As she stood over the chancellor’s incapacitated form, Ava knew appearances were deceiving. Inside the chancellor’s body, a consciousness was very much awake. And it was time to talk.
Ava snapped a mental cage around the presence within. “Who are you?” she demanded.
This time, the alien was caught off-guard by not having the upper hand. “You may call me Reya,” it replied.
“All right, Reya. What the fuck do you want?”
“What we have always wanted—to grow stronger.”
Ava tightened her mental restraints. “Well, time to rethink your strategies. You’ve messed with the wrong people this time.”
“The plans are already in motion. Eliminating me won’t change a thing.”
“It’ll get you off this planet and out of the mind of this innocent woman. I’ll count that as a win.”
The alien gave a mental sigh. “It’s not that simple, Ava. You know it’s not just me.”
Ava felt a tug on invisible tethers extending from Heizberg. In her mind’s eye, she saw the network throughout the Nezaran government—dozens of hosts for this Reya presence or its as yet unseen associates to possess at will—and to the head of NTech.
It all linked back to Heizberg. She was the foundation of the conduit leading back to the alien base a system away. If that conduit could be severed…
How do I cut the connection without hurting the host? Ava knew she’d need Luke and Doctor Dwyer to dissolve the TR in the woman’s brain, but perhaps a telepathic block would be possible as a short-term solution. If Ava could locate Heizberg within, she’d have an ally to suppress the alien presence through a simultaneous assault on two fronts.
She dove through the alien’s consciousness, searching for pathways into what lie underneath.
“What are you doing, Ava?” Reya questioned, a hint of concern slipping into its mental tone.
“I already told you that you don’t belong here,” Ava replied. “I’m going to get you out.”
“I know what you’re trying to do, but you won’t like what you find,” Reya cautioned.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Ava dived deeper, stripping away layers of tangled memories. I know she’s in here somewhere.
Reya tried to block Ava’s search, though all the barriers were easily overcome. Ava was in control—if only temporarily—and she had a mission to complete.
In time, she found herself deeper inside the chancellor’s mind than she’d ever ventured in another. Raw emotion flooded through her. Pain and suffering—the fuel Reya and her kind so desperately desired. And she’d had her own power source buried within as Cynthia Heizberg had remained trapped inside herself. The greatest torture of all was to have witnessed decades of abuse perpetrated by her own hands. Hands she couldn’t control.
There, in the deepest depths of her mind, Cynthia still looked on with horror.
“Chancellor!” Ava exclaimed, rushing toward the mental form of the weary woman.
“That isn’t me,” came a weak reply.
“It’s okay, ma’am. We’re going to bring you back to our lab and get it out of you.”
The mental projection of the woman looked up at Ava. “It will never be gone. It’s been in me for too long.”
“That’s not true. You’re still here. That means there’s more than enough left to save.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Cynthia shuddered. “I wouldn’t even have a life to go back to.”
“You can always start over,” Ava tried to assure her.
“No. I’m just a remnant, an echo of what was. I died when it took me over.”
Ava recoiled from the woman’s bitterness. Never had she felt such darkness and defeat. “I… We can find a way to help you.”
“If you want to help me, then let me die,” Cynthia pleaded. “Please, kill me!”
Ava pulled back further as the woman clawed at her. “Make it end! Kill me! I can’t live in this prison any longer!”
Her moans filled Ava’s consciousness, begging for death to release her.
Memories of the time spent imprisoned in her own mind swirled around Ava, offering scattered glimpses into a lifetime of lies. She had been so young when Reya took her, no more than twenty years old. Ambitious and bright, she was the perfect host to manipulate toward gaining ultimate control.
Cynthia hadn’t wanted that life. She had always hoped for peace in her home system, and to unite. To have watched for decades as her alien possessor tried to tear the system apart had destroyed her every day.
All feeling, all sense of hope had been stripped away. This tiny nugget was all that remained of her former self—an ember reignited for one brief moment before it was to be extinguished forever. And she was begging for Ava’s help to finally do something on her own terms.
“I can’t kill you,” Ava told with a heavy heart. “I can’t give you what you ask.”
“No, please! You’ll never be able to get Reya out. Some of it will always be stuck here, eating away. I can’t go on like this. There’s nothing left for me.”
“I’m sworn to protect.”
“Then protect me from this monster.”
Even if Ava could stomach killing an innocent for their own long-term wellbeing, she couldn’t be responsible for the execution of a foreign head of state. Personal beliefs aside, that wasn’t a decision she could make on the FDG’s behalf.
“We’re going to get you back to headquarters, and they’ll—”
Cynthia sobbed in her mind. “No more prisons. Let it end.”
Ava was crippled by indecision. She felt the woman’s suffering as if it were her own, and she understood the wish for death. Were the roles reversed, she’d want it for herself.
As she assessed Cynthia’s state, Ava was horrified to see how far the alien had embedded in her. It wasn’t just one localized place in her brain, but she had foreign structures integrated throughout her body. Her entire nervous system was affected. Even if it was possible for Doctor Dwyer and Luke to flush the alien presence from her body and make it so it couldn’t come back, Cynthia’s original organics had withered. The damage was done. They might be able to restore her mind, but the best prognosis would be to remain a prisoner in a useless body.
“I hav
e nothing to live for,” Cynthia murmured. “No friends, no family that is my own. I want it to end.”
Ava wished she could make the woman’s suffering go away, to take back the decades of torture. She could rid them from her mind, but that would be no better than what Reya had done.
One thing was certain: Ava couldn’t do nothing. She made up her mind.
“I can’t kill you, but I can give you a few moments of yourself,” Ava said.
Cynthia nodded in her mind. “Thank you. When I’m gone, you stop them.”
“I will.”
Ava kept a mental tether on Cynthia as she withdrew from her mind. Around her, the three members of her team stood with their weapons drawn, watching intently. Karen was still crouched in the corner with an expression of terror and fascination. Ava looked at her hands and saw she had returned to her normal human form.
“I need you to turn around,” Ava told her team.
“Ma’am—” Edwin started to object.
“That’s an order,” she stated.
Reluctantly, the three warriors turned their backs to her.
Ava stared into the chancellor’s eyes, tracing the tether back to Cynthia within. “Be free.”
The chancellor shuddered, and then gasped. Her eyes went wide and wild, fighting through the sedative. “I’m—!” She rolled to her side and crawled toward a disabled soldier two meters from her. Hands shaking, she grabbed a utility knife from the soldier’s hip pocket. She looked toward Ava. “Thank you.” Cynthia drew the blade across her throat.
Ava squeezed her eyes shut and turned away.
“What the fuck?” Nick exclaimed.
“Holy shit.” Samantha sucked in a deep breath.
Edwin’s eyes searched hers. “What did you do?”
“I freed her,” she replied. “I gave her a few moments as herself. That’s what she wanted.”
Edwin lowered his weapon. “We were supposed to bring her back for questioning!”
“She’d suffered enough.”
A pool of blood formed around Cynthia’s body as the life faded from her.
Ava swallowed. “We should—”
Choking moans sounded around the room, and half of the guards spasmed on the floor. Five seconds later, they became still, and their eyes slowly opened.
“What happened?” one murmured.
“Where am I?” another asked.
The one closest to Ava, whose knife Cynthia has taken, reached for his gun. “Who are you?” He spotted the chancellor’s corpse. “The fuck?”
Ava’s warriors reactivated the stealth mode on their suits.
She located her helmet several paces away and made a run for it. She dove the last two paces as one of the guards fired. The blast barely missed striking her in the shoulder.
Ava hit the ground and rolled to the side, sliding her helmet over her head in one smooth motion. She activated the stealth tech.
The guards grunted with momentary confusion, but then began tracing her likely path.
On her HUD, Ava saw the members of her team darting for Karen’s position.
Edwin was the first to reach her. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.
Karen recoiled from the cold, invisible touch at first, then realization passed over her face. She followed his directions toward the door.
Ava fired a warning kinetic shot into the ceiling with her multi-handgun, then switched back to sonic mode. “Don’t follow us.” She shot off three sonic blasts around the room, hoping to hit as many guards as possible with the wide spread.
The other warriors were headed for the back door.
“No,” Karen stopped them. “Out this way.” She pointed for the door through which the guards had entered.
“That’ll lead out to the landing above the main lobby,” Nick objected.
“Which gives us the straightest shot to outside. Trust me.” Karen jogged ahead.
Ava made a run for it. “Come on!”
The adjacent room was empty, since all of the guards had entered the meeting room when the conflict began. Ava ran to the door on the right wall, which her HUD indicated led to the lobby. She tried the door handle but it was locked.
There was no time to crack the security. Ava pulled her rifle from her back and started shooting.
The lock exploded in a satisfying spray of melted shrapnel.
“That’s one way to open a door.” She kicked her armored boot against the pulverized surface and it flew open. She holstered the rifle.
Cries of surprise sounded from downstairs. Ava spotted the open stairwell to her left. At the top, two guards had their weapons leveled in her direction.
Thanks to the stealth armor, her exact position was invisible. She held up her hand to stop her team from coming through the opening.
Ava fired a sonic blast with her multi-handgun at the guards, and they crumpled to the floor.
“All right, there are mostly civilians downstairs, but more guards are certainly on their way,” she said to her team. “Stay around Karen. Move quickly.” She headed down the stairs.
“What just happened in there?” Samantha asked over the comm, following Ava down.
“Those soldiers and head of NTech were linked to Heizberg,” Ava explained. “When she died, the alien no longer had a host to support her telepathic link here.”
“But Nox jumped from Kurtz into Jared.”
“Nox wasn’t embedded like Reya here—that was this one’s name. It was too large and complex to go into someone else. Nox was like an infant by comparison.”
“Fucking fantastic,” Nick muttered.
When they reached the switch-back landing on the stairway, Ava paused to make sure no one was about to try to blow their heads off. Fortunately, the lobby’s occupants appeared to have scattered when they heard gunfire upstairs.
“Okay, at the bottom, we head through those doors,” she pointed, following the indicators on her HUD, “and then it’s a relatively straight shot out the front door.”
“Should I have the pod meet us around this side of the building?” Nick asked.
Ava nodded. “Do it.” She noticed a new proximity alert flash across her vision. “And bring it close. I imagine we’ll be under fire on our way out.”
The rest of her team noticed the alert on their own HUDs.
“I’m on it!” Nick said, bolting down the stairs.
Samantha positioned herself between Karen and the incoming enemy, weapon raised.
“Go for the door, I’ll hold them off,” Ava instructed.
The three warriors descended the final steps, and Ava crouched behind the base support column.
Her team passed through the door a second before the first guards came into view.
“One target detected through—” The guard never got the chance to finish his statement.
Ava lobbed a flash grenade into the corridor, followed by a burst of sonic blasts.
The soldiers stopped their advance for a moment, but as the scene cleared following the grenade, it was clear they were still standing.
Shit, they must have put in noise-cancelling comms. Ava judged the distance to the exit doorway. It wasn’t far, but she could make it in a sprint.
“Someone is still here!” one guard shouted. He tossed a smoke grenade into the center of the room.
Ava bit back a curse as the fine smoke filled the room. Her suit was great at making her blend in with the surroundings, but having anything like smoke in the air would result in a big warrior-shaped hole.
She had a split second to act. With no other choice, she ran for the door. Though her suit did its best to mask her movement, the air was already too thick with debris, and she was running too hard for the sound canceling to have full effect.
The first volley of kinetic shots hit the back of her armor a meter from the doorway. She raced through and slammed the door closed behind her.
Her team was pressed against the sides of the hall.
Edwin looked at his c
hest plate, which had been sticking out just enough to deflect a bullet and keep Karen from taking a shot to her head.
The woman’s breath was ragged as she processed what had just happened. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah. These friends of yours aren’t very nice,” Ava said. “This door won’t hold, come on!”
They took off at full speed. Karen began to fall behind, so Edwin scooped her into his arms.
Ava would have previously been winded by the sprint, but she found she was easily able to keep up with her team as they made the final push toward the exit.
A door slammed open somewhere behind them, but she didn’t bother to look. More soldiers were no doubt coming, and they’d keep coming so long as there was anyone left standing.
“Home stretch!” Samantha cheered.
Ava could see the exit on her HUD. Unfortunately, she also saw a line of Nezaran guards blocking their path.
“Fuck! We can’t get line of sight on that many!” Samantha exclaimed. “Sonic is out.”
There was no way to make it to the exit door through the open space without getting too holey for Ava’s liking.
“The pod will be here in one minute. If it sits out there, they’ll blow it up and we’ll be really stuck,” Nick cautioned.
“Are you still patched into the security system?” Ava asked him.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure they know we’re right fucking here.”
“Can you feed sonic feedback through their comms?”
Nick considered her suggestion. “I can try.” He made some rapid entries on his mobile tablet. “If this works, we’ll know right about—”
The soldiers in the lobby simultaneously raised their hands to their ears, trying to rip out their comms.
“Go!” Ava shouted.
Her team raced across the open lobby while the guards were temporarily distracted. Samantha shot out the door lock and busted it open with her shoulder to clear a path for the others.
Twenty meters from the building’s exit, their pod was on the final descent to the dusty ground.
