by Robin Banks
A million years later or so, the staircase ends. We find ourselves in another hallway, one with a large door at the end of it. Luke leans me against the wall right next to the door. We stay there for ages. I don’t mind it, because he’s holding me and that is nice, but my body is hurting and tired and wants to lie down. Luke doesn’t let it, though.
When the door opens and someone walks in, Luke drags me off the wall and nearly throws me outside. We walk past three little girls playing. That makes me think of Mattie and nearly slip out of Luke’s cloak, but he squeezes me and I stop.
Then we walk around a corner and Luke comes back and I come back with him, and Asher is there and he’s so angry I want to cry, or maybe it’s because I am hurting, I’m not sure, but Asher is there and Luke is still with me and everything is alright again.
That doesn’t last long. Luke starts to pull me away from Asher.
“I need you to walk on ahead to the ship.”
Asher is angry. “Are you shitting me? I’m not leaving her. She’s hurt.”
“She’ll get hurt worse if whoever the fuck it is catches us. She’s in no fit state to fight or run and I’m headed the same way. I can hide her. I can’t hide you. There’s at least two of them. You fancy those odds?”
“Ok. I’ll walk on. If there are any problems, you shout for me. Ok?”
“Yeah. You’ve got to let go of her now. Step back.”
Asher’s body pulls away from mine and that is horrible, but Luke walks back into my head and wraps me up in his cloak again.
“Quinn, you have to do that thing again. You did so well. Just a little bit more, ok?”
I know he’s lying – I know everything he knows right now, everything he thinks and feels – but I know he’s telling the truth, too. The bad bit is over. We’re going home.
I make us small and far away, and we set off walking. Asher is ahead of us, getting further and further away. Once he’s out of sight I lose him completely. I can’t feel him at all. I’ve got Luke, though, and he’s got me, and we’re going home.
23. Luke
By the time we get to the ship I’m tripping balls and my heart is about to explode. It may not be a problem, though, as it’s halfway up my throat anyway. Asher and Raj are lurking right by the door, looking as casual as two large, trained, hostile men can look. As soon as we’re up the ramp and through the door I make us come back. The guys jump two feet in the air, then Asher races towards Quinn and I let her drop in his arms. Letting go of her hurts, but no more than anything else does already.
Raj comes and grabs me. “What the hell? Asher told me, but I didn’t believe it. You weren’t there, and then you were.”
“Long story. No time. We need to kill two fuckers.”
“What?”
“No time! Quinn, can you get a link to the assholes?”
Asher erupts at me. “You can’t ask her to do that!”
“Those guys need killing. She doesn’t have to do it, or even to see them. She just has to find them. Can you do that?”
She mumbles, “I don’t know.” She sounds like her throat is scraped raw.
“Can you try?”
Her eyes go blurry. I wonder if she’s gonna pass out.
I know when she finds them because her whole face spasms like she’s going to throw up.
“Got one.”
“Is he coming towards here?”
She looks at me in panic. “Yes!”
“You’re alright. I bet my ass he’s not coming for you. He’s heading to his ship. He’s going to fucking leg it.”
Raj steps between us. He looks pissed off.
“I need you to explain this to me, clearly and right now.”
“They were at the spaceport. They kidnapped Quinn and she got freed and is now on the loose on this bubble with whoever saved here. If they’ve got a ship, do you think they’re gonna stay put and wait for what’s gonna happen next? We know where they live, or hide. And if they don’t have a ship and they’re coming to get us, that saves us the trouble of having to find them. We can do them in right here.”
“Fair point, kid”. Alya steps forward. I hadn’t even seen her. “Get your asses in your seats. If they get on a ship, we’re out of here.”
“What? You’re going to let them get away with this?”
“No. I’m going to follow them and blow them the fuck up as soon as they’re out of Fed range. Easier than disposing of two bodies.”
Raj and Asher help Quinn into her seat. Asher runs to his seat and starts doing his thing, though he keeps looking back at Quinn. Alya is working frantically next to him. Raj keeps an eye on the two of us. I don’t understand why he doesn’t just keep an eye on Quinn. She’s the one who got hurt. I’m fine.
When Asher and Alya have finished with the launch stuff they both turn to stare at Quinn. I wish they fucking didn’t, but I guess they’ve got to.
I know that man she sensed has been getting closer because I can see her getting more and more worked up, though she’s holding it together alright. A couple of times her face looks really vague and she starts to pull against her straps, but Raj manages to calm her down. She holds her breath for the longest time, then she sighs and points.
“Gone past us. That way.”
Alya smiles at her, kinda. “Right into the spaceport. That’s good enough for me. We’re out of here.”
The departure hurts like hell. At one point I think I’m gonna black out but Quinn moans in such pain that I come back round really fast. Raj is doing what he can for her but that’s fuck-all, really.
As soon as we’re in orbit Asher turn back to look at her. “Are you ok?”
“Yes, but I lost him. I’m so sorry.”
She’s crying and it’s all my fault. This was my idea.
Alya is fiddling with her screen. “One ship leaving. About to hit orbit any time now.”
A few moments later Quinn squeals and points. “There. He’s there.”
Alya turns to Asher. “You got that?”
“Yes. Life signs?”
“Four. Is Quinn done here?”
“Yes.”
“Ok.” Alya gets up. “You two, get her in my office. Now!”
Quinn nearly passes out while we’re moving her. I wish she did: we’re still linked so I know how bad she’s hurting. It’d be easier if she couldn’t feel it. I know Alya is really worried about her because she screams us out of her office. She’s not even noticed the plasters on my neck. I’d forgotten all about them too. I nearly rip them off, then remember that they may carry some kind of information Alya may find useful, so I leave them alone. I guess they can’t make much difference now.
When we get to the bridge Asher has targeted our guns at that ship. He nods at Raj.
“Ready when you are.”
I step forward. “I should do it.”
Raj stares at me. “What? Why?”
“I was there. I saw the state Quinn was in.”
“We saw it too, just now.”
“You didn’t see her all strapped up and… You didn’t see her. I did. I want to do it.”
“I know. I just don’t think you should.” He’s talking really slowly, like he thinks I couldn’t understand him otherwise.
“That’s up to me, innit?”
“No. It isn’t. It’s my ship and my guns. And we don’t have time for this.”
He pushes the button without even looking at the screen. That’s the beauty of automated weapon systems, I guess: once they’re targeted, you can kill people without even looking at them.
And just like that it’s over.
For a moment I think about hating him for taking that away from me. I find that I just don’t have the energy. He doesn’t look much better than I feel. He puts his arms around my shoulders and I don’t know if it’s to comfort me or hold himself up or what, but it feels good and fuck-awful and necessary, so I don’t care.
When he lets go he spots the plasters on my neck, and then he starts to make
a fuss. Asher joins him. I get that they have to be doing something to distract themselves from everything, but I really wish they’d calm the fuck down. Asher insists on giving me another dose of that fucking antidote even though I tell him that I’m almost completely fine. I don’t have the energy to fight him on it, though. Everything is really fuzzy. Quinn is like a pulsating light: when she gets bright I can’t see anything else. When she goes dark I can’t think about anything else because I’m too worried.
By the time Alya has finished with Quinn, Asher is done with me. She’s so pissed off on Quinn’s behalf that getting pissed off at me hardly has an impact. She’s pissed off enough to cry, which is weird. I’ve seen her cry before but those were special circumstances, when stuff was really bad and coming at her from all sides and crying about it made sense. I keep telling her that I’m ok, that nothing really happened, but that doesn’t seem to help. It’s like she doesn’t believe me. I close my eyes, just for a second, because I’m a coward and I can’t stand to see her so upset.
When I come round I’m in my room, lying on my bed. Alya is lying across it, right at the end, over my feet. I think she’s asleep, but then her eyes open and she’s immediately alert, so I don’t know.
“How are you feeling?”
“Alright.”
“You’ve got to cut this shit out, ok?”
“Yeah.”
“Because if it doesn’t kill you, it’s going to end up killing me.”
She closes her eyes and sinks back into the bed. Her weight on my ankles is godsdamned uncomfortable, but it feels really good, too. I let myself drift off again.
When I wake up again Alya is not there. Raj is, though. Not on my bed, thank fuck: he’s sitting on a cushion on the floor, reading something. He looks up when he hears me move. He looks like shit but he still smiles.
“Morning, sunshine.”
“Is it morning?”
“No. It’s the middle of the night.”
“Why are you up?”
“Honestly? Half to keep an eye on you, half because I couldn’t sleep.”
“Where are we?”
“Nowhere. And going nowhere, too, for a while at least. We’re floating in the black, waiting to find out what exactly we just did. Aside from killing a dead man.”
“Say what?”
“Alya managed to extract some DNA from Quinn,” he scowls at that, “and it matched to a completely inconsequential trader. He was travelling on a ship that matched the one we were looking for, though, so she dug a little bit deeper. It turns out that the guy was one of the Pollux Patrolmen who died a premature death way before all this crap started.”
“What? The guy who nabbed Quinn was our killer?”
“We don’t know yet, but there is a strong possibility. What we do know is that the guy was psi-gifted. He picked up on Quinn’s scan, then picked Quinn up. Quinn didn’t see him coming because there was nothing odd for her to read: the guy felt… gleeful about the whole thing. I find that vile.”
“And he was an ex-Patrolman?”
“Yes. That’s almost a definite, according to the records we can find.”
“What the fuck?”
“Fucked if I know. Now we need to wait and see if our problem goes away, because those four are not going to be talking.”
I don’t know what to say. I’ve never killed a person. I thought I wanted to, but I didn’t, not really, even when everything was still happening and I was so fucking angry. Now I’m so glad he stopped me. I feel like shit about that because that load didn’t go away: he took it on himself.
I guess I must be looking at him funny, because he shrugs and gets up.
“Anyway, you don’t need me anymore.”
“Are you turning in?”
“No. I’m going to have a drink.”
“Wait up.”
We go to the kitchen. When he opens up a bottle I don’t even think about saying no. I never notice him opening the ones that come after.
Alya doesn’t even tell me off for getting shitfaced. I guess she gets it. She still runs me through every medical check I can think of, and a couple I rather wouldn’t. She doesn’t find anything wrong with me, which seems to disappoint her. I bet she was looking forward to yelling at me.
I give her the opportunity when she asks me about the details of our little escape.
“You have a psi-bility?”
“I guess. I don’t really buy it, but it seems to work.”
“And you found this out when?”
“When we nearly got caught in that flat. I wanted to hide us, and I did. I just carried on from there. It kept working.”
“But before doing it you didn’t know it was going to work?”
“Quinn told me I was hard to see, but I thought she was full of shit.”
“Quinn told you this when?”
“When I got my head whacked in that fight and…”
Shit. That’s not the official story.
She rests her face in her hands. “Spare me. I don’t want to know. The bottom line is that you went in there, on your own, knowing that Quinn had already been badly hurt, and without a scrap of a plan on how you could get the hell out again. Did I get that right?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“That’s my line,” she growls. “And it was never intended as fucking lifestyle advice.”
“What else could I do, leave her there?”
“Yes! You could have!”
“Not really.”
“I know!”
She looks like she’s going to whack me, then starts to breathe slowly and calms herself down. I wish I could do the same, but I can’t.
“Alya, we shot a ship down with four people on board, and only one or two we wanted to kill for definite.”
“Two. Quinn told me some stuff when she came round. I don’t think she meant to, but she needed to talk and I was there. And the other two may not have laid hands on her, but I bet they were just as involved. I don’t feel a scrap of guilt.”
“I don’t either. Not enough, anyway. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Of course it does. I’m a monster. I came to terms with that years ago. But nobody hurts my people. Kid, I was trained to take bad people out if the need arose. That’s what I did for a living.”
“But you quit.”
“Yeah. And now I’m quitting again. We all are. We’re going home and I’m not going to do anything remotely exciting or heroic or even interesting for as long as I live. None of us are. You in particular. You got that? I’ll fucking kill you if you try.”
“I love you too.”
“Stop being soppy. It makes my eyes itch.”
It could be the hangover, the fact that I’m recovering, or just because I’m slow, but it takes all day to hit me: I didn’t die. We’ve done the job and I’m still here. I wonder briefly what kind of freak accident is gonna take me out, then I remember what Dee said. She never saw me die. She saw me disappear, and I did that. Her vision wasn’t vague: it was too literal and too fucking weird for us to understand it.
I’m not going to die – well, I am, everyone does, but there’s no knowing how or when. I’ll be heading back home soon. All the shit I thought I was going to get away from, all the shit I’d temporarily managed to almost forget because I was too busy dealing with the shit right in front of me, is still there waiting for me. Just thinking about it makes my chest tighten up and my breath catch in my throat.
I manage to sit on the bed instead of falling down. I’m trying to get some air in when my door bursts open and Quinn storms in, crying and screaming abuse, saying words I didn’t know she knew and would have never imagined her using. She picks me up by my shirt, lifts me upright and starts to shake me like a rag doll. All I can do is go limp and let her do it because she’s hurting so bad that nothing she could do to me could come close to what I nearly did to her, what I’ve done to her. It’s then I realize that we’re linked again or still, that half the ar
gument is going on between our heads and there are no words in it, and that I really, really fucked up, because this stopped being just my problem a long time ago.
She lets me go with a shriek that I don’t know if I’m hearing or feeling and I drop onto the bed. She stands over me panting and crying, until she lets off another shriek and storms off.
The empty doorway reveals Asher, looking shaken. It takes him a long time to take the two steps to get into my room, by which time Alya and Raj have rolled up, too. He ignores them.
“You’re going to say that this is none of my business, but you’re half wrong. I just saw my partner physically assault you with no provocation I could discern. That makes it my problem.”
Alya walks in too. “Yeah. I want to know too. I don’t want to space someone over nothing.”
Asher glares at her and bunches his fists. I have to stop this before it goes too far.
“It’s not her fault, not really. She kinda had reasons.”
Asher squints at me. “Do I have to beat you up or something?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
They’re not going to drop it, so I tell them all about Dee and the prophecy. Then I spend an hour or so listening to Alya screaming. If it were anyone but her I’d say she was having hysterics, but she isn’t the sort. When she’s finished telling me what she thinks about me and my lifestyle choices – or death-style choices, whatever – Raj takes her off to their room. Asher goes off to see to Quinn. I stay in my room on my own, which is probably what I deserve but really not what I want. It makes for a long night. That gives me plenty of time to think stuff over. Turns out that’s not what I want either.
I don’t see Quinn in the morning. I’ve made breakfast, though I don’t feel like eating. When I put the plate in front of Alya she glares at me so menacingly that I wonder why I bothered. Raj doesn’t, but he doesn’t look happy with me either. That’s even harder to deal with. It takes a lot to piss Raj off, and clearly I managed.
