Nova pointed at her eyes, then pointed toward the voices. She raised one finger, then two more. Her empathy helped her detect distinct minds; I trusted her judgment. So there were three people, including Bell.
Cramps plucked at my stomach, turning it to a ball of iron. The sharp stabbing sensation running along my neck and head made it difficult to see straight. Please don’t let this damned disease get in the way.
“I find it hard to believe you’re just feeling out your competitors,” the man said, voice nasal and ragged.
“You don’t have to,” Bell said. Casual and confident. “You can go on about running your business and I’ll go about mine. No harm done.”
“How about I hold you here and let the enforcers decide what to do with you?”
Tev guided us to the far end of the stone structure, where we crouched down to whisper, barely audible.
“We have to go,” she said. “We have no time.”
I nodded, hoping she didn’t see the sweat forming on my brow, or that I clutched my hands against my stomach to hide their tremors. Nova, however, gave me a long, disconcerting look—she saw straight into my body and glimpsed all the white-hot pain that made it so hard to concentrate.
“You take the third person, since you know where everyone is positioned,” Tev said to Nova. “I’ll take the man. Alana, you free Bell. How is she being held?”
“I can’t believe I’m being ordered to participate in criminal activity,” Nova muttered. “Don’t you think Alana and I have done enough for your little quest? I’d like to take her back to the Axon now.”
“You were willing to be involved in this when you changed us.” Tev said. “It’s a little late to claim neutrality now.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m at your beck and call.” She took my hand. “Being a guide does not entail freeing criminals from the grasp of other criminals at the behest of a criminal.”
I took her hand off mine, squeezing it before letting go. “Let’s just get through this. The more help Tev has, the faster we’ll leave Spin.”
“Most sensible thing anyone has said in awhile,” Tev said, testing her biter. “So what kind of restraints do they have on Bell?”
Nova sighed. “Transliminal security-binds. You two can’t do anything with them. I can, but it’ll take some time. I’ll use my empathy on her guard. Fear and panic to make it harder to fight.”
“We’ll have to take the other two down and get Bell to the ship. We won’t have time to do our business here. Worry about the restraints later,” Tev said.
“Your target’s back is toward us,” Nova said. “He has a weapon but I couldn’t see what. Emotionally, he feels clear. Focused. I’d have to be touching him to get anything more specific from his mind.”
Tev gripped the biter with renewed determination.
“Help the captain,” I said, struggling against the pain. Tev looked alarmed now, but I ignored her and focused on addressing Nova. “I don’t know how much I can do. Please.”
She nodded. Tev’s eyebrows knitted together as she took in my labored breathing, the sweat on my face and neck, the gnarled shape of my fingers.
I just nodded in the direction of Bell. “Go. Worry about it later.”
Her anxious eyes lingered on me a moment longer before she and Nova led the way. I struggled to keep up, balancing myself against the stone. Nova peeled off in the other direction, approaching the third person from the side, while Tev crept forward, quietly releasing the safety on the biter. I caught myself holding my breath as she maneuvered as silently as possible to the edge of the wall, then sprinted toward the man. She wasted no time negotiating—Tev shoved the biter into the man’s neck, who jerked and screamed through tightly clenched teeth as Tev released shocking impulses into his spinal column.
Well, that was one way to do it.
Bell watched from the ground, shocked. Her wrists were tied behind her back. She had dark Heliodoran skin like mine and Ovie’s, and a natural attractiveness I’d always wished I had. Sleek and stylish in nothing more than an ordinary tunic, tights, and boots, she wouldn’t have been out of place in a fashion ad.
I hurried to her as best I could, helping her stand. She said something but I couldn’t hear it above the noise; I just smiled awkwardly and swallowed my nausea, guiding her back toward the structure where she’d be out of the line of fire.
I caught a glimpse of Nova and the other woman—an enormous, thickly built woman so muscular she was a wall unto herself—engaged in a struggle of their own. The sight of my sister engaged in a physical confrontation shocked me into stillness. Nova twisted the woman’s arm behind her back, but she contorted out of Nova’s grip and punched her in the gut.
“Nova!”
My sister barely reacted. Curses and shouts flew like spittle. Mostly the other woman’s, though the longer it went on, the more Nova struggled to maintain control. Her opponent must have had a strong will to be able to fight through Nova’s emotional projections. Nova dodged in a flutter of gold just as the woman detonated some kind of weapon I’d never seen before, firing what looked like a ripple of light into the stone wall. Debris tumbled down around us just as Bell and I made it back. One chunk hit me in the shoulder. White-hot pain raced through my entire body and I shouted, cursing. Cold dizziness disoriented me for a good ten seconds.
Bell’s curses joined the noise as she kicked away some of the debris.
“Are you okay?” I said from my pile on the ground. Blood trickled down the side of her head and one of her sleeves was torn, her exposed skin ripped and covered in crimson.
“Grab my other arm,” she said, crouching down and offering it to me, struggling to maintain her balance with bound wrists. I wanted to argue but had so little strength left, I just did as she said and she helped me stand. Blood coated my mouth. I tried my best not to dry heave.
Chaos raged around me while I struggled to hang onto my concentration. Tev crouched over the immobile body of the man who had interrogated Bell, looking between us and Nova. Several meters away, Nova struggled with the other person, the woman’s limbs and hair and face and flesh shifting, morphing, raging its own battle, as Nova transformed the woman’s body against her will, keeping her off-balance. Scales, feathers, useless extra limbs, horns. At one point my sister blinded her by growing skin over her eyes, and she wailed in horror.
Roaring thrusters howled over us, heat buffeting the roof. The snap and sizzle of plasma scorched the air as the most beautiful sight in the Big Quiet eclipsed the clouds: the Tangled Axon, her cargo bay open, hovering just above the building.
“That’s a nice ship,” Bell said, grunting through her speech. “How much would you be willing to sell it for?”
“Not now,” I said. Slip and Ovie gestured wildly at us from the cargo bay with their free hands, pointing standard-issue military rifles at the electrocuted man and the woman still fighting Nova. The cargo bay door formed an unstable ramp while Marre held the ship as steady as possible, manually operating the thrusters. She might have been unsettling, but damn, she was an amazing pilot.
Tev hurried to us and took my arm. Shouts exploded behind us, plasma arcs from their weapons narrowly missing us, scorching the roof and sending shards of debris flying in our direction. Three enforcers poured out of the stairwell from the club below. Tev’s strong arms helped me up, and I tried not to cry out as we stumbled along behind Bell. I prayed we wouldn’t be killed when we were this close to escape. The voices behind us grew ever nearer. More debris sliced through the air with each shot.
Tev bellowed and slapped a hand against her neck, blood pouring from between her fingers.
“Tev!” I held her in return as we hurried, stumbling, desperate to get to the ship before we were captured or killed. Hot blood poured down the side of her neck, shoulder, and arm, our clothes and bodies sticky with it. One foot after another, we stepped onto the ramp and helped each other stay balanced enough not to fall off as the Tangled Axon swayed, hovering. Losing blood
and obviously burned across most of the left side of her neck, Tev swayed on her feet and started to slip backward, knocking into Bell, but I grabbed them both. Heat spread beneath my hand on Bell’s torso.
More blood.
Slip caught us and together we all struggled to climb onto the ship. Our unsteady footing was a mixed blessing; at least we were moving targets.
Nova returned the large woman’s sight to her and backed away from the enforcers, palms forward. She picked up her skirts like a noblewoman and hopped elegantly onto the ramp as the cargo bay door closed, her golden fabrics whipping in the wind.
Marre wasted no time in ferrying us into the sky.
Chapter Twelve
Nova immediately went to work on freeing Bell’s wrists from the othersider restraints, but Bell was halfway to unconscious, coughing up blood.
“Some way to say ‘hey’ to an old friend,” she sputtered, eyes rolling back in her head.
“We are being pursued by an enforcer vessel,” Marre said over the intercom. “Brace yourselves.”
Everyone in the cargo bay held onto something or someone as the Tangled Axon banked. Tev and I grabbed hands and crouched down to lower our mutual center of gravity. Blood continued spilling from the wound on her neck, soaking the left side of her shirt in red. She looked pale and her eyes were unfocused. I ripped the bottom of my shirt off and pressed it against her wound. Blood soaked my clothes, and only some of it was mine.
“Tev,” I said, placing my hands on her face. Cold fear filled my chest. “Tev, look at me—”
An explosion hit the ship, rocking us all. Some of the crates demagnetized and fell, one of them barely missing Ovie. Nova held Bell up as she continued plucking at the bands around the nearly unconscious criminal’s wrists. Finally, a tangle of bright filaments fluttered to the floor and dissolved into the metal. She gently lay Bell down and brushed her hand over her forehead, pressing the other against her wound. “She’s not well.”
“Damage to the port thruster,” Marre said. “Functionality at seventy percent.”
The Tangled Axon’s suffering lanced me with every heartbeat.
“Help Tev!” I shouted at Nova, hot tears pooling in my eyes. “Fix her! She’s hurt!”
She held up her hands. “I can’t, Alana.”
“What the hell do you mean? I had a fucking tail! You can obviously do a lot more than we thought.”
“Sweetheart, that’s all guide work—magic. Illusions. Not science. The most I can do is help ease their pain, which I’ve done already. They feel very little. We should get them to a facility.”
Rage split me apart. If she could help them feel better, what about me? All these years Mel’s ripped through me, and she could have done something to help?
“Them?” Tev said, trying to see who else was hurt, and shouting in frustration when she realized it was Bell. “Slip!” she bellowed, voice echoing in the cargo bay. “Help Bell! We need her!”
I set aside Nova’s betrayal for a moment and touched Tev’s face, turning it toward me. “We’ve got to get you to a facility—”
“No,” Tev said, then coughed, grimacing. “I’m not going to hospital. We can’t. Enforcers.”
“Get the captain over here, now!” Slip shouted from across the hold, where she was unpacking medical supplies from an emergency kit. Immediately Ovie hurried to us and collected her from me, replacing my hand with his on the cloth.
“Lots of pressure,” I said as I relinquished Tev, pushing my hand on top of his to demonstrate. He nodded, kind enough not to tell me I was pointing out the obvious. Fear gripped my stomach at the thought of losing her before I could tell her how much she meant to me.
No, stop. She’ll be okay.
“Bell,” Tev muttered. “We need Bell. Help her.”
Heat and exhaustion and bone-deep pain threatened to render me unconscious, but I held on, fighting against the heaviness pulling at every part of me. Again the ship banked and I fell over, straight into Nova, narrowly missing Bell. My sister looked at me, blood-covered hands on my arms.
“You need help too,” she said. “You don’t have any left, do you?”
“Too busy being lied to by my sister, I guess.”
“You are so stupid!” A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face where debris had nicked her. “Why didn’t you tell us you needed more medication!”
“Why didn’t you tell me you could take away my symptoms! Why don’t you take it away now? Please! I need your help!”
“If I did that you’d be as mindless as you were on Spin. They need you right now.”
“I can’t believe you lied to me!”
Slip glanced up when she heard our shouting, but quickly returned to flushing and sealing Tev’s wound. Tev sat on the floor, leaning upright against Ovie. Tev said something to Slip, pushing her away and sitting up, but Slip eased Tev back down and shook her head, replying with a stern expression. Tev pointed in our direction, then shouted in pain. She looked pale, but they continued arguing as Tev winced against the strain her muscles put on the wound.
“No!” Slip shouted at her, then looked at me and called out loudly enough for us to make out what she was saying. “Bell! You have to help Bell—I’m busy with the captain!”
That jerked me into action. I tied back my locs and turned to Bell’s limp, blood-soaked form sprawled next to us, near a stack of strapped-in crates. White spots crowded my eyesight, blurring her face.
“Bell’s dying,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say or do. Mel’s-induced brain fog clouded my mind just as badly as the knives in my head had obscured my vision.
Nova ripped the sleeves off her gown. “She’s the only person who knows how to get the enforcers off our asses.”
Despite everything, I laughed at her profanity, then groaned and grabbed my head. Every time I made a sound, all the pain in my body flared.
“Alana, look at you!” she said, pressing the fabric against Bell’s chest. The dealer was a mess of ripped clothing and blood. She coughed and smiled up at Nova, saying something unintelligible.
“You’re bleeding.” I said, touching the wound on Nova’s head.
“I don’t care!” she swatted my hand away while trying to work. Gold fabric soon turned red, seeping up through Nova’s fingers. “You’ll die without your medication. How could you do that? I knew you weren’t telling us! I always know when you’re lying, Alana Quick!”
We banked again, knocking us into the crates. Instinctively, I looked toward Tev. Ovie and Slip worked to prevent Tev’s wound from banging into anything; he held her steady while Slip covered Tev with her own body until we leveled out. Ovie shifted his weight and whined a little, letting it roll off into a growl.
While the captain and Bell bled out in the cargo bay, the Tangled Axon’s discordant sounds rolled through the corridors and into her belly. She was shaken and hurting, like a nightmare-plagued child, twisting my insides into a mess again.
When we leveled out, Nova continued putting pressure on Bell’s stomach. I placed my hands over hers to help.
“Hey,” I said to Bell, trying to summon a convincing smile. “Sorry we had to grab you and run.”
“You—” Bell coughed up a mixture of spittle and blood, but my sister soothed her suffering. Nova’s fabric had gotten lost in all the blood, our bloody hands still pressing down on her. She smiled, teeth coated in red. She strained to speak. “Help me live, I’ll help. Device.”
“I told her why we were looking for her,” Nova said. “While taking away her pain.”
I placed one of my hands on Bell’s, uncertain whether she could feel it. “Please. How do we disable it?”
“Have to see.”
The device was on the other side of the hold.
“You can’t,” I said. “It’s too far. We can’t move you. What if—”
She broke into another series of coughs, her whole body convulsing. The blood under our hands grew hotter.
“Slip!”
I shouted. “We’re losing her!”
“Wait.” Nova held a hand up to me and Slip, shaking her head, eyes fixed on Bell’s, Bell’s fixed on hers.
Though only a few seconds passed, it felt like hours.
Peace melted across Bell’s face as her eyes closed and her head rolled to the side, arms limp.
Nova released her and wiped her hands on her clothes, which did nothing to rid her of the blood. “She’s gone.”
“Shit! What do we do now!”
“I helped her cross over, but not before she told me what to do.”
I grabbed Nova. “What? Tell me!”
Sadness filled her eyes. “It’s what I’ve always known, Alana. Transliminal Solutions doesn’t use technology. It’s just energy. Baryonic manipulation that holds what they’re calling ‘programs’ inside physical matter. But they’re not programs, they’re just . . . intention. Human intention. It’s nothing different than what I do.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean for the device?”
She sighed. “The only way you can get rid of it is to let it detonate.”
“There has to be another way—”
She waved me off. “No, Alana. There’s nothing else we can do. Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Transliminal Solutions. Birke. The othersiders. They’re like spirit guides. That’s why we have to tell the crew about you running out of your medication. You need more of the Dexitek, not whatever they’re offering.”
I forced myself to look at her instead of fixating on Bell’s blood-covered body. My mind raced between her words, trying to understand them. The othersiders were some sort of powerful spirit guides? I didn’t understand.
The only thing I could muster was, “What did you say?”
“We have to find medicine for you. Steal it if we have to. You can’t die, Alana.”
“I’m not dying.”
“Why do you say things like that when you know they’re not true? Yes, you are!”
I laughed a little, trying to force some levity into the situation to get her to calm down. “Mind over matter, right? Isn’t that what you’re always going on about?”
Ascension: A Tangled Axon Novel Page 19
