by Kayla Stonor
“That night. In my apartment! If not for the portal…”
“No. Killing me would have guaranteed the United Regions on your tail. A quick escape was the smart move. You wasted precious time cuffing me.”
A darkness possessed her. “No, you don’t understand. When I thought Octiron was the United Regions, I held a knife to your throat.” Anger curled her lips. Tears inexplicably blurred her vision. She fought them off. “I was ready to kill you!”
Tierc jumped off his rock, his landing stiff with agitation. “You never reached that moment. You don’t know that.” Gold blazed behind his eyes, his Qui fighting to break through the cuffs, a sign of intense emotion.
The need for this confrontation forced Ahnna on. “Yes I do! Why won’t you admit the truth?”
“Truth? What truth? You mean your truth? You want me to admit I’m not human? I admit it!” he yelled. “I am not pure human. I am a half-breed, descended from Qui and descended from human. My human genes are corrupted! All true!”
In a few strides he towered above her, fists clenched, eyes lashing out anger mixed with hurt, and she did not fear him. Hot desire trickled between her thighs. Her breasts ached, and her clothing rubbed her nipples to hard little nubs.
“But I am not your enemy and I can’t be the monster you need me to be.” His voice cracked with emotion. “Superior strength, yes. Superior senses, yes. All that.” And more. The unspoken words hung in the air. “All my advantages are rendered useless… You slay me with a single glimpse of your contempt, Ahnna. I see myself with your eyes and a knife twists in my heart.”
Ahnna blinked. Her knees trembled and a thick sob choked her throat, his honesty, his raw broken admission crumbling her defenses. She backed away, shaking her head. “You don’t get it. You’re killing us. Soon there’ll be no humans left.”
A ferocious roar blasted her, she felt its power, his hot breath burned her skin, but his mouth had not opened and no sound passed her ears. His frustration screamed at a psychic level, and once more her mind hurled up walls to block him out. Tierc turned aside, visibly struggling for control.
Still she didn’t fear him.
“You have been fed lies, Ahnna. The chance of compatibility between Qui and human is one in four—”
“Those numbers are false.”
His incredulous stare hit her so hard she stepped back.
“I can quote hundreds of verified studies,” he flung back.
“No, it’s all propaganda!” Except she felt on dicey ground, because Ahnna couldn’t quote hundreds of studies, she knew only what she had been taught, empty lines with no science to back HD-X assurances that the United Regions’ lies equated to pro-Qui propaganda.
Tierc’s lips thinned. “Skal, there’s no arguing with you people. You won’t accept scientific evidence or factual historical records. You’ve created a fanatical belief system. There is no reasoning if you won’t open your mind!”
Ahnna pounced. “So what will you do? To us ignorant, simple-minded folk!” She closed the distance between them and withstood the fiery heat washing over her in waves. Despair, pain, frustration, exasperation, but still not anger, not the terror-striking rage of a Qui hell-bent on destruction. “Or here’s an easier question for you. What would you have done that night, Tierc, in Vegas? What would you have done to me?”
“Please don’t do this.” Defeat laced his tone.
“You’d have killed me.”
“No.” He flinched at her disbelieving stare and raised his hand. “Only as a last resort, in self-defense.”
Ahnna fell silent. She read undeniable truth in both his reaction and his words. If Tierc intended to take her alive, and he’d had ample opportunity to kill her that night, then she needed to question HD-X standard operating procedure—kill or be killed.
Tierc stooped, plucked the red-hot can from the fire so fast Ahnna’s heart tripped after the deed was done. He smacked his palm against his pants. “I’d have arrested you, the courts would have convicted you on conspiracy to commit terrorism, and you’d have wasted your life on some asteroid mine. Octiron did you a favor. I, on the other hand, would never know I’d lost the only woman capable of satisfying my Qui.” Raw hunger roughened his voice. “I guess Octiron did us both a favor. If you could, please, for a moment, open your mind to the possibility that I’m speaking the truth.”
“If I did…” Ahnna paused, knowing there could be no hope for them, and yet Tierc’s eyes bored into hers, waiting, hoping, and her heart splintered as she took onboard his pain, “then my whole life would have been a lie. My son would be living a lie, raised to kill or be killed in a terrorist regime, all for a lie.”
She watched the light die from his eyes.
Chapter Nine
H e thought he’d broken through to her. For one glorious moment, he’d felt Ahnna’s mind crack open, seen hunger in her eyes, and then he watched her crawl back into a cell built by HD-X with bars she couldn’t see and a key she carried inside her.
She refused to accept the new paradigm before her, choosing to live the lie that justified her life and beliefs.
Water cans full, wounds washed, they descended the next few pillars in silence. The light began to fade, the deeper they descended.
Ahnna rappelled down a few feet and paused. “We are so ill-equipped for this.” She tapped her comms-link. “Axo, can you hear us?”
The AI’s voice replied to them both. “I am picking up your response loud and clear.
“We’ll keep checking in with him,” Tierc said.
Ahnna swung from her rope, used the light on her weapon to light up the darkness and then switched it off. “What’s your charge?”
Tierc checked. “Ninety-five percent.” He’d burned power lighting the fire.
“Mine’s full. Let’s stick with one light for now.”
“I can see fine.”
Ahnna muttered something Tierc didn’t catch. He ignored it, probably something rude. They dropped another twenty feet. His sharp hearing picked up the rustling before his eyes detected movement. “Skal! Ahnna, hold up.”
She braked, aimed her weapon’s beam down and gasped. As she redirected the shaft of light towards the rock face, a coiling shape launched towards her, venomous teeth snapping. Ahnna squealed, fired, and lit up the rock in a large swathe. A heaving surge of movement fled their position. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with horror. “Snakes, millions of snakes!”
Weapon in hand, Tierc scanned the rock in case one decided to turn back. “Not millions. Hundreds.”
“Thousands! We can’t go this way.” A note of panic shrilled her voice. “They can climb the rock. Cover me.”
“I am. What are you doing?”
Ahnna’s hands whirred as she reorganized her rope. “I’m outta here. We need to find another way down.”
The drone dived past them, filming the critters, skittering sideways when a slew of snakes launched towards it. Tierc fired a split second blast at a sinewy shadow risking a return to the cleared area. They needed to keep their fire to short targeted bursts to conserve power. The charred snake dropped to the writhing nest below. “There could be snakes on other pillars. Take stock a second.”
“I fucking hate snakes.”
Spoken with honest passion.
Zeke spoke through their comms-link. “Not good, dudes. That’s all I can tell you.”
The unexpected intervention said much. Zeke had stuff he couldn’t tell. That meant Octiron must have done more preliminary research for this challenge than they had let on, which made sense given the scientific nature of their assignment. Perhaps there was another way down. He scanned the rock below for immediate danger and then searched the cliff-face around him. A dark shadow fifty feet up and to their right caught his eye. “Ahnna, I think there’s a cave.”
“Crawling with snakes.”
“No, it’s too high. We haven’t seen any snakes until now.”
She followed his finger with her weapon’s beam. “How the hell di
d you see that? Okay, I’m coming to you. We need to switch to climbing mode.”
The amount of reorganization just to go up took Tierc my surprise. His friends made it look so casual. “Should have paid more attention.”
Ahnna grunted as she shifted his quick-draw to a new anchor. She pulled on a rope hard. “Okay, you’re good. Follow me.”
Probably not the best time to explain he didn’t need the rope. The rock had plenty of pockets and footholds, he could have free-climbed, but having her so close and personal set his neurons afire and on an intellectual level, seeing her in her element gave him pleasure. The challenge forced them to communicate and surely working together would wear down her resistance.
He chased her to the cave, couldn’t improve on the line she chose. Ahnna constantly paused to check the cave for snakes. Tierc spotted movement behind a rock, didn’t say anything for fear of spooking her. He slowly moved into position ready to strike if the snake did. The moment they were both inside, Tierc moved Ahnna aside and stalked up on its position. It struck fast. Tierc moved faster, grabbed it by the neck and threw it outside. Surprised Ahnna hadn’t made a sound, he turned and discovered her crouched over, her face so white it stood out in the darkness.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” she mouthed.
“Stay there. I’m going to check further in.”
She nodded, more focused on breathing.
Tierc sensed one more critter in the shadows on his way back. Too far from the entrance to throw it out, he snapped the snake’s neck instead. Hopefully Ahnna’s phobia didn’t extend to snake meat because their rations weren’t going to get them far and he was ravenous. A humming made him look up, Zeke’s drone zooming in on the snake.
“Real cool,” Zeke commented in his ear. “Like some Karyadi move.”
“Don’t know what that is, I’m assuming a form of martial arts.”
“Close, but not a discipline that originated on Earth.”
“Axo, is this snake edible?” Tierc asked.
“That reptile is a Cyran. They are common on Altaira and reported to be high in nutritional value.”
“Good.”
“Who are you talking to?” Ahnna asked before spotting the dangling snake in his hand. “Shit. Another one!” She began to look around them.
“That’s the last, I swear, but I’ll take point from here, just in case.”
“You think this cave goes somewhere?”
Tierc draped the snake around his neck and led the way round a corner. He pointed at several steps hewn into the rock that led down to a roofed passageway. “I’m willing to bet all these pillars interconnect, but I want to conserve our weapons power. Do you trust me to see clearly enough in the dark?”
“Yes, but we can’t be sure this cave system connects to the level we need.”
“So we’ll double back and rethink. Look, someone put these steps here. This cave’s been dug out for a reason. The darker this gorge gets, the more dangerous it will be outside. We’ve seen no birds, no creatures capable of climbing except for a couple of persistent snakes, and no evidence of animal inhabitation, no tracks, no stools, no skeletons. Starting a cave system here avoids tangling with snakes and god knows what else lives farther down. I think it’s worth exploring.”
Ahnna was frowning. She looked freaked out.
Perhaps she didn’t realize his night vision was superb.
“I can see really well down here.”
“I can’t.”
He reached for her hand, but she snatched it away before he could touch her. “You see well enough,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “Fine. We’ll try it your way. You’re bringing the snake with us?”
“Dinner.”
She shuddered. “Another reason to hate you.”
Shock chilled Tierc’s blood, and part of him understood she had intended the words lightly, the context of the situation, her fraught state, the lack of venom in her words, all pointed to a throwaway line, but damn, this chick knew how to twist the knife. She recognized it too, the way she bit her lip, heat warming her cheeks. Her eyes skittered away. Ignore it. They didn’t need the distraction of their personal war.
Tierc raised his blaster and headed towards the stairs. When Ahnna didn’t immediately follow he looked back. “Keep close.”
To his relief, she joined him willingly, one more ceasefire to add to the rest.
It quickly became obvious the stairs spiraled around a four meter diameter and they had already descended at least a hundred feet. A flickering light below brought Tierc to a stop.
“What is it,” Ahnna whispered, rubbing her hands up and down her sleeves. She’d holstered her weapon a while back.
“Either a natural fluorescence or technology.”
“Technology means people. Have you noticed how smooth these steps are?”
“They’re also dusty. No one’s been here in ages.”
Ahnna crouched and ran a finger across the step. She took out her weapon. “There’s a fresh air supply coming from somewhere.”
Tierc carried on another full turn and stopped. They’d reached the bottom and a passageway stretched out ahead of them. He studied the flickering light on the wall ten meters along, an artificial light source that illuminated alien scribblings carved into the wall.
“Zeke,” Tierc said tapping his comms. “Send an image of this to Axo. Axo, what’s this say?”
The drone zipped down the corridor, filming the writings.
Axo was less helpful. “I am not permitted to divulge this information.”
“Why not?”
“It would give you an unfair advantage.”
An advantage suggested they were on the right track. Octiron had to have been down here. They would have sent a drone. Hell, a drone could have carried out the geological survey. This whole challenge was about putting them through the wringer for the salacious enjoyment of the masses.
“You’ve carried out research for us before. On Trax.”
“I am not permitted to divulge this information.”
“At least we’re within comms range,” Ahnna commented. “Although I’m not sure for how long. What happens to your drone then, Zeke?”
“It’s auto-programmed to track you.”
“Come on,” Tierc urged, “let’s keep going.”
After twenty minutes the corridor widened. Tierc rummaged through metal pipes, wrapped coils of optical fibers, and a variety of electronic gizmos stacked in a recess. A technological society had worked down here. A tool kit could prove useful. He started to hunt through some thermoplastic cartons.
“What are you thinking?” Ahnna asked as she inspected the supplier labels on the optical fibers.
Tierc stepped over some piping. “That whoever left this equipment arrived a long time after whoever wrote on those walls.”
“Agreed. These fibers date back fifty galactic years. This place has been abandoned twice.”
“Someone planned an operation here before leaving in a hurry.” Tierc pulled out a storage carton. “The question is why.” He lifted the unlocked lid, half-expecting something to jump out at him. Then he grinned. “We have a wire cutter, knife, and a flashlight.” He flicked the switch. “A dead flashlight.” He picked up a miniature welder and fired it up, creating an intense blue flame. “We have fire.”
Ahnna grimaced. “Just don’t ask me to flash cook that snake.”
Tierc’s stomach growled. “Think of it as char-grilled meat. Probably tastes like chicken. We need to eat and it’s late. Let’s camp for a few hours. Food, rest, and then we’ll be ready for whatever else Altaira has to throw at us.”
A little further on Tierc stopped at an ornate wooden door. He tuned out the incessantly hovering drone and listened. On hearing silence, he pressed down the handle and pushed the door ajar. The air inside was stale, but nothing jumped out at them. The empty reception area led to an office and kitchen, and bedrooms, the bedsheets ruffled as if their occupants had left in a hurry.
“This used to be a huge space,” Ahnna said, patting one wall that was clearly part of a more ancient structure.
The other walls were pre-fabricated. Someone had built a base facility within the cave system and furnished it for a team of four.
“A geological survey,” Tierc suggested.
“A survey team that left before they got started.” Ahnna’s eyebrows rose high. “What’s down there?”
* * *
Tierc skinned the snake and Ahnna cooked. She said it was only fair.
Chewing the grilled meat until his jaw ached, Tierce glanced at Ahnna picking bones out, her nose wrinkled in distaste. The snake had a nutty flavor that wasn’t unpleasant but the meat’s sinewy texture robbed the meal of enjoyment. They sat on easy chairs in the mess room, their meal accompanied by sips of boiled water. The silence wore on Tierc’s nerves. Zeke had parked his drone atop a closet where it presumably recorded their every word. Real conversation killer.
Ahnna expelled a long breath as she studied her next bite. A light sweat beaded her forehead.
“Do you want to break into the rations?” Tierc asked.
“We don’t know how long we’ll be here.”
He nodded. “You did well. Getting us down.”
“Like you needed my help.”
Tierc frowned at her. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have taken so much care.”
Ahnna shrugged and tore a strip of meat off with her teeth.
Crandal’s voice spoke through Tierc’s comms-link. “Tierc, what were you doing in New Vegas?”
Tierc’s shoulders slumped.
Ahnna rolled her eyes. “Can’t even loathe a meal in peace.”
“We’re tired, Crandal,” Tierc said, “Do we have to do this now?”
“Yes. Viewers want to understand you. There’s growing interest in your universe. Our audience wants to know how your universe differs from ours.”
“We don’t abduct people and force them into a stupid contest to get their freedom back for a start,” Ahnna snapped.
“But you are taking part,” Crandal admonished. “You signed up to the rules and that includes giving interviews.”
