by K. Gorman
Jaxx met them in a dank, half-lit corridor five floors down.
Thickset, with a filled-out frame and wide, brown eyes, he shared Marc’s style of shaven head. A cigarette, one of the many things that hadn't died on Old Earth, flared in his hands and, as she got closer, the smoke clotted her nose and made her squint. He upticked his head when he caught sight of them, the sullen, defensive look on his expression switching to a relieved grin.
“Yo, I saw some of them ball things you talked about.”
A cacophony of noise became audible as they grew closer, and Karin noticed the emblem for one of complex's arcades on the corner of his shirt. “Do you work here?”
He shrugged. “My cousin. He’s off tonight.”
“When did you see the balls? Were they here?”
“Yeah, man, they floated right down this fucking hallway. I came out after they passed, but I saw them leaving.”
“Any idea whose they are?”
“Nah. Never heard of anything like that before, ’cept in video games. You said they shoot lightning?”
“They do.”
“Clio.”
“Is the way down clear?” Karin asked.
“Yeah. Verina says they’re gathering around the back exit, but you want to go under, right?”
“That’s the plan,” Marc said. “How long ago did you see the spheres?”
“About fifteen minutes.” Jaxx glanced toward the end of the hall. “You going that way?”
Marc didn’t speak for a few moments, giving the door at the end of the hall a hard frown. Then he nodded. “Might as well.”
Probably better to go in after them, Karin thought. If they went a different route, they risked running into them unawares. This way, they could at least look for them.
Still, her palms itched at going in that direction.
Well, actually, they itched at going in any direction.
“I never should have left my pilot’s seat,” she grumbled.
Marc gave her a sympathetic pat on the back, then unholstered his blaster. “Let’s go.”
*
Jaxx followed them down into the complex’s sub-basement. After all the stairs and winding corridors, Karin had lost track of what level they were on, but the air began to feel a little different. Closer, with more pressure, as if, despite the massive ventilation systems she'd seen behind Arcin's walls, the levels above pressed down on them.
They crossed an empty hallway and segued into a series of rooms and corridors that had a more first or second-world feel to them than the behind-the-scenes infrastructure they’d left behind—linoleum and drywall instead of metal and concrete. Like most of Arcin’s older sections, it was well-worn but, judging by the plastic wrapping around the furniture, not very well used.
Offices of some sort. Or some kind of old meeting area or hotel reception. It looked like it had been preserved, as if it were on pause and waiting for a new client to take up whatever business it ran.
A fountain opened up in a tiny lobby to their left. Small, white nozzles sat on angles at its bottom, but its waters remained still, reflecting the accented walls around it. A tiny whir alluded to a filter that was still at work. The smell of incense came to her nose as they passed, and she gave the area another glance, noting the decorative, old-style filigrees. Several chairs sat at perfect angles around a coffee table, their surfaces free of dust.
Cleaning robots at work?
“Yo, check out the party room.” Jaxx nodded up the hall. “It’s got a stripper pole.”
Karin raised an eyebrow as the room came into sight, with said pole clearly visible through the long window that ran down the room’s side.
“It’s for KTV,” Marc said.
Both she and Jaxx frowned. “What?”
“You might know it more as Karaoke. We call it KTV on Fallon.”
“Karaoke?” Both her eyebrows were raised now. “With strippers? Do they make them sing?”
He shrugged. “Dunno, but you can see the mics. That netlink next to them will have songs.”
“Clio’s bounty,” Jaxx said. “These people know how to have a good time. A weird time, but a good one.”
A clunk sounded ahead. They all froze.
The hallway ended in a sharp bend to the left, the same unobtrusive overhead lighting reflecting off the pastel yellow walls. As before, it was dead quiet. Only the sound of their breaths, and the slight whir from the fountain behind them, came to her ears.
But the air had changed. Tenser, with a different kind of pressure behind it.
After a few seconds, the door they had heard closed again. A shadow appeared on the wall at the end, moving closer. It looked like an oblong sphere.
“Move.” Marc pulled at her shirt as he spoke, his voice low and urgent. “Back to the junction. Go down the other hall.”
The sphere came into sight as they pulled back to the corridor, floating chest-high into the corner and going no faster than a casual walk.
Karin lost sight of it as they sprinted down the hallway. They charged down a set of low stairs, Marc simply jumping to the next floor, and passed through an unlit lounge area with rich, unwrapped leather couches and filigreed coffee tables. Her knees and feet hammered from the impact and, as Marc took a furious, wide-eyed glance back, she instinctively ducked.
“Down!”
She met the floor hard, throwing herself into an awkward, unpracticed roll that bumped her elbows and every vertebra of her spine. A muscle in her abdomen pulled painfully as she came to the end of it and looked back.
A ball of electricity crackled through the air above her, close enough to send all the tiny hairs on her arm pricking upward. It hit the wall with a crack and a hiss.
Marc hauled her up by the elbow. “Go!”
She made to leap forward—and almost ran into Marc’s side as he abruptly halted.
Ahead in the hallway, haloed by the lights above it, another sphere floated toward them. Electricity sparked at its front.
“Down!”
Marc shoved her to the side. They dove behind the couch.
The ball of electricity crackled harmlessly through the air and hit the stairs just underneath the first sphere.
“Sol!” he said. “Think my blaster will work?”
“I dunno, but I would kill for my forceball racquet right about now.” Jaxx peeked over the top of the couch. “They’re coming this way, so if you’re going to do something, I’d do it quick.”
“Can we lure them?” Karin asked. “The ones from earlier didn’t seem that smart. They attacked those soldiers, right?”
Marc lifted his blaster. “Let’s try shooting them first.”
“Spoken like a true soldier.” Jaxx flashed her a coy grin as Marc knelt up to aim over the top of the couch.
Marc grunted. “Well, if you’d prefer to try peaceful negotiations with them, you’re more than welcome to—Clio!”
He jerked back down just as the top of the couch lit up in white.
Electricity slammed into the wall above them.
This time, it was close enough to hurt.
A trailing arc snapped down to them. Numbing pain flashed through Karin’s body as it jumped close to her arm. Her lips went numb, along with the insides of her eyelids. Her entire head felt as though it had turned to cement.
“Shoot it!” Jaxx screamed. “Shoot it!”
The blaster cracked somewhere close to her ear. A red streak flashed in the wall mirror next to her, then pinged off the first sphere. It left a blackened scorch mark across its surface.
The sphere wobbled. Then it floated forward. Electricity crackled at its front.
Closer, the second sphere fired again.
She hissed as the discharge skimmed across the top of the couch and skidded along the wall above them. Then came the first sphere’s shot, blasting the wall behind them. Pain jumped through her skin, making her breath catch in her throat. Involuntarily, her lungs shuddered.
Marc’s blaster cracked agai
n. Once, twice, three times.
Gasping, muscles shaking, she crawled toward the end of the couch so she could get a better view of the mirror. “I’ll try to distract it with light.”
A tinny voice sounded from Marc’s pocket—Soo-jin, back on the Nemina—but she didn’t pay attention. All her focus was on the mirror beside her and the two spheres that floated closer and closer to them.
With a thought, she called her light to her.
She didn’t have much practice with it. Before the Shadows had attacked, she’d been in hiding. Her use of her powers had been limited to secret, often drunken moments shared with her sister—or in private, at home, with no one else to see.
But Marc and Jaxx already knew. And, since Senton had betrayed them, so did the Alliance, Arcin-17, or whoever had sent these robots.
Light flashed on her hand, flowing like milk, and she quickly put it palm-down to the floor. Out of practice as she was, she needed the link on her palm and the motion in her hand to focus.
An answering patch of light sprung up on the opposite side of the room. With a thought, she made it big, tall, and human-shaped. Then, she made it walk.
Beside her, Marc pulled back, ducking out of the spheres' sight. Everyone went still, staring at the scene in the mirror.
Both spheres paused. Thanks to Marc's blaster, their fronts had a scorched look to them that made it easy to tell when they swiveled around. A smell of burnt leather and hot metal came to her nose, and a faint haze of smoke veiled the air. Karin held still, staring as a small light appeared in a dot near the first sphere's top. It began to pulse, as if it were thinking.
It appeared on the second sphere a moment later.
They all held their breath, not daring to move.
Electricity crackled. The first sphere’s shot flew through Karin’s light and crashed against the wall behind it.
The sphere’s light pulsed again. It didn't move.
Sol. She shifted her hand, aiming her palm. The light-dummy moved with her, jerkily floating toward the stairs that led back up to the fountain. Staring hard at the reflection, she willed her light-figure up the stairs slowly, hoping the sphere would be lured into following.
The sphere’s pulsing light stopped. A crackle of electricity built on its front again. Karin's jaw tensed as it wobbled.
It began to float toward the stairs.
Seven gods. She let a slow breath out as it moved away, following its track in the mirror. Then her focus shifted to the second sphere.
It didn't budge.
Marc tapped her arm. When she looked over, he held up two fingers, then pointed his finger into the back of the couch, indicating the other side of the room.
She frowned. Could she make two?
Before she could decide, a crackle of electricity came from nearby. The second sphere’s shot flew over the couch and splashed against the wall, low enough to make them all collectively jerk at the pain.
She gripped the light in her hand tight, keeping her connection to her first dummy up the stairs.
“Clio’s bounty, how much amperage is that?” Jaxx shook his hand out with a grimace.
Marc grunted. His blaster cracked over the top of the couch.
“More than a livestock fence. The other one’s still leaving. Karin, do you think—?”
“Working on it.”
Still gripping the first flash of light in her hand, she produced one in her other. Answering light flooded silently up from the floor in the middle of the hallway, putting together a human-shape piece by piece.
It was slower than her first one.
Another shot of electricity crackled against the wall. Her light dummies flickered as pain rang through her, but she gritted her teeth and re-stabilized them, shooting a quick glance up the stairs to make sure the first sphere was still leaving. At least Marc’s shots were keeping the other one from floating too close. Every time he hit it, it bounced back a centimeter or two.
But, every time he had to duck behind the couch, it more than made up that lost ground.
In the mirror, the sphere floated closer.
“Sol. Karin, get ready. We have to—”
“Stay down,” she said as she felt him get up again. “I’m going to try something.”
He didn’t have to wait long before she did it. Light moved fast. In less than a blink, her second light dummy had darted from the middle of the room to just beside her. In the next step, it engulfed her.
Everything went white. Her breath caught in her throat. She held it, listening hard.
Electricity crackled.
She jerked the light to the side just as the sphere’s shot sailed through the air above her. Pain jumped across her fingers. She gripped the light in her hands tight, focusing on the connection through the pain, and willed it to move further down, guiding it by feel as she squeezed her eyes shut.
It moved jerkily along the back of the couch, further away from them. She squinted one eye open, watching the sphere in the mirror.
Electricity crackled on its front.
This time, though, the shot fired across the other end of the couch—right where her second light dummy stood.
Yes!
She jerked it back more, like a person who was fleeing. Behind her, Marc and Jaxx went still as they watched the mirror.
All they needed was for the sphere to turn. To at least start going the other way. Then they could slip around the corner, put a bit of a wall between it and them, and race down the halls as fast as they could.
The sphere stayed where it was. It didn’t move toward them, but neither did it make for her light. In the quiet, another snap of electricity sounded from up the stairs as the first sphere shot again at her other dummy.
Then their sphere rotated. In the mirror, the small light in its back pulsed. Electricity crackled on its front. It began to float toward her light person.
Yes!
Keeping the light connection gripped in her hands, she gathered her heavy, stiff legs under her. As quietly and low key as they could, she, Marc, and Jaxx half-crawled their way below the couch’s back and arm rests, then along the wall. They slipped around the corner.
Intermittent discharges of electricity followed them up the hallway, the sounds growing fainter and fainter as they turned their walk into as quiet of a run as they could. At one junction, Jaxx pulled out a set of keys, unlocked one of the doors, and led the way into a tunnel access line.
Only when the door closed and locked behind them and Karin had a foot on the ladder did she release her light connection. Her hands tingled as she let it go. The light slipped from her hands like glowing milk, but vanished before it hit the floor. She didn't feel her two light dummies go with it, but a pressure she hadn't noticed building in her head lifted away.
Once in the tunnels, Marc pulled the netlink out of his pocket and queued up the Nemina. “Start the warm-up, Soo-jin. We’re coming in.”
Chapter 7
‘Warm up’ was a bit of a misnomer, left over from Old Earth expressions. While there was a minimum heat requirement for take-off, engaging the fuel rods didn’t leave much of a heat signature as it only prepped the engines and cycled through its pre-checks. Space-flight and atmo-flight required different levels, mostly in life support, artificial gravity, and the burn required to compensate for actual gravity.
By the time Karin, Marc, and Jaxx arrived twenty minutes later, the Nemina sat ready to go.
They’d parked her in a low concrete shelter made more for ground transport than space-faring vehicles, but the Nemina had a low enough height clearance to tuck herself in under the roof.
Jaxx stopped as the ship came into sight. “I guess this is where I leave you.”
Marc turned.
“I suppose it is.” After a second’s consideration, he held out his hand. “Thank you for helping us.”
Jaxx shook it.
“It’s the least I could do, considering…” He shot a shy look to Karin. Ever since her light-dummy h
ad appeared, he’d gone hesitant, more aloof toward her. As if seeing her powers made them more real to him. “Well, you didn’t have to come back for us. Hell, you didn’t have to heal anyone in the first place. I bet it’d be a lot less hassle if you hadn’t.”
She gave him a small smile. It felt forced, bitter. “What kind of person would I be if I hadn’t?”
“I dunno. Normal, I guess?” He winced. “Sorry—poor choice of words. I—”
“No. I am normal. Really. Human. I’ve been tested.” She glanced to Marc for support, but he had turned away, his netlink in his hand.
“Soo-jin, we clear?”
“For now. There’s been some activity, but not in the last ten minutes.”
“Activity?”
“Ships flying overhead. Comms buzzing. That sort of thing. I’m getting second-hand reports of a cluster on Arcin’s North side.”
Karin chewed on her tongue. With ships that close, they’d be noticed the second they flew out. “Is Cookie’s dummy online?”
“Yes. Ready to blast.”
He’d switched the Nemina’s old idents into a computer that they’d left attached to a frame-only engine on the other side of the island. The plan was to use the Nemina’s new ident and ship scan, along with a pre-programmed, government-approved flight plan that Karin and Soo-jin had booked several hours ago, to pull the heat off them.
“Maybe I should pilot,” Cookie added. “Since the rest of you are all wanted fugitives.”
Karin bared her teeth. “No. I’m flying.”
“Better hurry, then. Pre-flight’s in two minutes.”
On the tail end of his words, the ramp of the Nemina hissed. Light splayed across the worn concrete as it descended, scraping against the concrete with a squeak of metal. Karin made to step forward, but the sudden heightened pitch of Jaxx’s voice stopped her.
“Yo—guys, those things are back.”
Adrenaline spiked through her. She followed his gaze.
