by Azalea Ellis
I vaguely remembered the glimpse of that break in existence that I had seen in the Trial for Testimony and Lore. I shuddered, suddenly absolutely sure that something coming from there was a really, really bad idea. “How did you know how to make the array work, if they’re forbidden?”
“I am a historian, and an explorer. I know many of the old things that others have forgotten.”
I started to nod, then frowned. “Wait, weren’t you worried that the array on Earth would let something from between through?”
He smirked. “The array opens a door to the void from the world that initiates the doorway. Estreyer was never in danger.”
“So . . . we could go back to Earth only to find it’s been invaded by some . . . eldritch god?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I stared at him. “You’re an asshole, you know? There are plenty of innocent people on Earth. Children.”
His jaw tightened. “Well, it is only a possibility. And we had no other choice at the time, so do not condemn me for it now.”
I conceded, though irritation simmered in my blood. “Are you coming with us?”
“I . . . will cross through, but I will not go back to NIX. I will stay close, and if you have need of me, I will raze the place to the stones of its foundations. But I cannot see it and restrain myself to pleasantries and subtle threats. It will be nothing at all, or death.”
Shortly after that, all of us making the trip piled into the small two-person Estreyan ships that were small enough to fit through the array on Earth’s side. I squeezed into one with Adam. Blaine and the kids were staying behind for this venture.
A group of people activated the stone circle, which glowed bright and kept going, and Adam flew us through, flitting down from winter up into autumn in a disorienting twist.
It didn’t take long for the others to join us, and we flew toward NIX over the course of a couple hours, our tiny ships piercing through the night like crustacean-shaped bullets. When we arrived close enough, we exited the ships and stood around as a group, Estreyans and humans stretching our legs in tense camaraderie. We all wore full armor with extremely little skin exposed, along with masks that covered our mouths and noses to keep from breathing in any anti-Seed warfare the Estreyans feared NIX might have aerosolized. I thought they were being unnecessarily paranoid, but just shrugged and went along with it. It did make us look even more intimidating, so that was a plus.
Our goal was to both retrieve the meningolycanosis, and make sure NIX didn’t have access to it any longer. Along with any other interesting or suspicious substances we happened to find. I’d convinced the queen not to order the small force of Estreyans that had agreed to come with me to wipe NIX out completely. Not that I had any sympathy for the organization, but many of the Players were just . . . people. People forced into this, just like I had been.
Besides, too few people wanted to risk travel through the highly stigmatized arrays, so I convinced her that if possible, we would do this through diplomacy. What a novel idea.
Atop a mountain about a mile out from NIX, our group looked down on the base.
Torliam’s hands clenched so tight that his knuckles creaked, and he glared at the compound without blinking.
I turned to one of the Estreyans and nodded, huddling together with Adam, Jacky, Chanelle, and Sam.
With a loud pop, the five of us stood in the center of NIX’s courtyard.
There was an instant of surprised silence, but only an instant. Alarms blared. People rushed into action, a group of Players sprinting inside before the doors slammed shut behind them, guards scrambling, and most surprisingly, the Shortcut falling straight down, concrete sliding over the part of the courtyard where it had stood. The gun turrets on the walls—new ones, since we’d destroyed many of the old—turned all the way around to point down at us.
Less than thirty seconds after we’d arrived, a group of people in the darker bodysuits of the special ops Player units dashed out of one of the doors, which opened only long enough for them to slip through.
I raised my hands above my head. “I’m not here to fight, guys,” I called. “I just want to speak to Commander Petralka. If you find you can’t resist attacking us . . . you will regret it.”
They hesitated, and didn’t attack, though one of them spoke in a low voice, probably talking to someone on the other end of a microphone.
I realized as I looked around that NIX seemed so much smaller, much less than it once did. Always before I had been afraid, within this place.
Chanelle sidled up beside me, gripping the side of my utility belt for reassurance. “It feels weird, to be back on Earth. My family is here. They probably think I’m dead, though.”
I bit the inside of my lip. “After this is over, we’ll come back again. We’ll find them, and make sure our families are okay.”
It didn’t take long before another of the doors slid open, and a man in crisp military uniform exited, striding over to us. He stopped a few feet in front of me, definitely not a safe distance from someone with my abilities. He was a tall man, almost as tall as me. “Commander Petralka has been . . . removed,” he said. “She proved herself incapable of fulfilling her duties, multiple times. You may have some idea of the instances I am referring to,” he said with just a hint of a smirk, his piercing glare and the way he held himself more than a little aggressive. “I am Commander Britt. You can just call me Britt. Why are you here?”
I smiled. “I’m here to make a bargain. A trade, if you will. You have something I want . . . and I have something you really don’t want.” I looked around, noticing the faces peeking out of windows, some of them being herded away, presumably to safer places. “Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk? Your office, maybe? Don’t worry, we’re housetrained.”
He stared at me for a little, then his eyes flicked over my small group of teammates. “You first. I think you know the way.”
I led the way to Petralka’s old office, escorted by a pretty large contingent of guards and special ops Players.
Britt opened the door with a complicated series of scans and identity checks, and stepped into the room, moving to sit behind a large marble desk.
A pale man with too much pudge to be considered skinny, but too bony to be considered fat, sat in the corner, his twitching hands sunk into bulky gloves. He muttered when we entered, but didn’t look up at us, staring at the smartglass tablet on the walled table in front of him.
I was curious, but my Wraith Skill was really bad at deciphering how electronic displays would appear to the human eye, even at close distances like this. “Your security is much better,” I said. “And you’ve obviously been running response drills.”
Jacky, Chanelle, and I sat in the chairs in front of Britt’s desk, while Adam stood with his back to the wall, eyes darting around, though for once his hands were still, and Sam stood behind me.
“Thanks for noticing,” Britt said again with the decidedly mean smirk. “What do you want?”
“I want your anti-Seed experiments. Blaine Mendell coined the term meningolycanosis. I believe you’re familiar.”
Chanelle coughed pointedly, her big blue eyes narrowed into a glare.
The man in the corner’s fingers twitched, and Britt’s eyes flickered. Window communication. Interesting.
“I am. What do you want with them?”
“I believe that should be obvious,” I said flatly.
He leaned back. “You’re actively an enemy to NIX. My superiors have authorized me to kill you on sight, if I feel the need. If I successfully capture you, I’d get kudos for that, too. Though . . . I would worry that you’re just allowing me to apprehend you as part of some ridiculous plan to steal even the damn Shortcut out from under our noses.”
Jacky snorted.
His eyes narrowed. “Though, it would seem you don’t need it. How did you get here? We found no trace of you on Earth. And we looked.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know all the hi
ding spaces.”
Britt read another Window.
I had an idea, and sent Wraith out toward what I suspected was a Thinker in the corner. Instead of concentrating on the screen, I read the reflection of the smartglass tablet in the shine of his eyes. The numbers flashed across so fast I could barely read them, then settled.
“12% chance they hid on Earth.”
Very interesting. I sent a Window to Adam, telling him what I’d just learned.
“You didn’t hide on Earth,” Britt said. “Maybe, if you’d like to share, I could get authorization to release the ‘meningolycanosis.’”
“This isn’t that kind of trade. Petralka got . . . “removed” because she couldn’t handle me or my team, and she didn’t realize it early and just kill us. Well, neither did her Thinker, as far as I could tell. But you’ve got a new one now.” I looked at the man in the corner, who twitched. “Maybe you won’t make the same mistakes. Because it’s too late to just kill us.”
“This is obviously a threat.”
Sam stiffened behind me, and then relaxed, his posture changing to something more resembling warm toffee.
I turned to look at him, and had to suppress the instinctive flinch when I saw his black eyes.
His new Skill liked to kick in without his permission, especially when he felt stressed. Once it did, it didn’t let him go until it had to. “This is why I should have gone to see if I could heal that group of people that had been infected by that mind-control hive bacteria. You wouldn’t have to go to all the trouble of bargaining,” he said.
“You’re the one who vetoed that idea,” I said. “When you had your morals.”
“I was being illogical.” He turned to Britt, staring at him with a complete lack of expression. “And yes, this is a threat.”
Britt flinched back from the windows into emptiness that had taken the place of Sam’s eyes.
I nodded. “I want the meningolycanosis, or I’m going to attack this base, along with help from some of my alien friends.”
The Thinker’s fingers twitched.
“98% chance of alien collusion.”
“10% chance of attack.”
I changed my mind.
The Thinker’s eyes widened.
“27% chance of attack.”
I changed it again.
“63% chance of attack.”
Britt’s eyes flickered, and he frowned.
“You see, Britt, the aliens didn’t care about us. They didn’t come here to attack, at first. But we made them angry with the whole imprisonment and torture of one of their own thing. They’ll kill you and everyone here if I don’t stop them.”
“84% chance of truthfulness.”
“If you just give me what I want . . . we’ll go away.”
“95% chance of truthfulness.”
“In event of attack, 7% chance of base survival.”
Britt’s teeth ground together audibly.
“No one could fault you, with percentages like that,” I said.
He jerked.
A few minutes later, I was walking unimpeded through the lowers corridors of NIX, Estreyan guards having joined my team to make sure Britt didn’t decide to betray us halfway through completing our “trade.”
Chapter 36
…that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
— Lord Alfred Tennyson
Adam led us down into the bowels of the compound, moving quickly.
We turned the corner on a surprised guard at one point, and my Estreyan escorts slipped in front of me faster than he could draw his gun up.
The guard stared at my group, and then slowly lowered his gun, stepping back toward the wall for us to pass.
Sam, still under the influence of his Black Sun Skill, brushed a hand against him on the way by, and he crumpled to the ground.
I was beginning to see what the queen had meant about becoming a cult leader. It was strange, but I can't deny I liked the sense of security that came with not having to worry about dying all the time, when people were willing to literally put themselves between me and danger.
On the way to the meningolycanosis stores, we passed the Player containment area where they'd kept Chanelle. Cells ran along the hallway, and almost all of them had viewing windows through which we could see the condition of the Players within.
I’d known vaguely where they were, but this was my first time actually exploring the area.
Some looked sick, or depressed, or just generally unhealthy. But some were worse. Their bodies were bloated, veins turning black as the skin turned gangrenous in places. They tore at their own skin with nails and teeth, or wore restraints to keep them from doing so, straight-jackets or human muzzles. They babbled soundlessly behind the walls, and twitched in seeming paranoia at things that weren't there.
Watching them made me . . . extremely uncomfortable. I had a feeling my mind was trying to remind me of something, a sense of vague deja-vu.
The Estreyans were even more shocked than I, and the group slowed from a jog to a walk as we all became distracted by what we were seeing.
One of them turned to me. "Your world is touched by the Sickness, too?"
I wanted to deny it on instinct, but realized that was what I'd been comparing the prisoners to. They reminded me of the infected spider-monkey I'd seen on Estreyer. "We didn't, before," I said instead, lamely, trying to ignore the horrible suspicion forming in my mind.
Sam had no compunction in blurting it out when the same thought came to him. “NIX has been experimenting with it, I bet.”
There were gasps all around. Jacky shuddered, and Adam and I shared a worried look with her. Was this what had been done to Chanelle?
"What is wrong with your people?" one of the Estreyans asked, still staring through the windows.
"They know not with what they play," I said, slipping into the Estreyan speech pattern in my own distraction. These people were injected with meningolycanosis, if the medical charts on their doors weren’t lying. The same as Chanelle. But she was different from them. Not normal, but she didn't act insane.
Chanelle whimpered, grabbing my hand as she looked through the observation windows. “They cultivate the abhorrent, like flowers growing in the soil. Growing in the flesh of our own kind,” she whispered, eyes half-vacant, though I wasn’t sure if she was losing lucidity, or if she was just in shock.
We continued on to the storage room for the meningolycanosis. We took it, and everything else in the room that wasn't bolted down, including the documentation. The Estreyans stored everything breakable extremely carefully, doubly wary of human creations now.
“I know Queen Mardinest did not order it,” one of my guards said, “but it would be a kindness to these poor creatures if we razed this place to its standing stones, and killed them all. They are suffering, and the Sickness will spread.”
“Nothing stops the Sickness from spreading,” I said. “And maybe . . . we will return with a cure, and these people will not need to die.”
He shrugged. “If it is not soon, they will die anyway.”
Chanelle squeezed my hand harder. This fate would be hers, if I couldn’t find a way to stop it.
I resisted the urge to slide down the wall and hide my head in my hands. When did saving the world become something I was seriously considering?
As we left, I carefully did not listen to the sound of one of the subject’s screams of pain.
As we walked out into the courtyard, which still bristled with security, I saw two faces that I never expected to see again.
I stopped in my tracks, and the others followed my gaze, up to one of the hallway windows that looked down on the circular courtyard.
Jacky hissed. “We don’t need NIX anymore. Can we kill him now? We’ve gotten a lot stronger. I bet we could do it.”
Kilburn looked down on
us, his too thin form standing nonchalantly with his hands in his pockets.
Sam smiled, especially surprising because of his usual stoic nihilism under the influence of Black Sun. “I would like to melt his eyeballs out,” he said.
Adam looked around. “It’ll have to be quick. Could you guys cover for us?” he asked the Estreyans.
“No,” Chanelle said.
We turned to her. She stared up at Kilburn with the kind of piercing focus so rare for her even now. “I want to kill him,” she said. She turned to me. “I want to do it. But I’m not strong enough yet. Will you bring me back . . . later? After?” The unspoken question, whether I would bring her back after she wasn’t sick any more, hung in the air.
I grimaced, forcing my claws back into their sheaths, and nodded. “You have more right to his death than any of us,” I said reluctantly.
I looked up again, but Kilburn had gone. Near where he had been, another person who should have been dead looked out on us, pressing his hand against the glass.
Vaughn glared down at me, mouthing one word very slowly. “Traitor.”
I turned away, and with a signal of my hand in the air, we were gone from the courtyard, back to the mountainside with Torliam and the Estreyan teleporter.
The flight back to the array barely registered, and as we passed through it, I sent out a prayer that neither world had been or would be noticed by the things in between. Though I didn’t know what gods might be listening.
Chapter 37
There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
— Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The next couple weeks were a blur of exhausted, desperate training and sleepless nights of strategy and worry.
Blaine and the Estreyan scientists—that he grudgingly admitted were somewhat intelligent—had taken the samples we’d appropriated from NIX, and went to work testing and weaponizing them for use against the God of Knowledge. They’d also been developing visors that they thought might cancel out his light-based psychological attack. Blaine had gone without sleep for days and commandeered every useful Estreyan he could find to help him build them.
