by Gwynn White
"We need him to fly, so that's not what I meant," Sara 'pathed. "He's part of the plan too. Let's go."
Fel Or'an had an odd mixture of old stone and new remodeling that made the hallways solid where it mattered, but in some places relics had been left, such as the mara head profiles and hieroglyphs carved into the wall on his right. The mixture of symbols and pictures of exotic and unfamiliar animals—even some that looked human—was unlike any language Emmit had seen. The eroded stone grafted into the newer-looking wall, floor and ceiling as though showcasing and supporting a museum from some millennia ago and the message it held. A new era of ultras and discovery?
They entered an adjoining hall and found Ehli with an arm around Cullen, trying to help him walk. She favored her leg with the bad hamstring, and his legs were dragging. He could barely look up. Bandages were wrapped around his head and chest, with dark stains of blood seeping through. What had happened to his suit? The helmet looked like it had malfunctioned before the visor could fully retract.
Sara ran ahead as Emmit's dad slowed.
Emmit peeked into Cullen's mind and had to stop as the amazing scene unfolded, from exploding mara to his leap across the chasm and shocking rescue of his mother at the end of a branch. You did all that for her? Anything negative he'd felt toward Cullen before was instantly flipped into respect and gratitude.
"She did quite a lot too," the wounded man thought back.
Sara reached them and braced Cullen's other side. "The ship's not far. We'll take him there."
His dad and mom shared a silent look as he stood there, and she hobbled on. Emmit caught his sense of reluctance to help her, and he didn't understand why. That's my mom... your wife.
But the look she was giving him wasn't exactly a glowing welcome.
Her gaze fell on Emmit and her face relaxed. Her pace increased, and he jogged the short distance—past his dad—to hug her. She smelled like she'd bathed in sweat and mud, but he wasn't a ripe rose either. I can't believe... her memories flashed in his mind. He saw what she'd endured, felt the pain in her shoulder and leg, and experienced her fear as if he'd dangled from the branch and had the wind rocking him loose as his fingers burned to let go.
Their connection tightened to a narrow tunnel between minds. "I'm not sure if we can trust your father."
He shook his head. I think we can.
She looked at him as if she hoped he was right, but wasn't convinced. Then on a frequency that felt wider—more public—she thought, "The rejects made it across." She shared a vision of someone riding a mara as it leapt over the chasm, fell short of the other side, then jumped off the mara to tumble onto the opposite side as the mara let out an unholy shriek that echoed as it fell into the chasm.
"Ten made it across," Sara 'pathed, and again, Emmit could feel the wide access of her words.
Could he do that too? Share a thought that only one person could hear?
Sara glanced at his mom, suspicious. "We're glad you both made it."
"Yes," his father said. "I'm sorry we couldn't risk meeting you at the chasm."
"And for leaving us in prison?" his mom said. "Yeah, S'all peaches and applesauce 'round here." Her sarcastic smile changed to a dark stare. "One of your guards just turned."
"I have to help them," she 'pathed to Emmit as she broke away from Cullen and hobbled into a jog, growling with the effort. "They can't get inside. I'll be back."
His dad ran with her.
Sara nudged Cullen to limp faster. "Come on, Captain. We have to get the ship ready." She pointed right at an opening in the hall. "This way boys."
His mom and dad kept on down the same hall. He didn't want to risk losing her again. "But—"
A pinch in his head halted his steps. "We don't have time," Sara 'pathed.
He was worried about how his mom would fare against a hall full of rejects, and why it was necessary to get so close, but then he wondered, first tightening the walls around his mind to protect the next thought: what is my and Cullen's role from here? He knew it had something to do with Adi's father and getting to Vijil, but where his abilities were needed, he didn't know.
He opened up a narrow channel into Cullen's mind as the captain and Adi followed Emmit and Sara. Captain. As soon as his mind opened to Emmit's, he locked it to just the two of them.
"Yeah?"
What have they told you about your role?
"My memories and ability to navigate pullspace are supposed to take us back to Vijil before the Osuna get there."
But what are us telepaths here for?
"I think you were supposed to take my memories if I didn't offer them... I don't know."
But if you didn't come along, who would have navigated the pullspace?
"I don't know. Torek could. Jolnes as well, as far as I know."
And they've just showed up. With Ocia. He sensed all three of them: Ocia, Torek, and Jolnes. They were exhausted, each sporting injuries that would inhibit their ability to fight back if forced to stay and fight the rejects. Emmit shared this news with Cullen, sparing him the pain of their memories.
Sara typed a sequence of numbers into a keypad, turning the light green. The hatch unlocked with an audible click before it slid open. On the other side was the interior of a ship just a little larger than Captain Re's.
As Sara half carried Captain Re through the doorway, he thought about his mom and dad... What if they don't make it back?
"They will," Sara 'pathed.
The interior walls were as black as his wolverine. Which made him think of where they'd taken him to get sewn up and bandaged. He found Sprinkles sleeping, woke him with a tug on his whiskers, and laughed when the beast sprang off the floor. Emmit laughed. "He's coming."
Adi didn't laugh. He looked terrified.
"What's wrong?" Emmit asked.
The glance of horror Adi shot him sent a chill through his veins. He stepped closer, and whispered, "They want me—"
His hands clapped his head, and he let out a horrible cry as he fell to his knees. "No. Stop. I can't. Let me go!" Adi bent over in pain.
Emmit helped keep him upright, and his touch on Adi's hip opened a channel, through which he heard the echoes of Willo's laughter. And not the kind he wanted to join in with.
"You weren't planning to leave without us, were you?" Willo 'pathed.
33
Cullen was glad for Willo's help into his ship. He understood why they had chased him and Ehli—survival, and the poison gas Schaefer had released into their base had driven them on without much choice. But now that he was back on his ship... where's Torek?... he could get the engines fired up and they could go back home.
"Not your ship, but it will take you home," Willo 'pathed. "And that's not me supporting you. It's Sara." Static crackled through his brain, sharper in the region of the neuronet chip. "You can smash her head against the nearest hard edge."
He eased his eyes open against the pain in his skull. They passed closed doors as their boots clanged on the metal floor. The ship had the tangy aroma of warming fenarum prior to a pullspace jump. The generator in the closed room on his right hummed with smooth efficiency. Ahead was a cargo area with two neuronet docks set up vertically on the wall to utilize the space from floor to ceiling. This was a nice ship. Newer than the Talis. If it was going to pull all the way to Vijil, it would have to be.
Sara took them to the cargo area and slowed as they neared the vertical chairs. "Have a seat, boys. I have to tend to the Captain." She led him into a side room with clean steel shelves, a bed with a cloth on it, a sink, and shelves that he assumed carried medical supplies.
"Let's get that off," she said, indicating the strap of his backpack.
The ultra serum Schaefer had ordered him to retrieve from Willo was inside. Is she going to use that on me?
Sara set the pack on the floor, and assisted him as he leaned over the examination bed and rolled onto his back.
"Don't worry. We'll get that back and use it for our good," Willo sa
id.
He'd almost forgotten about her.
The room slowed in its spin. His body relaxed into the bed, accepting the difficulty involved in getting back up.
What are we doing? I can barely move.
"Go along with what they say. We'll be there soon."
A drawer slid shut and Sara walked to his side, a bottle in one of her plastic gloved hands and a white rag in the other. "This'll burn," was her brief warning before alcohol doused and ignited a fire on his scalp.
He tensed and closed tight fists, but managed through the wash of hot pain. Some alcohol leaked into his eye, and he grunted through the added sting. "Eye."
She dabbed the beaded cloth between the visor and his eye. "We have a new suit for you. Let's get this off. Can you hold this?" Her pressure of the cloth on his head indicated where to put his hand, which he did, and she unzipped his suit top. As she peeled it open, scabs on his chest wound pulled. She eased it off, letting the jacket rest back on his chest. Another drawer slid open and shut. Cold metal touched his bare chest. The suit rose, and he looked down at the sound of the extraction scissors humming. The metal gave off a heat that singed hair as she snipped away at his suit.
"It won't be long before I'm more than just a doctor around here," she said under her breath.
The pain in his chest distracted him from what she said, though the way she said it, as though he weren't there, and that she had something in mind that no one knew about, was one more beep in a room full of blaring alarms.
She cut through the last of the suit around the chest wound, then picked at cloth still stuck in the tenderest of his open flesh. "So you seem to be one of Ocia's helpers." He kept his eyes on the ceiling beside the panel light so that she didn't see through his prodding.
"I'm a doctor trained by the Ruthelin School of Medicine." An Osuna school he'd heard about, which also trained some of the most ruthless interrogators in the universe.
Cullen wondered if that was meant as a threat. "I've heard only terrible things. You must be proud."
She tugged a cloth strand clear of the wound with a distinct lack of gentleness.
Cullen laughed as his head throbbed. "Is this foreplay? Cause I really don't want to embarrass you and have to decline. But you know, once my brain works well enough to remember my name, maybe then, okay." He ended with a wink, and lowered his head to the firm cushion of the bed.
Sara tugged on his sleeve, pulling it over his hand.
He bent his elbow to help, and laughed to himself. "I do like a woman who won't take no for an ans—" A hard slap rocked his cheek, jerking his head sideways. The ache stretched over his scalp with renewed vigor.
"And I prefer men with a little more activity above the shoulders." She lifted his upper back enough to pull the free sleeve underneath, cutting through the side of his collar.
"You mean, like using my brain to fly us across galaxies? Yeah, you wouldn't want that kind of density."
Sara continued pulling the jacket around his neck while peeling the visor and front of the collar off his face. "Your contribution has more to do with your father's gift. He must really love you to risk execution and the fate of his planet just to see you again. My dad didn't even say goodbye when I left."
She pulled on his hair near the head wound, and the scissor blades sheared through it. "I need to clear the area to get the stitches. I'll use a chemical solution for the base." A new whiff of alcohol preceded cool drops landing in the sensitive rivulets in his opened scalp, sending a twinge down to his fingertips as she pressed and smeared the cloth over his wound.
"So, they've told you much about this plan?" he asked, trying to forget the pain.
"I know enough." She pressed two more swipes over the wound, then set the cloth down. A thin metal sound flicked off the table. "You need to relax. Gifted or not, you're here, and soon we'll be on Vijil. Everything else, you don't need to worry about."
A sharp point entered his scalp near the wound. As she inserted and tugged at the stitches, Cullen said, "I have a little bit to worry about. I'm the only one on the ship who knows how to navigate pullspace, and," he dragged out "and" as the tingling in his scalp created mindlessness. "I also happen to have a serious head wound, as you may've noticed."
"Torek and Jolnes are on their way."
As he twisted to speak to Sara, trying to look her in the eye, his gaze fell on his jacket. And his wristcom. The sight of his wristcom reminded him of something Torek'd said, to which Cullen hadn't given a second thought since: "Good, 'cause you're gonna need that. Take care of it."
Why had Torek said that? He could bubble without it. Having it would be great if possible. "Hey, Emmit!"
"Yeah?" Emmit called back from the other room.
"Can you fix my wristcom before we jump?"
"Shouldn't be too hard."
"You'll do great."
Ehli and Schaefer made a brief stop at one of his labs to get medicine for her leg strap to inject. The cool flow calmed the flare seizing her hamstring. As long as she didn't have to sprint, she should be fine for a while.
Her shoulder was a different story, but they didn't have time to treat that.
Coming up on her right, the stone wall had a head-tall mural of a giant ball of light creating a crater in a wheat field. She'd seen a picture like that in one of Schaefer's books, but the crater was in the middle of a river with mountains beyond. His interest in the Ancients had been a moderate source of his scientific study back home, and since this building looked old enough to have been built by the Ancients, she could see how it made sense as a destination in his life. There wasn't time to analyze the mural, or ruminate over the changes their lives had gone through. Rejects were pressing on the border, and one might be one of Schaefer's soldiers, mentally overridden.
She tracked that one, and as they approached a break in the hall, Schaefer started one way, but she knew the possessed one was in the other direction. "No, this way."
Stroman was the man struggling to keep the reject out of his mind.
Relax, Stroman. We're coming. The distance between them made their connection little more than verbal.
The hallway connected to a stairwell carved with elaborate weaving where they continued their hurried descent. Whomever had built this had taken great care.
"How could you create something like this?" she asked Schaefer as they pounded steps side by side.
"It wasn't me," he said, and she felt his affront. She had doubts about many things he'd said, but his offense made her curious.
But he had been the leader here. "What do you mean?"
"Oniz, or Willo, as she's pretended to be with you and our son. She sabotaged my ultras. After I declined her... advance." His mind softened, and appearing in hers was a scene starting in an office with Willo smiling, close up. Her washed and styled hair, and pretty silver blouse, presented a softer figure than the hardened jungle soldier she'd met.
Ehli's foot slipped on the edge of a stair and she slid to a hard jab in her butt.
Schaefer stopped and helped her up. "I admit to developing feelings for her, even as I tried to remain faithful."
She felt the disgraced truth in that, and the regret.
He turned to continue down the stairs, keeping her hand in his, reminding her of married moments of walks together... here, they were far from that world of peace and calm.
"It's been hard keeping this secret," he added. "I wondered if you'd given up on me—on us. After I faked my death, I wouldn't have blamed you, but I couldn't help holding onto the unlikely chance that you and Emmit believed I was still alive." He paused to catch his breath, and swallowed some saliva. The scene reappeared at the point where he pushed Willo away from a kiss. Ehli held on tighter to keep from falling as her eyes took in two realities. The darkness in Willo's glare looked more like the Willo she knew. "I don't know if that's where it started, or if she'd had a contingency plan brewing for much longer, but not two weeks from that night, we had our first murder."
<
br /> They rounded the final spiral in the staircase. Ehli wondered if there was a way to prove Schaefer's claims. Between him and Willo, she had more reason to trust the man she'd loved... years ago. Seeing him, and in this moment, knowing his urgency to run to the aid of one of his employees, connected her however minimally to the lover she'd known. Those feelings at least felt less distant than they had been since she'd arrived and learned about his lies.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and headed left.
Dim light from the open windows lit the wide room. Dusk had arrived. She slung one side of her pack off and unzipped it to search for the flashlight she'd stored in the front pocket.
"I am sorry," Schaefer said. The heaviness in his breathing and sweat glistening on his face hinted at a slower return journey, which she hoped wouldn't involve being chased. "I've been so stressed. So many moving parts. Then you and that young pilot.... It doesn't matter. After what I did, and this many years, you're free of our marriage bond. I understand. But you need to believe me, I want you and Emmit to survive." He coughed, hacked, and swallowed mucus. His tone and spirit emanated a trust that she tried to scrutinize, but only came back with genuine remorse. He was the same man she'd married, even if time had added new layers on top. He was also the same man she knew loved his son as much as he had her.
"You've done a supernova job of this one," Ehli said. "That's for sure. I want to believe you have our best interests in mind... but the lies. There're so many."
"Every one done reluctantly, but out of complete necessity. I've spent every day second-guessing that moment and the path I set out for us to get here." He shook his head and briefly raised his palms in defeat.
Stroman's pain was now close enough to weigh on Ehli. She absorbed his fear, joined him in his mind and comforted him like the mother the young man missed. I'm coming, she shared, thinking of her son. This was a risk, but they had to secure the base.
They reached the end of the room and a modernized double door built into the heavy stone that supported the ceiling.
Schaefer reached to enter a code into the keypad.
