by Abel, Regine
“FALL BACK!” Tabitha yelled behind me.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the women stunning the kids surrounding them. The young Janaurians didn’t attack, content to stand in a tight circle around the women, staring at them intently. The oldest child in the group circling Tabitha, maybe nine years of age, appeared confused and frustrated, like something that should have happened wasn’t taking place for some unexplained reason.
“They’re fucking with my head!” Wrath mind-spoke to me, the message garbled as if drowning in white noise.
My head jerked towards him. Like with the women, three children had gathered around him. Two Kryptids were closing on him. With a lucky swipe of his scythed-limb, he nearly beheaded the one he’d been battling, but whatever the children were doing to him, he clearly didn’t see his surroundings.
“WRATH, TO ME!” I shouted, stunning the other pair of children coming my way.
Wrath blindly ran towards me, almost stumbling on the corpse of one of his first Kryptid victims. I kept shouting to him, guiding him with my voice. The children started moving towards us, walking. Halfway to me, Wrath’s vision appeared to clear, and we raced towards the ship, Steele already ahead of us.
The Kryptids emitted a clicking sound similar to the strange one I’d heard earlier, and the children still standing, started running, rushing towards the ship. The women, shields up and immune to whatever mind-fuck those children were performing, covered our retreat into the ship, firing away at both the Kryptids and the young Janaurians.
“Linette, we’re coming in hot!” I mind-spoke to her.
“I see you. Doors opened.” she replied.
We rushed into the ship, the women hot on our tail.
“Doors closing,” Linette said over the com.
Just as they began to close, one of the oldest of the children leaped in. One of the women screamed, but I couldn’t see or guess who. The room flashed before my eyes, as if a stroboscope had been activated. A prickly, spindly sensation stabbed at my nape, and crawled around the edges of my psychic void.
“Take him down!” Diane yelled.
“The little shit is too fast,” Sonia shouted back.
“Fuck! Stop!” Tabitha snapped, bumping brutally against me as she rushed after the child.
A blinding light flooded my vision then vanished leaving me in a dark wasteland. I spun around only to find an endless sea of scorched earth beneath a murky sky. I couldn’t tell if the darkness overhead resulted from what resembled dark clouds or if there truly was no sun shining above them. I knew this was some kind of dream walk, but I could no longer hear the women or any sound from the ship. I moved a few steps straight ahead with both hands in front of me. According to my last position on the ship, I should be touching a wall within three meters. But I kept walking and walking without ever meeting any resistance.
It then dawned on me that, as with Chaos before the Kryptid fell him, my mind no longer controlled my Shell. I was trapped in a psychic nightmare.
Chapter 11
Liena
“Brace yourselves,” Linette’s voice said over the com as the ship took off.
Tyonna and I both exchanged worried looks at the ruckus coming from the hallway leading to the airlock.
“I’m going to check what’s happening,” Tyonna said. She pointed at Chaos rising in his new Shell from the rebirth table. “Stay with him.”
I nodded, my heart pounding, and the cold sweat of fear slithering down my back. When Tabitha had yelled through mind-speak for us to revive Chaos’s Shell, I’d feared all four of the Warriors would also fall, followed shortly thereafter by their Soulcatchers. The video feed from outside had traumatized me beyond words. There was something utterly terrifying about fighting youngling monsters. I nearly peed myself with relief when Linette announced the door closing. She wouldn’t do so with one of ours missing.
And then the screams began.
I hated not being able to see what was happening. Unable to resist the need to know he was safe, I reached for Raven’s mind. No sooner did my consciousness brush against the edge of his psychic void than my stomach roiled with a nauseous feeling. Something slimy, malevolent, reminiscent of Silas’s violation of my mind—but utterly different, alien even—was saturating the most sacred seat of Raven’s soul.
“Tyonna, no!” Chaos shouted, jumping unsteadily to his feet.
Barely a minute had passed from the time his previous Shell had died to Tyonna portalling him into this new one. While getting transferred into a new body by a Portal eliminated rebirth sickness which left Warriors weak and disoriented for a few days, Chaos’s soul still needed a minute or two to fully embrace this new body.
“Do not let the child near you!” Tabitha mind-spoke to me.
“There’s a child onboard?” I whispered with dread.
“Shield me,” Chaos ordered, grabbing one of the spare blasters and setting it to stun.
I never had a chance to answer. My vision went berserk, a bright light flashing before my eyes. I tried to shield Chaos, but my psychic mind seemed stuck in molasses. The sound of the Incubator room door sliding open made me turn around. A Janaurian child, maybe seven years of age, stood at the entrance. The amphibian creature with pasty white skin looked like what a white dolphin might have become if it had grown legs and arms, and its face had flattened to a humanoid shape.
Beyond him, Tyonna stood, staring off in the distance, and the Soulcatchers that had been running towards us held or shook their heads, clearly fighting whatever force was messing with their minds. In that instant I knew that the child had disabled my shield. A couple of blaster shots flew past the Janaurian’s head, missing by a large margin. Chaos didn’t miss.
We’re dead.
Those were my last thoughts before the familiar falling sensation swept over me.
“Sleep, pretty lady. You are so tired. Too tired. Sleep. Rest. All is well.”
The sweet, childish voice spoke to me like one would sing a lullaby. My mind felt weary. I tried to fight it, but the harder I tried, the wearier I became. By the time darkness swallowed me, I couldn’t remember why I’d been fighting to begin with.
* * *
“There you go, Liena,” Raven said, handing me the bag of groceries he’d picked up from the market.
He kissed my forehead then settled on the couch in the living area, so that he could watch me prepare dinner for us. He crossed his ankle over his knee and rested his hand on top of his boot. For a reason I couldn’t explain, that bothered me. I shrugged it off and set to work.
“We have new recruits coming tomorrow. Do you want to help with their training?” Raven asked. “They always like interacting with Veterans.”
“I’m hardly a Veteran. I’m not even officially part of the Vanguard,” I said, confused he would even suggest that. “Plus, you know I don’t like people messing with my head.”
“Right, I forgot.”
How the hell can you forget that?
I eyed him, speechless, but he got up and walked out of the room. I stared at the bedroom door as it closed behind him. Shaking my head, I pulled out the meat and produce from the bag. Once again, a feeling of unease settled in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t explain it, but something about the vegetables and steaks didn’t sit well with me.
Raven walked back out of the room, the clapping of his boots resounding loudly on the polished, wooden floors.
“You’ve got your boots on,” I blurted out, realizing at last what had bothered me about him.
He looked at his feet then back up at me, a confused expression on his face. “Well, yes. Boots are meant to be worn?”
I gaped at him, wondering what the heck kind of answer that was. We’d never discussed my customs because he’d naturally adopted them. Why the sudden change? It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but it struck me as odd.
“What’s the problem?” he asked when I kept staring.
I shook my head and averted my eyes. “Nothing, hun. Nothing
at all,” I said, trying to shake the impending sense of doom looming over me.
Doom…
Why did that word—that name—strike me as so important?
“How is Doom doing?” I asked.
“He’s doing great, as always,” Raven said, casually strolling up to the counter. He picked up one of the onions and rolled it between his hands.
“You must miss him a lot,” I said with a sympathetic smile.
“Of course, he’s a great friend.”
Friend?
My smile froze on my lips, while Raven continued to fiddle with the onion. My gaze roamed around the apartment. It was my place, the same and yet, different. The proportions of some of the furniture seemed off, the colors either too bright or too faded. And this meat and those vegetables were… odorless.
Oh God! Did I have another crisis?
Refusing to believe what I knew deep down to be true, I played along, needing to be certain.
“He is indeed. We should have him and my cousin Victoria come over for dinner when he comes back from his mission tomorrow.”
“That’s a great idea,” Raven said. “Your cousin is charming. Do you want help preparing these, Liena?” he asked, pointing at the vegetables with his chin.
My throat tightened, and it took all my willpower to keep my expression neutral. Cousin… Liena… Whatever happened to him calling me Beauty?
“Yes, that would be great. In fact, why don’t you get started? My bladder is complaining.”
He chuckled, a sympathetic smile illuminating his beautiful face. Swallowing the bile rising in my throat, I made a beeline for the bathroom and locked myself in. There was something beyond abnormal with this dream walk. I hadn’t created it myself—I wouldn’t make such blatant mistakes. It didn’t feel like those created by Raven either. This one had a slimy, alien feel to it, even more repulsive than the nightmares Silas had trapped me in. I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing before this occurred and yet, it lurked at the edge of my consciousness. Something was fucking with my mind, not just my psychic one.
As I’d been practicing with Raven, I pictured a doorway out of this trap. Instead of the luminous outline of the door slowly filling itself into a solid object, like I’d grown used to, the room flickered, as if a curtain of white noise had flashed before me. Whoever was holding me captive didn’t want to let me out. Focusing again, I managed to create the glowing outline only to watch it fade before the door could fully form. My captor was too fast, too powerful. I needed a different approach.
“Liena.”
I yelped upon hearing Raven’s voice, its cold, dead tone giving me chills.
“You startled me,” I cried through the door. “I’ll be out in just a minute.”
“What are you doing, Liena?”
The same creepy voice told me my captor would shortly take action against my escape attempt. Looking frantically around the room, I searched for another, quicker way out.
“You know what I’m doing. I said I’ll be out in a minute,” I replied, assessing the Psyche by the shower.
“Open the door, right now, or I will.”
Dropping all pretense, the fake Raven’s voice had taken on that dreadful clicking sound of the Kryptids. Heart pounding in my throat, I picked up a heavy decorative vase on the vanity and willed the luminous outline around the Psyche mirror.
“You will regret this,” the grating voice said before the door burst open behind me.
I threw the vase with all my strength at the mirror just as the glowing outline began to fade. The mirror shattered, revealing a doorway into the Incubator room of the Reaper, our stealth ship. Straight ahead, I could see my body, crumpled on the floor, staring back at me, unseeing. I jumped through the opening, but chitin armored hands caught me, dragging me back.
“NOOOOO!” I shouted as the mirror began to rebuild itself.
In a desperate effort, I pushed my consciousness forward through the dwindling opening. I fell heavily into my body with a loud gasp. The spindly, crawling sensation of an alien mind trying to regain control of mine slithered all over my psychic void. My vision flashed again with the onset of another dream walk. On instinct I summoned a shield around my sphere, not thinking for a moment it would work.
It did.
I nearly wept with relief as the malevolent presence was cast out of my mind. Memories of the failed raid on Janaur, and of the creepy child, rushed back to me. Scrambling to my feet, my gaze flicked towards the weapons shelf in search of a blaster. As I ran towards it, I noticed Chaos lying on the floor between two rebirth tables, staring off in the distance with dead eyes. I shielded his mind while reaching for a weapon.
He blinked, stirring to life.
“Raven?” I mind-spoke to my mate.
The same alien presence seeped through the mental link. I used my last shield on him and rummaged through the cupboards for a psychic disruptor device. It was just a hunch, but I hoped it would work to disable the child’s ability.
“Good thinking,” Chaos said, guessing what I intended.
Protective as always, he took it from my hands and ran out of the room.
“Liena?” Raven’s voice said in my head.
“I’m safe. Chaos is coming with a psychic disruptor.”
I exited the room with a second disruptor and activated it near Tyonna, Tabitha, Diane, and Sonia, all three had collapsed in the hallway where they’d been chasing after the child when he disabled me. They snapped out of their trance at the same time the shrill scream of the child resonated a short distance from us, in the adjoining corridor.
“I want to see that little shit,” Tabitha said in a growl, rubbing her side with a wince.
Moving as a group, we headed towards the junction only to see Chaos with the child cradled in his arms, followed by Wrath, Raven, and Steele—holding the disrupter. The child no longer had that dead look in his yellow eyes, now brimming with tears. There was no fear in his eyes, just despair.
“Help me! Please, help me!” he pleaded, staring at Chaos.
Raven ran past his companions to draw me into his arms. He crushed my lips with a brief kiss that spoke volumes of his fear, relief, and joy at finding me uninjured.
“Where’s Linette?” I asked.
“She’s setting our ship back on course to the safe zone. The kid was taking us towards an incoming Kryptid vessel,” Wrath said. “She’s also checking the ship for any virus or spyware.”
“How the fuck did that kid manage to do that? His people don’t have that kind of technology,” Raven said.
“He didn’t. This parasite did,” Chaos said, showing me the nape of the child as he headed towards the ship’s lab, adjoining the Incubator. “Can you remove it?”
“Oh my God!” I whispered, before covering my mouth with my palm.
It resembled a giant, silver scorpion, with its legs and pincers inserted at the base of the child’s skull and neck. The long tail had attached itself to the young Janaurian’s spine with tiny hooks. Instead of the usual flat head and back of a scorpion, that creature appeared to have an oversized brain bulging over the length of its body.
“Get him on an examination table,” I said.
My mind reeled as I tried to inventory all the sentient insectoid creatures I’d studied over the years. I’d never seen or even heard of one like this. But then, General Khutu had been known to experiment on every possible species in his efforts to give himself a war advantage.
“Help me, please,” the boy pleaded again.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Hepon,” he said, with a small voice. “I didn’t want—”
The boy whimpered. His young body suddenly seized, and his face scrunched in a grimace of pain as the parasite’s limbs tensed around the boy’s spine. The punishment meted out, the bug released the pressure. Hepon pinched his lips, tears rolling down his ivory cheeks.
“Hush, sweetie,” I said. “I’m going to help you.”
Tabitha
showed me her blaster set to stun, an inquisitive look on her face. I shook my head. We could stun the bug, but that would also knock out the kid. I wanted a more sustainable, if not permanent solution that would allow us to get more information from Hepon.
Rummaging through the surgical equipment, I pulled out a laparoscopic dome and placed it over the parasite.
“I need CO2 fed into the tube normally used for suction,” I said to Diane, who had a formal education as a field nurse.
“Clever girl,” she said, rushing to fetch it.
In the meantime, I closed the lid at the top of the dome to prevent the gas from escaping. Diane returned with the cylinder, hooked it to the suction tube, and pushed C02 inside it instead. Within seconds, the parasite went limp, put to sleep. We needed to be careful not to put in too much gas as it would kill the bug, a risk we couldn’t take until we had detached it from Hepon.
“This is going to take a while, and I’m going to need Diane’s help,” I said to my companions, releasing the shield on Chaos and Raven, but keeping mine up. “I would like to take a look at Hepon’s psychic mind and try to shield him from that bug, but…”
My voice trailed off. They didn’t need me to spell out my fears.
“Let me check first,” Raven offered, his eyes immediately going out of focus. “What the fuck is that?” he whispered, moments later. “Have a look if you can.”
I didn’t feel the nearly panicked fear that used to paralyze me at the thought of looking into a complete stranger’s mind. Yes, the sliver of unease lingered, but I’d finally conquered my trauma. Escaping the parasite’s trap had reinforced the fact that I wasn’t a helpless victim. I largely owed my wonderful mate for this newfound freedom from both my past and from Silas.
