by K. Gorman
He frowned as she continued to stare, then ducked his face after a few seconds, glancing down to his purple Starcats T-shirt.
“Food sounds good.”
Cloth rustled next to her as Soo-jin dropped to the floor, pulling the monitor back out, and this time, Nick knelt next to her, taking up Karin’s normal spot as he rummaged through the bag and pulled out the equipment. She watched as he averted his eyes, keeping his focus on the medical readings. Like him, the woman in front of Soo-jin had been attacked while missing clothes. That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad, but she had also been on her period. Red-brown stains smeared down her bare legs, clearly visible from all angles.
This must be hard on him. He knows them all.
She turned away, rubbing her shoulder. Her legs were starting to ache with all the walking—the Ozark had a lot of stairs, and they must have checked at least half—and a kind of vague exhaustion pulled at the back of her mind, leaving a stuffed, gauzy feeling around its edges that, as far as she could tell, shouldn’t be there.
They hadn’t been on here that long. Two hours? Three? And she’d gotten a decent amount of sleep on the Nemina. She shouldn’t need any for a while yet.
She dismissed the feeling with a shake of her head. Whatever. I’ll just grab a coffee in Mess.
They waited another ten minutes for the first of their Lost to wake up—which, fortunately, turned out to be the one with pants—then gave them instructions to head for the Mess, and left.
To her great satisfaction, they found their next Lost loitering around a comms station only three hallways later. Another woman, wearing the same shipboard gray as most had, her close-cropped pixie hair all grown out, giving her what someone on Old Earth would have called a shag but was more well-known in the Sirius system as Kama after the anarchist fashion trend that had taken over some of Nova Earth’s more popular dramas.
Nick sucked in a breath. “Ronnie.”
“Isn’t she your girlfriend?” Ethan asked.
“What? No—” Nick’s eyes widened. “We were just. Well, you know.”
Ethan’s eyes were curious. “Just what?”
“Er…” Nick flustered, back rigid and tense. His hands gestured something indecipherable in the air in front of him. “Well, you wouldn’t understand. She just likes to have fun—” Glancing down at Ethan, and probably remembering how old he was, he backpedaled. “—you know, like watch movies and stuff. Nothing serious.”
Karin raised her eyebrows.
Beside her, Soo-jin snorted. “All right, Romeo, your turn to hold her down.”
His face tightened. The hard look he gave Soo-jin lingered and, for several long seconds, it looked like he was going to argue.
“Come on,” Soo-jin said. “It’s your turn now. Besides, I think she’d prefer you do it over some strange scrounger from the Black.”
From the Black, meaning from space. It was the epitome of the ultimate stranger, as if someone had just popped up like a ghost—but the term tipped on its head when both parties lived and worked around the Black, as they did now, past Belenus and Enlil and into the wide orbit of Amosi and the infrequent space stations. Caishen had only two sisters this far out, Rudra and Hanan, and they were both smaller and less inhabited.
A different motion tightened Nick’s face. He nodded once, tersely, then moved forward.
He didn’t say anything as he collected Ronnie. He was gentle, intimate. Not in the way Marc had been when Soo-jin had been taken, but definitely close. His fingers curled gently around her shoulders and, after a few seconds, he bent forward to whisper something in her ear.
Then his hands dropped, catching Ronnie’s wrists and pulling them behind her. She struggled briefly, her mouth opening, and a confused frown crossing her eyebrows, but there was no resolve behind her actions.
The Lost didn’t think like humans. Her struggles didn’t have any true ambition or panic.
Meeting Karin’s eyes across the space, he held her gaze for a few seconds. Then he nodded.
She rubbed her palms together. Light flared between them.
But, before she could do much more, movement flickered in the background.
Beyond them, at the far end of the hallway, the door panel flashed green. It hissed open, rumbling on its tracks.
For a second, everything was still. With the light delay on the door, it was impossible to see into the darkness of the next hallway. They held their breath, waiting.
A second later, two Shadows, tall and thin, impossible to look at, stepped through the frame and walked into the room.
Karin stopped dead, heart hammering in her chest.
Then, the door behind them, the one they had just locked, hissed.
“Oh, fuck me.” Soo-jin danced around, medical pack swinging from her shoulder. She wrenched it off and let it fall, then dove to search through its contents for the second blaster.
Eyes wide, Karin stared up as another two Shadows came in. Nick yelled behind her. The crack of his blaster snapped through her like a bolt of lightning. On the floor, Soo-jin swore, still looking for the blaster.
Light burst from Karin’s hands. She started forward, ready to help—but a small gasp stopped her in her tracks.
Ethan.
She swung around. The Shadow moved, silent and fast. It had crossed half the distance before she realized it, its shape distorting, falling out of proportion. It billowed like a sail on one step, then went tall and thin on the next.
With a thought, she gathered her light. It flared, burning without sound or heat, glaring out of her vision like magnesium. She slashed her arms forward, yelling at the pain.
The light shot ahead like a bomb.
The Shadow tried to dodge. It jumped up and clung to the ceiling far longer than it should have. A part of it spread like smoke, and its own shadow, made stark by the glare of her light, stretched on the metal behind it.
For a second, it looked like it would miss completely.
But her light was not a bomb. She pulled it in her mind, directing it with an upswing of her hand. It burst apart, fragments of it shooting upward and smashing into the Shadow’s body like missiles.
The snarl that screamed across her mind was not something she heard with her ears. Angry, full of rage and pain, it definitely came from the Shadow. She yelled, ducking her head as it tore across her frontal lobe.
In her peripheral vision, the Shadow dropped to the floor and started toward her, silent and lethal.
She slammed it with wave of light. Black-and-white crashed together, snapping, crackling, hissing when they touched each other. Her light washed over it like a storm surge on a beach.
Then, it was gone.
Her light faded from the air. As she caught her breath, other sounds came back to her. Soo-jin and Nick fighting, Ethan screaming. Cracks of blasters, swearing. Pain drove through her shoulder. She clutched it with a hiss.
A shout sounded behind her. “Karin. Watch out!”
She whirled too late. Ethan screamed as the second Shadow hurtled into her. Ghost fingers pulled at her shoulder, her head, but an instinctive wave of light shot them off. The whole corridor started to tip, but she caught herself, staggering to the floor as she spun away from her attacker. As she completed the turn, she gritted her teeth and raised her hand, yelling at the pain.
Her light made a clean slice in the air as she completed the chop her sister had taught her.
She nearly fell afterward, stumbling into the wall and pushing against it to catch herself, but the Shadow also staggered for it. Her eyes widened as it mirrored her, one hand bracing itself. Its head, bulbous, depthless, matte black with not even a barest hint of reflection, turned toward her.
She didn’t give it a second chance. Light crashed into it before it recovered, slamming it further against the wall. It pinned into the Shadow like a hundred tiny bullets, marking it like drops of milk, sparkling, shimmering, making the air hum with energy.
When it receded, fading back into the
air, the Shadow was gone.
The hallway grew silent. Everyone froze, wide-eyed, searching for the next danger.
After a few seconds, Soo-jin blew out a noisy breath.
“Fuck me.” She straightened, then gave Ethan a quick glance. “Sorry.”
“I think, in this case, Christops might forgive you.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She blew out another breath and threw her head back, closing her eyes. “So, they can open locked doors.”
“We knew that already,” Karin said. “That one on the last trip got me in a locked room, remember?”
“Yeah, but from what you told me, it didn’t actually open the door, so I thought maybe it had come through some air vent or something.” Soo-jin glanced back the way they had come. The door at the beginning of the hall stood open. Beyond, the hallway was black. “We better do a head count. Check on the others.”
“Ronnie’s the last one. We can just wait for her and head to Mess after.” Karin nodded up the hall, catching Nick’s glance. “You want a breather, or shall we do this?”
He shook his head and made to step toward Ronnie, who’d stayed close to where he’d shoved her to the wall at the beginning of the fight.
“No,” he said. “Let’s finish this.”
Chapter Fourteen
“You’re getting better at it,” Soo-jin said. “The light, I mean.”
Karin glanced over. They’d picked up the other three former Lost in the hallway where they had still waited, and Nick had led them through some of the ship’s internal structures to cut back close to the Mess.
Apart from him walking ahead of them in near silence, keeping a close proximity to Karin and Soo-jin, the others hung back. Low murmurs of conversation rose from behind them every minute or so, whispers that would have set her teeth on edge back on Belenus, but she shrugged them off now.
People talked. It wasn’t a bad thing.
“I used to be better,” she said. “I’m out of practice.”
Soo-jin snorted. “I can’t imagine why. It’s not like they have gravball courts dedicated to throwing light around. You were on the run, right?”
I still am. That hasn’t changed. Even if she had friends now, and more resources, she’d find it a lot harder to lose herself in the system traffic with her poster broadcasting on every Alliance channel.
And finding places to practice hadn’t been the problem. The security had been. Every place, no matter how abandoned, seemed to have a camera. In the few times she’d slipped up in school, she’d lived in rigid fear, sure that, at any moment, footage would get back to the company. That they would come for her, guns blazing, and she wouldn’t be able to fight them off. They would continue their quest.
Whatever that quest was.
In the cool air of the corridor, she shivered, remembering Nomiki the day she’d found her waiting in their room, face all business, and had laid it out for her.
They’re taking our memories, Rin.
“You came from Belenus, right?” Soo-jin continued. “I think I remember creeping that on your CV.” She backtracked. “I mean, obviously, you came from Earth, but on this side—”
“No, you’re right. That’s what it says on the CV. Nomiki and I lived on Belenus for the first part. Good schools, chilled environment.”
Belenus orbited well out from the ERL gate, on the other side of Fallon’s two planets, and the distance between it and them had never stopped being a priority for them. Even now, after everything had settled, they stuck to the outer planets. Enlil had an even wider orbit than Belenus. And Karin had taken it a step further, signing up for outer-settlement scrounges.
“I transferred from Bella U to Arnell flight school. Was doing undergraduate History and Cultural Studies before I decided piloting was more fun and profitable.”
Soo-jin grunted. “Glad you decided to switch. We would have been fucked, otherwise.” Belatedly, she glanced back, where Ethan trailed a few steps behind them. “Sorry, Ethan. I—”
“I know, I know.” He rolled his eyes. “I won’t say anything to my dad.”
Karin closed her eyes and stifled a yawn. Like most of the ship, metal siding reflected the overhead lights in a brushed, yellow-tinged blur. The recycled air pricked at her dry eyes, carrying a tinge of stale must that made her wonder when the filters had last been changed out. An older, caged light jutted out over the door at the end, the dust coating its top and sides, along with the red casing beneath, suggesting it was long dead.
She paused at the threshold, letting Soo-jin pass first.
The woman caught her eye as she went. “So, quick break at the Mess, then we gather our forces and head to the bridge?”
“Yep. And I expect we’ll have some explaining to do.”
Conversation drifted down the hall as they left the last stairwell, much livelier and more bustling than when they’d left. Ahead, a couple of faces poked out of the Mess doors as the panel hissed behind them, then widened as they caught sight of them. They vanished back inside, and a hush soon dropped.
Fifteen people watched her as she stepped through the door, clustered in a loose group than ran adjacent to the food prep bar that led into the kitchen.
The tables and chairs were permanent fixtures, welded to the floor in case of zero grav, but several people swiveled around to face them. Other things around the room also hinted at zero grav preparation—two emergency suits folded in a closed shelf under a first aid box on the wall, tethers attached to some of the looser tables, clips on the garbage disposal that fixed it to the corner. Several paintings lined the walls, and their mass-produced, bucolic scenes gave the room an edge that stepped away from quaintness and into exhaustion.
Although most people still wore what she’d healed them in, it looked like a few had risked the trip to quarters to change. She saw a few fresh faces in the crowd. Charise, the first she’d healed, sat at a central table. Soo-jin’s med-bag had been relegated to the chair beside her, replaced by two older medkits whose contents spilled over the table. She barely glanced up as they entered, busy tending a wound on a young girl’s arm.
Aware of the attention on her, Karin shrugged off the pack she carried and loaded it onto the nearest table. Soo-jin followed suit, dropping her bed bag next to Karin’s, but Nick kept his blaster, standing off to the side with a grim look on his face. As they straightened, Ronnie, Marsa, Kirna, and Hebe slipped by, working their way along the wall before filtering toward the rest of the group through the tables. One of them made a gesture for Ethan to join them, but he ignored it, stepping closer to Soo-jin and Karin.
Everyone stared at them.
Actually, they mostly stared at her.
She had a feeling she was going to have to get used to that.
Well, this is awkward.
“So,” she said. “Where shall we start?”
“Names are always a good place.” Arren, standing to the back of the group, raised his hand. He looked better than he had before. Stronger, with less of a waver to his movement. Karin spotted a half-empty plate on the table near him. “Arren Cliessen, though I think you already knew that. I’m afraid we’re all pretty lost and confused about all this. Who are you?”
Lost. That was one way to put it.
She cleared her throat, quickly gesturing to herself and Soo-jin. “I’m Karin, and this is Soo-jin. We were on a ship coming back from Amosi when we hit your beacon. That was three days after the attack—a little over two weeks ago now.”
A murmur rose in the Mess, but not as loud as she’d expected it to be. No one seemed surprised at the missing time. A few netlink screens glowed among the crowd, which probably explained the lack of surprise.
It also meant that they’d probably noticed her and Soo-jin’s wanted posters on the relay.
“And what was this attack? We saw some of the videos—” He gestured to the closest netlink, propped up on the table. “What are those things? Do I need to get my grandmother’s book of fables out, or is there more information
on the feeds once we get further in?”
Karin held back a snort. A book of fables might be appropriate in this situation, but she doubted it would help. She’d practically done an entire undergrad in myths, and the Shadows didn’t match up with anything she’d seen. Nothing beyond urban legends and hearsay, anyway. Internet rumors, not actual mythologies listed in the library codex.
The relay also wouldn’t help them. Unless specifically requested, it only updated the basics. And, unfortunately, their wanted posters seemed to have taken greater priority over the varying Shadow theories on the web. Caishen would have the most up-to-date info outside of the exo-planets, but even then…
Nobody knew what the Shadows were. The Alliance, with all its power, was kicking one-legged against the tide.
And they were losing.
That was a guilt that weighed on her, but only briefly. She would go to the Alliance. Once she found Nomiki and got to the bottom of things, she would leap at the chance to help.
If nothing else, it guaranteed her a safe place against the people who had raised her.
Unbidden, Nomiki’s words returned to her mind.
They’re taking our memories, Rin.
“Feeds don’t have much,” Soo-jin answered. “No one really knows what they are, even us. They fall to normal guns and knives, which is good. We can give you keywords to pull data and, when the Nemina comes back, we can transfer what we have in our drives.”
She made a dismissive gesture, giving her head a small shake and meeting the gazes of those around the room. Her expression remained stony. “But we have almost a week before that happens, and there’s still one person we need to clear. We believe he set the emergency broadcast that called us in.”
Another low murmur rose around the room. People looked to each other, scanning the crowd.
Arren gave a resigned nod, one hand going up to scratch at the top of his forehead.
“That’d be Christops, then. Wondered where he’d gotten to.” He lifted his gaze, bushy eyebrows rising into his forehead. “You doing all right, Ethan?”
Beside her, Ethan nodded.
