by K. Gorman
With little more than a thought, and a small jerk of her hand, she called it to her.
The room went dark. For a second, her skin glowed in the after effect, like a compact-fluorescent bulb that had just switched off. Squirming out from between the two Lost, she stood up and made a break for the door.
“Karin, no!”
Hopper made a strangled noise, but a crackle of electricity cut him off. She heard the thump of him diving to the floor just as a burst of electricity flashed through the room, followed by a blaster shot from the other man.
Then she was out the door and down the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She staggered into a run, breath rasping in her throat. The dizziness hadn’t abated, but absorbing the light seemed to have helped. Just the fact she remained upright attested to that. Hopper’s shouts came from behind her, along with blasts of electricity and blaster-fire, and she redoubled her efforts to get away, throwing herself toward the end of the hall.
Clio’s bounty, what the fuck am I doing? I’m on a space station. We can’t fucking leave.
Gulping down another breath, she overshot the corner and stumbled. She barely had time to register the hallway tip around her. Pain flashed up her nerves as she hit the floor, bones ringing from the impact. For a second, she fought against the rough, cool pre-fab beneath her, choking with the breath knocked out of her.
Behind her, someone screamed.
She pushed herself up and forced herself to run.
Are you a pilot, or aren’t you?
She took the lights from the next hallway, and the one after that, too. Slowly, the spinning in her head began to slow. Her breath rose in her ears. As she held a hand in front of her, the light she cast followed the turn of her mind, illuminating the parts she wanted to see. When she changed her sprint into a kind of running, limping shuffle, a familiarity threaded its way back into her muscles. Her back straightened, breaths taking on an old rhythm.
She’d done this before, back in her childhood. Escaping the compound for midnight runs through the surrounding forest and woodland. Sometimes, even the compound security would join them.
Before the end, when their protocols had tightened.
The runs had probably saved her life.
Several bodies waited in the next hallway. She jogged up to them, bent down, and felt for a pulse. Then, satisfied they were alive—she had no idea what she’d have done if they’d been dead—she continued on.
Normal people might have lingered with them. But normal people didn’t have a sister like Nomiki.
Nomiki didn’t, in general, leave them alive.
When she dropped down a level, a sign on the wall pointed her to the cabins. She took the hall’s light, let out a breath as it absorbed back into her skin, and continued on.
She paused as she got to the next hallway.
Cabins didn’t change much from vessel to vessel. Maybe they did on luxury ships, but she’d never set her baby toe inside one of those. The crew quarters didn’t differ much from the rest of the ship—the doors pushed together more, cramped in like an industrial, long-term version of the pod hotels she’d seen on Nova Earth—but she didn’t have to recognize their shape to know she’d found the place.
The guard outside their cabin had crumpled to the floor.
Her jaw stiffened as she drew closer. A smell like burnt, microwaved plastic permeated the air, and several scorch marks blackened the wall next to him. His netlink and blaster lay on the floor, a meter away.
She tucked two fingers against his neck.
Alive. Good.
Extra good, since he remained unconscious. She frowned, giving the hall an anxious survey. If the balls had come to her cabin first, then had they actually managed to track her? Instead of wandering into the space station and getting lucky?
Something to keep in mind.
She slapped her hand against the door. “Soo-jin?”
No one answered. As she strained to hear, her eyes widened.
Gods, the balls hadn’t gone inside, had they?
She hammered against the metal. “Soo!”
A rustling sound made her relax. “Karin? Is that you?”
Muffled by the walls and door, Soo-jin’s voice sounded groggy but alive.
Karin relaxed. “Yeah, someone’s attacking the station. You know anything?”
“No. Just heard some crazy shit. Decided to lay low. What happened to the guard?”
“He’s down. Our friends with the balls.”
There was a pause. Then, “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”
She must have heard what happened.
“Well, maybe it’s good for us.” Karin turned her attention to the keypad. It lit up when she put her hand against it, bright red. “Any idea on how to get this door open? Codes?”
“One-two-three-four?” Soo-jin suggested. “Maybe they’re really stupid.”
She put it in. The door gave a disapproving beep. “Nope.”
“Four-three-two-one?”
Another beep.
“What’s Hopper’s wife’s name again? Sharon? Has it got an alphabetical input, or should we try to binary the numbers or something?”
“Won’t work,” Karin said. “I think it’s a four-digit code.”
“Well, I’ve got lots of four-digit words you can try.”
“Ha ha.”
She glanced down at the guard. He hadn’t moved, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t wake up. Plus there might be more of those balls around. Or, if they were really tracking her, the two from earlier might follow her back down.
Or Hopper might come down. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where she’d gone.
“We don’t have much time,” she said. “Should I try shooting it with a blaster?’
“Let’s try that last. Any tools around? Crowbar? Screwdriver? Sonic screwdriver?”
She glanced down the hall. “None that I can see. We’ve got a communications dash, though.”
“Go. See what you can find.”
She jogged down. It lit up at her touch, making the metal gleam at its edges, and gave a simple station map and menu.
“No login,” she muttered to herself. “That’s good…”
Searching through the interface, she paused at the docking file, skimming the list of ships. The Ozark had docked. No surprise there. Without her on board, they had no reason to stay away. Not when they seemed to have made nice with the station. She frowned. Hopper wouldn’t have gotten those guns on board without help. Now that she thought about it, he’d have needed more help than Charise and her small group could have provided.
Something to think about later.
The Fallon vessel hadn’t docked. She’d expected that, too. Fallon and the Alliance might get along now, but the feeling was begrudging and reluctant, especially on the Alliance side. With the sentiment Hopper had shown earlier toward the approaching Fallon ship, she doubted he’d let it dock.
She skimmed through the other menu options, switching through a map and a comms link and the various virtual stores, her jaw growing tenser. Nothing on station operations—well, at least nothing useful. Nothing that would help her open a door.
Maybe she could check the guard’s netlink. Someone could have messaged him the door code.
“Karin?” Soo-jin’s muffled voice had a metallic ring to it as it came down the hall. “Did you find anything?”
Switching out of the latest menu, she walked away from the terminal, a disgusted sneer pulling back her upper lip. Letting out a heavy breath, she turned back and headed toward the door.
Movement caught her eye. She stopped dead, eyes widening.
A metal ball floated toward her. As silent as the moon, it had already passed the threshold at the end of the hall and cleared more than half the space before she’d noticed it.
“Oh, fuck me.” She froze, vacillating on what to do, then sprinted back to the cabin door. Light flared in her hand, and she experienced a giddy rush as she t
hrew it down the hall to skitter along the wall next to the ball.
“Soo, there’s a ball. Get away from the door. I’ll—” She glanced around in a frenzy, and her gaze snapped to the guard’s blaster. “I’ll try and blast it.”
“No! Wait—” Soo-jin smacked the wall to get her attention. “Those things are electric, right? Let it hit.”
“What?!”
“You heard me. Let it hit, then get away somehow. Even if it fails, they can open doors, right?”
Karin stared at the metal in front of her, jaw slackening. “It exploded the door last time.”
“That’ll work. It shoots electricity, so it ought to do something to the panel.”
Her jaw slackened some more.
“Soo, I’m not even an engineer, and I know this is fucking insane.” And, just in cast Soo-jin hadn’t registered it before, she added, “It exploded the door last time. Boom.”
“Your vocabulary has matured so much. Just let it hit and see what it does. I’ll stay away and pad myself with the mattresses.”
“You are insane,” she said. “I am not—”
A sudden crackling, close enough to raise the hairs on her arm, sounded in her ear. She turned just in time to see that the ball had moved away from the distracting light show on the opposite wall, floated closer, and found her.
She jerked away and dove for the floor, intending a forward roll, but instead just fell. Her arms shot up to protect her head as a surge of heat and light exploded above her, trailing sparks that rained onto her arms and back. She hissed as the pain prickled through her skin.
Behind her, the door gave a heavy clunk. The display panel beside it shivered with different colored lights, all pixelated together.
Grunts came from the cabin. Slowly, and with great reluctance, a gap slid open. Soo-jin’s fingers wrapped around its edge. Her eye appeared above, gaze finding Karin on the floor. “Give me a hand?”
Electricity crackled.
Karin spun. Barely a meter from her, arcs of light and plasma snapped across its front, ready to shoot. She yelled a warning and threw herself to the side, the impact slamming all of the air from her lungs as she rolled over her shoulder. Pain knifed through her bones.
Soo-jin swore. Metal shrieked, followed by the grinding sound of a door being forced back on its track, then she was out and skipping in front of the ball as it floated closer to Karin.
“Hey, hey! Look at me!” She waved and bobbed, jumping in front of it. “Over here!”
Eyes wide, Karin lifted her head. “What are you—”
“Shut it, I’m way more agile than you. Comes with being part ninja. Now, move. I can’t do this forever.”
Air whooshed over Karin’s head. A faint clunk came a second later.
Did she just kick it?
“Over here, ugly!” Soo-jin danced away, leading the ball toward the wall where Karin’s light still glowed. A whine sounded from it, rising in pitch.
Soo-jin leapt to the side as the electricity shot, executing a perfect roll on the metal floor. A second later, she was back up and sprinting for Karin. She grabbed the blaster and netlink from the fallen guard, stuffed them into her pockets, then helped Karin up. “Come on. We got a couple seconds’ cooldown. Let’s go.”
Pain shot through her knees and ankles, but Karin forced herself to go on. Half-running, half-limping, they made for the end of the hall. The air had a smoky smell to it that burned in her nose. Another whine sounded behind them, and they jerked out of the way as the ball sent a charge of electricity after them.
Light flared in Karin’s hand. She threw it back, hoping to distract the ball, then Soo-jin hauled her forward by the arm. Their pounding footsteps filled the corridor as they sprinted for the door. She stubbed her toe into the threshold and almost fell over herself trying to get to the panel on the other side. Soo-jin slapped it. As she turned back, she had a view of the door sliding closed as the ball floated up the hallway.
The door panel flashed red. Then Soo-jin shot it.
“There,” she said, holding the blaster. “Now it has to work for its meal.”
“I don’t think it wants to eat us.” Karin bent down to her knees, panting. “It just kind of zapped people last time.”
“Yeah, well, you can never be too sure. Let’s go. See if we can’t fool its tracking ability.”
On the way down, Karin took out every light she could and absorbed it into her skin. The feeling of nausea still sat in her gut, but the emptiness under her skin had lessened. They passed through an elevator, standing tense as it dropped them to the next level, and came out on a floor of office spaces. Hallways pulled away from them on all sides, changing from the station’s metal and plastic siding to a surprising luxury of wood and drywall. Dark, plastic-glass windows faced the hallway, only some of their internal blinds shuttered.
Station management, probably. And the marketplace coordinators. They ducked into an office close to the next junction, wedged against a supply closet with only one set of windows facing out. The lights flickered on as they entered, and Karin pulled their glow away.
“Okay.” Soo-jin turned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need to see.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Just didn’t want to be targets, you know.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. Now, where’s my Karin flashlight? The computer, please.”
A knock and a rattle sounded, as if her hands had just bumped into something on the desk and then caught it before it could fall.
Karin let out a breath. With a thought, she let the light drift back through her palm. The mercurial tint washed out the white, plastic desktop, sending faint shadows pulling away as she moved closer.
“Another netlink. Perfect.” Soo-jin snapped it off the desk, then her hand went to Karin’s wrist, pointing it around the room. “All right. There. That looks like a cabinet I want to investigate.”
She tucked the blaster back into her pocket and turned away, opening the cabinet. Her dreads fell over her back, beads glimmering in the light as she bent over and started rooting around.
“Hey—screwdriver!” Flashing a grin over her shoulder, she twirled it against her shoulder, the yellow handle bright against her slate-gray shirt.
Karin leaned to look inside. “No keycards or anything?”
“Not a chance. They’re all wearing them. I—shit.” Her voice dropped. A second later, the cabinet closed with a quiet click, and she was pulling Karin to the floor. “Quick. Put that out.”
Confused, she doused the light in her hand. The room went dark.
Quiet, Soo-jin pulled her under the desk with her. Karin’s knees bumped over the legs of the chair. In the dark, they froze, still as deer in a floodlight, straining to listen.
It remained silent. She frowned. Her head brushed the underside of the desk, and she ducked down. “What—”
“Shh.”
A beveled window sat above the desk. Enough of a gap existed that some light filtered down—enough to outline Soo-jin’s huddled form as she braced herself, one palm flat against the wall. Her eyes caught it only as a reflection, liquid dark on her pale face. If she hadn’t been acting normal for the past few hours, she might have been one of the Lost.
Karin strained to listen some more. Then, hearing nothing, she settled in to wait.
A minute late, voices came up the hall.
Hopper.
“—I don’t care what the hell those things are, I want them off my station. Find out where they are, disable them, and put their metallic corpses in the Rec room as trophies. And find out where those two women went. Get the Ozark online. Maybe they know.”
Karin didn’t question how Soo-jin had known they were coming. She’d seen stranger things in her life. As Hopper drew closer, with what sounded like three or four of his security men, she shrank down and held her breath. His voice sounded right next to her.
“They can’t have gone far. Not without a ship. And we know every inch of this station.”
A door clunked—the one at the end of the hall that they’d almost gone through before deciding to search the office—and the sound of the men’s boots grew fainter. “I want them alive. Both of them. If—”
The door closed, cutting him off.
They waited a few beats, listening. Then Soo-jin blew out a slow breath. “He wants us alive. That’s encouraging.”
Karin’s jaw stiffened. “I still don’t want to be caught.”
Soo-jin squeezed her shoulder, then wiggled her way past. “Well, he may know every inch of the ship, but there’s no way you healed all his crew. And he’s got those balls to think about. We might just have a chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It looked like any other panel to her, but Soo-jin must have seen something in it that Karin didn’t, because she tapped her shoulder and pointed. “Equipment store.”
It creaked open on its hinges, and Soo-jin poked her head in. A second later, she pushed a packet into Karin’s face. “Here, take this.”
Karin wobbled at the sudden weight and leaned onto the wall for balance. A second pack followed the first, and then came the crinkle of plastic wrappers. The smell of peanuts filled the air as Soo-jin tore into a food packet and gave it to her. “Here. Did they feed you anything?”
“No.”
“Seriously? I mean, we had snacks in the room, but… they want to keep you alive, right?”
As Soo-jin’s eye roll came into view, Karin slipped her a sly smile. “Well, I did throw up on the floor.”
“Serves them right. Good girl.”
She patted her on the shoulder, slung another pack over her back, and ripped into another plastic wrapper. A crowbar dangled from her arm as she leaned back, hooked over her elbow like some kind of engineering answer to the fashion canes the nobility used in some parts of Nova Earth. Attempting to eat the package one-handed, she hunched as a flurry of crumbs dropped to the floor.
“Shit. I’m going to Hansel and Gretel us.”
They dropped down another stairwell, not bothering to keep their steps quiet. The air hung muggy and close around them. Sweat soaked the hair at the back of Karin’s neck, and she found herself pulling the ponytail around the front to let it breathe. The pain in her bones and muscles had rescinded to a dull, begrudging ache that showed its stiffness with each step.
