by K. Gorman
She still didn’t remember him, but she definitely knew his face.
Nomiki, on the other hand… Her sister stared hard at the man, her expression contorting into something hard and angry. Shoulders stiff, it looked like she were holding herself back, like she wanted to rip right into him.
Even Dalajit was beginning to notice. A wariness had crept into the guard’s eyes, and Karin hurried to defuse the situation, moving to bring his attention to her.
“He worked on our project, right? One of the project coordinators?” She flashed a quick smile to Dalajit. “I worked back-end Eugenics, so I didn’t see a whole lot of the bigger-wigs, but I definitely remember him. I—”
“Karin, stop.” A muscle shivered in Nomiki’s neck, and Karin got the distinct feeling that she was still holding herself back. She seemed calmer than before, but the rigidity and tension in her body belied that façade. “You don’t understand. He went into our minds. He was part of the treatment. He’s the reason we can’t remember.”
A chill seeped into her chest, and she got a flash of… something. Little more than a blip of static on her mind, or like the afterglow of an image. She couldn’t see its details, but she could feel its direction. Suddenly, the air felt cold to her skin. A smell of dampness and antiseptics came to her, and the feel of bare feet against hard, bare concrete.
She took a deep, shuddering breath and pushed the feelings away. When she opened her mouth to speak, her lips had a kind of numbness to them. She was aware of everyone staring at her, but she grounded herself and made herself hold onto the calm that she could feel slipping away. Her hands shook.
“Then he can help us,” she said. “If he knows what he did, then he can undo it.”
Another silence filled the hallway. The guard shifted behind Dr. Takahashi. By the shuttered, neutral expression on his face, he had apparently come to some kind of decision.
“I think you should leave,” he said. The shoulder of Dr. Takahashi’s lab coat warped as he put pressure on it, ready to steer the doctor back into the room.
“Wait,” Karin said. Light flared on her hands. Immediately, all the Lost looked to her. “I can help him. At least, let me do that much.”
“What the—?” Dalajit’s eyes broadened at the sight of her light. Some of the Lost shuffled forward, and he was forced to back into the doorway to block them from leaving, but his eyes never left her hands, his guarded expression turning to confusion. “What is that?”
“It’s something Seirlin programmed into me. I doubt it’s in your systems. I—”
“Stay away from him.” Dalajit pulled Dr. Takahashi away from her, reeling him back into the room. “You need to leave.”
Nomiki shifted. But, before she could do anything, movement from down the hall caught their attention. Around the corner, the elevator announced its arrival with a subtle, easy tone, and its doors opened with a whooshing sound. A shadow shifted on the wall, barely-there.
“Dalajit? You down here yet?”
Karin froze as she recognized the voice.
Dalajit’s doctor hadn’t been one of the visiting specialists. She was Dr. Sasha.
For a second, she struggled to remember what Dalajit had called her—Linnet?—but it didn’t matter how the mix-up had happened. Either she’d married and changed her name, or had just done it for posterity. It didn’t matter.
She was here.
Beside her, Nomiki’s eyes had widened. One of her arms twitched—looking for a weapon?—but she restricted the motion as a more-defined shadow played across the end wall and Dr. Sasha walked into view, frowning down at a netlink in her hand.
She halted the instant she saw them. By the sudden sharpness in her eyes and the cold intensity that came to her expression, she definitely recognized them.
Chapter Nine
She looked like she’d just walked out of one of her dreams. Thinner than she remembered, Dr. Evangeline Sasha wore the same Seirlin Genomic-branded labcoat as Dr. Takahashi, though hers had a fresher, less limpid look to it. Her hair had grown longer, and she still used highlights throughout it, but their shades shone different from what Karin remembered at the compound. Sleek and vibrant, with more definition.
Gods. They had been living a life in hiding, and Dr. Sasha had kept up with her regular hair appointments.
For some reason, the thought stuck with her.
The doctor’s face faltered for a few moments, a run of emotions too fast to identify, though Karin did catch the brief hitch of shock and surprise in her eyes.
“You,” she said, followed by a small sound, as if a tiny, hysterical laugh had hiccupped from her gut and then been cut off. Her gaze slanted to the side, where Dalajit stood with Dr. Takahashi, as if just remembering them, then returned. “How did you find me?”
Find her? Karin glanced to Nomiki. What is she talking about?
But if her sister knew, she was keeping that information close to her heart. Nomiki’s expression had somewhat returned to what Karin called her ‘working face,’ the emotions on her features schooled except for the bright anger that shone through her eyes.
“We didn’t,” Nomiki said. “This was a coincidence.”
Marc shifted in her peripheral vision. She glanced over, remembering what he’d said to her weeks ago, just after the first Shadow attack.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Neither did she. Not anymore, anyway. Not after what she was starting to remember.
“I take it you know these people.” Dalajit moved his gaze between Sasha and Nomiki.
Takahashi still stood behind him, anchored in place by Dalajit’s grip on his forearm. He was probably wondering who he needed to protect. In his eyes, the situation must have changed quite fast.
I doubt he’ll ever be so trusting after this. Sasha and Takahashi should have told him about their shady past, or at least alluded to it. She’d thought this branch of Seirlin had little to do with the Earth facility—they’d only come to access records, after all—but now, with two of the Earth team working inside?
It was no secret that she and Nomiki had escaped. They should have been more guarded.
Of course, maybe they had been. Something had triggered that bioscan of Nomiki in the front hallway. And Dr. Sasha knew everything. She’d raised them, after all. She knew exactly how dangerous Nomiki was, and she hadn’t forgotten. The doctor hadn’t taken her eyes from Nomiki in a full minute.
“Oh, yes, I know them very well. These two were single-handedly responsible for the slaughter of everyone in the Earth facility. Everyone. Including guards like you, who had loved ones. Families. Friends.”
Karin’s jaw clenched, tensing at the memories that flashed through her. Bare feet. Security lights. Blood. Nomiki with a set of modified scissors. For a moment, the doctor’s gaze withered on her, and a dark emotion rippled across her face.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been experimenting on children,” Soo-jin commented, her voice dry as she surveyed Sasha with her arms crossed over her chest. The upper part of her lip pulled back, turning her previous saccharine smile into a disgusted sneer. “As I understand it, you people made quite a few children disappear over the years.” She glanced to Karin. “She’s the one you’ve been talking about, right? Her picture was in that book of yours.”
“And he’s another one.” Karin jerked her chin toward Dr. Takahashi, never taking her gaze from Dr. Sasha. The sight of the doctor made her feel cold, as if a slow, creeping chill were seeping through the inside of her bones. “Nomiki, what would you suggest?”
“I say we take them both and let the military sort them out.” Muscles in Nomiki’s jaw tensed, as if she were chewing on a particularly distasteful thought, then she ticked her head from the doctor and toward the rest of them. “Reeve?”
His eyebrows twitched upward. “Kidnapping? I’m not sure I could support that.” He nodded toward Dr. Takahashi. “Him, maybe, considering his state, but—”
“Dr. Takahashi is a respected emp
loyee of Seirlin Genomics and—” Sasha started.
“And currently falls into Emergency Bill C-587, passed last week, which puts him under my jurisdiction.” Reeve made to fold his arms over his chest, copying Soo-jin, but cut off the gesture, pulling at the cuffs of his jacket instead. “I’m under full legal authority to take him in for holding.”
Dr. Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll be hearing from our legal department.”
“You can send any complaints to my superiors on base. I’m sure they will be happy to follow up.” He gave her a polite half-smile, then made a gesture at Dalajit. “Are we going to have any trouble?”
“No. Not from me.” Dalajit’s jaw worked. “I don’t like it, but I read the bill. You have full legal authority.”
“Good.”
A small moment passed between them all. Then, Nomiki blew out a disgusted breath. “Guess I’m on my own, then.”
She reached behind her, her hand angling up to the back of her jacket and withdrawing the long, black blade she carried. Slender on one side, it had a heavy, thick, sturdy base that tapered down the slight curve of its edge and ran the length of Nomiki’s arm from her elbow to the tip of her middle finger. Karin remembered when Nomiki had first got it, special mail order from a weapons dealer on Tala, Fallon’s other planet, the blade flashing through visual cues as she’d set up its inner programs.
Since she only drew the one blade, Karin guessed she’d left its twin on the Nemina.
The guard started forward, abandoning Takahashi at the same time Reeve jumped into action. “Hey, you can’t—”
Sasha kept out of reach of Nomiki’s slow approach, her eyes dancing in the light as she retreated up the hall. Anger and irritation sharpened her features into hard angles and put a shrewd line in the frown on her forehead.
Nomiki rotated her blade, playing with it the same way a tennis player might flip the handle of a racket before a match. “You know me, Doctor. You know exactly what I can do. I’d advise cooperation on this one.”
“You two were always ruining things.” Sasha’s hot, furious gaze turned to Karin as she glanced her way, then to Nomiki who had paused, eyeing her. A wicked grin split her lips. “You forget, though. I’m like you.”
Karin tensed as her posture changed, the rounded shoulders and stoop of her back rolling up into a stiff-shouldered, confident, aggressive pose that rivaled the sudden venom on her face. Her hand lifted, and Karin had a sudden glimpse of an image from her memory, of the tattoo on the doctor’s wrist and the double digit number that made her one of the first few successful experiments, reassurances of the program’s methods and research using herself as the evidence. Nomiki leapt forward just as the doctor’s fingers twitched.
A roar rose up from beside them. Dalajit yelped, as did Reeve and Soo-jin, the sound cut off by a sudden shuffle of footsteps.
The Lost.
Karin was shoved into the wall as Marc jumped back, but not before she caught a glimpse of Takahashi’s face contorted in rage, his arms taking wild swings that Dalajit and Reeve defended against. Beyond, the rest of the Lost were now surging into the hallway, their faces livid with similar expressions.
“Holy shit.” Soo-jin jostled her from the side, urging her forward.
Karin bumped into the wall again as a Lost knocked Marc into her, harder this time. Pain ground up from her shoulder as she scrambled, almost tripping as Soo-jin wormed past her side. Marc blocked her view of the mob, but by the noise of footsteps and growling shouts of people, she could tell that the Lost were out of the room and attacking.
When she broke free, the hallway had descended into chaos. Lost lunged through the doorway. Reeve tried to hold it back, but the force of people on the other side made it impossible to close. Arms and legs stuck out of the gap, and the door wavered on its hinges. Marc had two Lost coming after him, and three had pinned Dalajit to the wall. Two others squeezed through. Then, as she watched, a sudden force of pressure on the door shoved Reeve back several steps and swung the door open so fast, its knob cracked into the wall.
Lost roared out. Their eyes locked on her and Soo-jin.
Light brimmed onto her hands, sending a scattering of fractals darting across the wall like electric fish. She pulled on her power, the luminosity increasing as she focused her energy.
Soo-jin glanced down. “You got this?”
“Might want to get your fists ready,” she grumbled. Adrenaline spiked her blood with energy, and her heartbeat roared in her ears. Light spread and grappled upward in the air, climbing like a tree.
As the Lost came charging toward her, she lifted her hands and used the motion to throw her light, slamming it into their bodies.
Unlike the Shadows, her light didn’t have a very physical presence. She could stick it to objects, like the metal ball that she had helped Soo-jin disable, and she could make it into different shapes, like the light puppets she’d used to lure threats away, but she couldn’t harm things like the Shadows could. Her light couldn’t pick up a human and throw them across the room.
As such, the two Lost simply jerked when her light hit, nearly passing right through it. But she made it stick like jelly.
Soo-jin wheeled them both out of the way as the two careened by, blind and looking like people who’d just run into a couple of sheets hung out to dry. If sheets happened to be made out of the same light as a moon gave.
Karin gritted her teeth and lifted her hand, pushing more energy into it. With a thought, she directed her light to thrust into the people’s minds and drive the Shadows out.
It worked.
And, a second later, as the two people collapsed and their Shadows leapt out, tall and wild, she completely regretted the action.
They surged upward, billowing to the full height of the hall, then stooping as if it weren’t enough. Humanoid, in a vague, distorted, long-limbed way, their heads seemed too large and drooped off their necks in a manner that sickened her stomach.
By the time she’d rekindled light in her hands, they were on top of her.
A sharp pain cut into her ribs, and she had a vague sense of the world turning. Her vision went black. The sickening, familiar sensation of ghost fingers slid in between her ribs, as if they were touching through to the organs inside.
Then, the hallway returned, and she was flying through it.
She landed on the floor and skidded, going down several meters from where she’d been. Numbing pain drove up her arm, and her head smacked against the ground. She had a moment of panic as the wind smashed out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
The Shadow returned, looming in her vision. It reached down, quick and sharp with its movements, and grabbed her arm. She yelled as pain split through her nerves.
Nomiki slammed into it.
Karin coughed and scrambled to her feet, sucking in breath. By the time she turned around, the Shadow had been cut into fading tatters, and Nomiki had already lunged for the second. Beyond them, several Lost still fought with Marc, Reeve, and Dalajit, but she noticed several bodies already on the ground, all wearing the same Seirlin clothes.
For a second, her insides seized, but she forced herself to breathe through it and the memories.
Unconscious, not dead. No shots had been fired, and upon closer inspection, the rest of them seemed to have gained the upper hand of the fight. Reeve had one in a headlock and was lowering them to the ground, Dalajit had taken out some kind of weapon that looked almost like Nomiki’s blades, but then, as her breath caught up to her, she realized it was thinner and straighter, and that it pulsed with electricity.
Lightning-stick, then. Standard incapacitator.
Nomiki cut through the second Shadow. A few seconds later, the fight was over as Dalajit put the last of the Lost to the floor with an electric hiss.
The air smelled like a hot oven.
The room seemed to pause, everyone taking stock of each other. But Nomiki whipped around and sprinted back up the hall, to where the doctor had disappeared.
/>
“She threw some black shit at me,” she yelled behind her. “And I think—yes, she took the elevator.”
She came back around, her lip curling, and barely pausing her sprint as she moved toward Dalajit. “Where’d she go? How many exits?”
“Three, including the main.” He looked shaken. Karin didn’t blame him for that. “She keeps her ship on the roof.”
She bared her teeth. “Which way?”
“Access in the stairwell.” He pointed down the other side of the hall. “Maintenance stairs, that way.”
Nomiki took off running.
Karin shook off Soo-jin’s grip and ran after her. She heard someone call her name behind her, and the sound of footsteps, but she was too focused on her sister to pay attention. Memories pulled at her mind, screaming from the sidelines. Images of the labs, the compound, the many times she and Dr. Sasha had been alone in one of the clinic rooms, administering her treatment. Her fist tightened at her side.
She followed Nomiki through a second set of doors. Pain prickled through the bones of her wrist, and she kept her right side forward, slamming it against the bar to open the door to get in and catch it before it closed after her sister. Another cinderblock hall met her, stretching up into the distance. She paused in the next junction and turned. Nomiki’s footsteps seemed to bounce around in the hall—impossible to tell where she’d gone. She paused, taking a quick stock of the area, and found a small sign at the end with an ideogram for stairs.
She jogged toward it.
As soon as she went through the next set of doors, Nomiki’s footsteps came back into earshot.
“Miki?” She called up. No sense hiding it now. If she could hear her sister, then Nomiki was not going for stealth—and who else would be after Sasha?
“You shouldn’t have come,” Nomiki called back down, her words a little breathless. “You should stay back with the others.”
