by K. Gorman
And, beyond controlling the Lost and making walls of blackness that, given their last encounter, could also produce Shadows, they had no idea what the doctor could do.
They didn’t even know her project name.
“That was a little dramatic of her,” she said finally. “What should we do now?”
“Other than make out?” Soo-jin gave a quick uptick of her head, indicating the closet around them. “Well, we can’t stay here. I vote we sneak around, all quiet-like, find a door or window or something, and get out. If we’re lucky, Brindon’ll get the radio working along the way.”
“Sounds good. Then we can leave the Fallon military to the gallant rescue.” Though she worried about leaving Marc, there was nothing they could do about it. Even if his Shadow did get him up and walking, they couldn’t just take him out with them. Sasha controlled the Lost. She could turn him against them.
Besides, Fallon had about ten million times the resources they did. Any rescue of theirs would be better than risking a harebrained scheme.
“Just gotta avoid that passel of Shadows from earlier. Maybe find a map of the place. There’s gotta be emergency protocol maps, right? For fires and stuff?”
“Definitely,” Karin agreed.
“And I’ve got a blaster. And you’ve got your light.”
“Yep.”
“So we’re totally good to go, right?”
“Right.”
Neither of them moved. Moments ticked by. They both stared at the door. The liquid quality of her light put it in a pale wash as it did the rest of the room, and a fractal made a divet of brightness smudge over the scuffed wall beside it. The line of black between its panel and its threshold felt almost alive, especially where it lay thicker at the bottom.
For a second, she could almost hear the whisper of Shadows outside. Especially when movement from her finger made the darkness seem to move.
“Any minute now,” Soo-jin said. “Aaaaany minute.”
“It’s not that I’m scared,” Karin said. “It’s just that I’ve gotten so comfortable in here. What with this concrete floor under my ass and these metal shelves.”
“I know. It’s amazing how little I want to move. The shelf behind me’s even doing that thing where it gangs up with your bra clasp and digs it into your spine.”
“I hate that.”
Soo-jin blew a loud breath through her lips and leaned her head back, eyes closing toward the ceiling. Her legs came up in front of her, ready to stand. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
The world seemed to open as they left the room. With their breath kept shallow and quiet, and each move and step a careful venture in shared silence, the building’s ambient sounds amplified around them. First, the tick and hush of a vent above them, then a more-distant, subsonic thump that, to her ears, sounded like a beast chained in its lair but was probably just the building’s climate control.
Although her first impressions of the place had been of abandonment—decrepit concrete, dark, empty hallways, and the complete neglect in the outer parking lot kind of led to that assumption—it was becoming very clear that this was a functioning, active facility. For one, the lights were off, not dead. The ubiquitous amount of exit signs, more than she had expected from such an industrial place, proved that, as did the flickering wall panel they found partway up the next hallway.
Soo-jin gave it a passing glance, then went on without a word.
As they left one section and moved into another, the design shifted around them. Soon, the scale of the place began to take shape in her mind.
It had seemed large enough from the air. An old, mid-sized factory, maybe a quarter the size of her university campus on Belenus, its scale hadn’t struck her as particularly imposing. Even on the ground, she’d only counted four or five stories between both halves of the building—but here, the new hallway’s high, uncompromising ceilings, crammed with pipes and vents, and the long, wide path in front of them told a different story.
Maybe it went underground. She hadn’t noticed them dipping down, but their escape from the fight had been blind and frantic. They could have gone down at some point. Or, the building’s upper parts may just be stretched due to its original constraints.
Whatever the case, it was weird and creepy, and she wanted nothing more to do with it.
Gods. I hope Marc is okay.
They came to a set of double-doors at the end of the next hallway. Metal, with a gleaming aluminum pushbar handle that Karin hadn’t seen in over six years. A patch of thin light, different from that of the exit signs’, shone in the next hallway, visible through the two slender windows in the door. Soo-jin paused, squinting through the glass. “What do you think?”
“It feels like we’re going farther in rather than out.”
Soo-jin considered that with a further narrowing of her eyes. “Maybe. But the other way leads back into the tunnel.”
They kept their voices low. Barely a murmur. Karin leaned in, cocking her head to look back the way they’d come. Behind them, the hallway stretched out in a clean, unobstructed length of pale, shadowy walls and worn linoleum that seemed to gleam in places. The exit signs, one shining out of view beyond the next junction and one at the far end, gave the whole area a thin, light-green tint that did nothing to quell the unease that crawled through her bones. The whole place felt like it was holding its breath, watching them.
“Let’s keep going, then,” she said. “Maybe we’ll find something.”
Karin cringed as the door made a quiet squeak. They slipped through, Soo-jin catching it before it closed and easing it back in so that it didn’t click. They froze for a second, straining to listen, eyes darting around the hall.
When nothing happened, they slunk to the wall and carried along. Several doors lined the walls on either side, all closed except for one that stood ajar close to the end of the hallway. Ahead, the light from the room farther down made a hazy patch along the wall and floor opposite it. Not a strong light, though obvious enough given the rest of the hallway’s dimness, it reminded her of the old standby lights the fume hood used to have back in the chemistry classroom on the Earth compound. The sign stenciled onto the wall read ‘Clinic 4-C.’
Soo-jin crept up to it and gave a hard listen, cocking her head. Then, blaster at the ready, she peered through the window.
The sharp breath she sucked in drove a jolt of fear through Karin’s skin. “There’s a fucking body in here.”
“What?” Karin jostled forward to see.
In the center of the room, a man lay strapped on a table, naked except for a cloth that covered his parts, though her angle afforded an unapologetic view of his closest thigh and butt cheek. Well-muscled, with the kind of outline that remained rugged even when limp. No less than three I.V. drips hung around him, a couple of their tubes catching in the yellow light from a holoscreen at the back of the room. Several charts and figures ran across its screen, though only the heart monitor was recognizable to her. A few seconds later, she found the medkit tool wrapped around the end of his index finger.
“So… he’s alive, then…” Soo-jin trailed off. “Think he’s awake?”
“No.” Though his face was at the wrong angle for them to see, she doubted he was awake. Too still, for one, and with the kind of stillness that resonated as uncanny in her gut. She repressed a shiver. “Sol.”
“You want to go in? Check it out?”
“Not particularly. I’ve seen this movie. We’ll get right to his head, and he’ll jerk straight up and scare the living shit out of us.” She bit her lip. “Besides, I don’t think either of us could take him. Look at those fucking muscles.”
“Oh, trust me, I am looking.” Soo-jin flashed her a grin. Then she lifted the blaster and gave Karin a quick nod. “’Sides, Baby’s got a gun. We’re cool. Plus, I want to snoop in and steal whatever we can find in there and examine it with my incredible medical expertise.”
“You’re EMS-trained. Not a doctor.”
“Okay,
so I want to steal it to run through the net later. And maybe run by a few doctor-y friends of mine. See what we can find. That’s a standard holo-hookup in there. I can totes get in.” Soo-jin’s eyebrows twitched upwards. “Don’t you want to find out what’s going on? I mean, it could be important for you.”
Everything could be important for them. If Seirlin didn’t come through with the Eurynome records, then this facility might be their only chance to get them. And if they waited, it’d be locked down and under Fallon control.
Karin returned her gaze to the man through the window. He still wasn’t moving—barely even breathing, though his heart rate continued uninterrupted on the screen. Around her, the vacuous ambiance of the hallway pressed in on her. A draft from the corner vent stirred the hair at the base of her neck.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “But let’s be quick.”
Soo-jin was already opening the door. “Oh, don’t you worry. I am not sticking around here.”
A breath of muggy air met them on the inside. The room smelled of chemicals—cleaners, with a strong bleach and alcohol base that didn’t quite override the whiff of sweat and urine she caught when she drew closer to the man. A darker shade of Caucasian, he was taller than she’d expected, with a thickness that made her suddenly very aware of how small she stood in comparison.
“Sol’s fucking child, I think his biceps are bigger than my head.” Soo-jin crept on his other side, the tail of her dreads swaying down as she bent to the side to peek at his face. “Not much of a looker, though. Keep an eye on him, hey? I’ll check out the computer.”
No problem. Karin wouldn’t be taking her eyes off him anytime soon. Every inch of him screamed dangerous, especially since she’d just found the tattoo on his wrist that confirmed that yes, he was definitely in the program. And probably more on Nomiki’s side of said program, given his physique—but then, maybe all male-oriented programs erred on the physically buff style. In all her readings, she hadn’t heard of too many unfit gods. A few cripples, maybe, but they remained cripples with muscles.
Of course, women didn’t fare too much worse, either.
He had an uninspired face. Flat-ish, with wide lips and a nose that had either been broken and badly reset—hard to imagine, if he’d received the medical attention from Eurynome—or had grown confused over its mix of genetic markers. As far as Karin remembered, Eurynome spliced genes from a variety of sources. Medical chimerism. Apart from that, his eyes looked evenly spaced, with large, bushy eyebrows and epicanthal folds—another symptom of his chimerism—and a forehead that rose smooth and flat. His thick black hair sat in a loose wave that, by the way it kinked near the base of his neck, looked like it was usually held back in a tie.
“Project Ares,” Soo-jin announced. The computer screen flickered behind her, and Karin caught a glimpse of several images streaking past. The charts and monitoring windows had vanished. “Isn’t that the Roman god of war?”
“Greek,” she corrected. “Same god, though. Mars is the Roman equivalent.”
“Huh.” Soo-jin took a moment to look back, giving the man another once-over. “Let’s make sure he doesn’t wake up.”
She lifted a hand toward his face, tentative. “Should I check his eyes?”
“For Shadows?” Soo-jin bit the side of her lip and sucked in a breath. “Well, he’s unconscious. And medicated to be so, whatever else is going on here.” She wiggled a few fingers to indicate the I.V.s. “Shadows ain’t gonna change that.”
“Then let’s get the data and go,” she said. “Before someone comes to check on him.”
She gave the room a brief scan, looking for cameras. No way they’d just leave someone there, alone. Not while undergoing something medical. Sure, they may have wandered off while she was receiving her treatment, but they’d always come back to check, and she’d never been unconscious. Humans weren’t plants. You couldn’t just set it and forget it.
How was he eating, anyway? Was that in the I.V., too?
And where was everyone else? All those happy, smiling kids from the bulletin board? Some of them had been with the group on the stairs, but the rest?
Karin squeezed her hands into fists.
Suns, they needed to find a way out of here.
“No network, in case you were wondering,” Soo-jin said. “Only some internal server thing. Were I Cookie, I could probably do something with it…” She trailed off, and the frown in her voice deepened. “Hey, Karin, I think you should look at this.”
She glanced over. Soo-jin had narrowed her eyes at the screen, her expression unreadable. “What?”
“Your program was Eos, right? It’s in here.” She waited a beat. “There’s an Eosphoros, as well.”
“That’s… just a disambiguation.” Well, sort of. The lore was complicated. Most times, it referred to the morning star as opposed to the morning itself, but some old texts put it at one and the same. As if Eosphoros were a prettier version of Eos. Giving Mr. Ares a prolonged glance, she moved to the end of the table and sidled over, careful not to turn her back on him. “What’s inside?”
“Your pictures, for one—I mean, I assume that’s you as a child, right? It looks like you.” Soo-jin tilted her head and took a step back, opening the angle of the computer for her to step in and take a look, then flicked back into the main part of the file when Karin gave her a nod of confirmation. “The rest is a record with a bunch of medical jargon I don’t have time to parse out right now.”
Karin perked up as she glanced through it.
Her file.
“Okay, definitely get that one.” She jabbed at the screen with her hand. “What’s in the other one?”
Soo-jin brought it up with a click. “Not you. Another little girl, though. Kind of cute. Same hair, facial features.” Soo-jin glanced up, giving her face a quick assessment. “You think they wanted godly visual traits, too?”
“That all depends what programs Freyja, Isis, and Aphrodite look like, I guess.”
“Yeah…” Soo-jin glanced back. “You never mentioned an Ares, though.”
“They didn’t have an Ares. Not that I saw, anyway. Nomiki was the closest they came to it.”
“Any chance you just didn’t see him? Or maybe he was before your time? I mean, if Sasha went through the program, then there’s got to be more like her, right?”
“Yeah, there is,” she agreed. “Takahashi said as much. But I don’t think Ares was among them. This guy’s got a different program number on his wrist. At least one generation after me. Besides, they had enough trouble with Nomiki, and her program isn’t even the main war deity. Could you imagine if they’d raised an Ares with us?”
Soo-jin shot her a grin. “You’d probably be worse off. Nomiki’s a thinker. Cunning. I bet Ares is only a hit-and-smash kind of guy.”
That… didn’t sound right. But, then again, none of this sounded right. As far as she knew, Ares had never been promoted as particularly stupid. Some gods were, but in manners of war…
She frowned, remembering something. “Wait a minute. We did have an Athena. She died, though.”
“They probably couldn’t handle her supreme intellect. What about this girl, though? Know anything about this miniature twin you have?”
Karin glanced at the file number on the screen, and then at the date for good measure, doing a quick translation to relative Earth time in her head. “She’s also in the next generation. Younger than this guy, anyway. Should be around eight years old, now…”
Right around the time I first manifested my light powers.
“I’ll just go ahead and copy all these files. And all this random stuff in the recycling bin.” Soo-jin waited a beat, then yanked out the small, gold transfer stick from the base of the holoscreen and closed the windows she’d opened.
She gave the screen a pat through its top after reverting it to the man’s vitals again, and moved off. “There. Let’s leave Tall, Dark, and Sleepy to his beauty rest.”
Chapter Nineteen
&nb
sp; The hallways lightened after a few turns, and then the ceiling closed in on them, shortening from four meters to a closer two-and-a-half, which would have put more than a drip of unease into Karin’s heart had the walls not also changed. Gone were the scuffed and painted concrete of the earlier halls, replaced instead with a softer drywall and—well, the floor was still either linoleum or vinyl, but it had a newer look to it. Less worn, more even. Shinier, especially with the renewed lighting in this place.
Unfortunately, it also came with Shadows.
They spotted one just as they made to turn the corner of the first hallway, and both did a silent scramble over each other to get back behind the wall and out of sight.
“Shit,” Soo-jin whispered.
Karin’s heart stuttered. They’d gone so long without spotting anyone that the Shadow came as a double-shock to her. Maybe even triple.
Those things were creepy.
“Did it see us?” Soo-jin swore again, this time under her breath. “Hells, do you think it can hear us?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t fucking know.” She shook her head, then finally straightened from gripping her knees. “I—”
A sound in the next hallway stopped her cold. A small sound, little more than a tap of a foot. They both stopped dead, barely breathing.
Then, from beyond,
“Ehhhh…”
It sounded like the branch of a tree, creaking in the wind. An inhuman clicking came next, then a rasping clunk, as if it had swallowed something. “Os. Eoooossssssss.”
Soo-jin beside her, Karin backed away from the end of the hall, wincing at every scuff and tap her feet made. She crouched down, trying to put the movement in her knees and hips like her sister had taught her, trying to keep quiet. Soo-jin’s hand trailed lightly over the wall. In her peripheral vision, Karin saw it drop down. A click and shuffle sounded, and Soo-jin brought the borrowed blaster up in front of her.
