by K. Gorman
A very watchful, very aware tomb.
Ahead, at the next intersection, Nomiki paused to turn her attention down a new corridor that sprung up on their right. She stood there longer than usual, stock-still, every fraction of her being the epitome of focus.
Then, up the corridor, a door opened.
With her attention on Nomiki, the sudden movement in the background made her jump, and she felt Soo-jin do likewise with an uttered swear. For an instant, their grips on each other tightened into steel. Her eyes widened as a Shadow stepped out into the hall.
It had a tall, billowing shape and stick-like legs that appeared to grapple with the floor for a second before channeling down into a more recognizable form, and, as it straightened, it had to bend to fit in under the ceiling. Walking out into the corridor, it gave a brief pause, its darkness shivering at an unseen wind, then turned to close the door again.
For a second, it looked like it was about to walk the other way, no harm, no foul. Half of it had swung toward the opposite direction, ready to do so.
But something made it stop. A shudder ran through it, visible even from their distance. Then it stepped back around and faced them square.
They stared at each other across the distance. Marc’s blaster whined as he deactivated the safety. Ahead, Nomiki took a step back, reasserting herself between them and the Shadow. Her knives hung like twin fangs, their long blades curving backward past her knees.
A low rumble started, like the cracking of thunder at a far-off distance. An energy she hadn’t felt before hummed into the air, making the front of her mind tingle. The air felt heavy with electric shock. Once again, she caught a whiff of something sterile at the back of her nose—along with something stronger and deeper.
Sound ripped across the top of her mind with the subsonic tone of a bass guitar.
She is making me close the door. I haven’t killed anyone yet. I don’t want to start now.
The group’s collective flinch made it obvious they’d all heard it. Only Nomiki hadn’t moved, though Karin could see the alarm in her eyes.
The Shadow will guide you. Hurry. Time doesn’t move that much slower in here.
Karin glanced up the hall where the Shadow stood. It stayed still, waiting.
“Jesus,” Karin yelled. “Let’s go!”
“What the fuck?” Soo-jin jerked in her grip. “Hell, no. There’s no way—” She tipped her head up to address Nomiki. “Yo, tell your sister she’s crazy.”
But Nomiki had paused. Her attention focused the other way, up the corridor to where the Shadow stood. After a moment, she took another step back into the corridor and opened the angle of her body to it, turning toward it.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “I’ve lost the trail.”
“What?”
“If he’s lying and we follow, worst case is we get in a fight, I kill everything, and then we all starve to death wandering in this limbo world.” She paused. “If he’s not lying and we don’t follow, we may definitely starve to death in this limbo world.”
“I think there’s a few other options in there,” Soo-jin said. “Like, it could be luring us into a trap where we fall into the abyss and are never seen or heard from again. Or it could lead us into a room filled with sarin gas. Or lasers. Or methane that’ll fart us to death.”
“All of which I consider better endings than inevitable starvation and cannibalism,” Nomiki said. “I say we follow him.”
“Fuck me, you both are crazy.” Soo-jin twisted in her grip, the action nearly tipping them both. “Marc? You got anything to say about this?”
“I say we take the chance,” he said.
Soo-jin was quiet for a moment. Karin couldn’t see her face, but she could well imagine the look she leveled at Marc.
“Well, at least I’m drugged up for this. If this all goes three ways to Hell, I expect one of you to dose me with the other tranq in my pocket and get me high as shit before the end.”
Marc tipped his blaster in a salute. “Duly noted.”
Ahead, Nomiki straightened. “Marc, you should carry her. Give the blaster to Karin. It’ll be faster.”
They raced up the hall, at first cautious, then when the Shadow stepped around in a slow, deliberate manner and led the way farther on, faster. Doors flashed by every few seconds, their painted wood gleaming under the ceiling’s lights.
They passed their first intersection after more than a minute, its other hallway another mirrored version with lights and doors leading away into such a far-off distance, it made her mind reel to look at it. A sharp, jabbing ache started in her left calf, punching into her leg with every step. After another minute or so, it shifted into something duller and deeper. Breaths hissed through her throat in a pattern she remembered from her childhood, and the distance-running the compound used to make them do. Beside her, Marc’s breaths sounded little better, but he managed to keep up with Soo-jin bouncing on his back. Her wound still bled, spilling onto his arm in a slick, dark red line as he held her legs. Soo-jin’s arms looped around his shoulders in a tight grip, her jaw set in a grim, hard expression.
They didn’t talk. No time for that, nor breath.
Ahead, the Shadow vanished around a corner. They followed, chasing it up another long, straight hallway. Karin bent her head away from the dizzying scene, focusing on the tile at her feet. Her muscles shook, and a stitch of pain in her ribs made her hitch over and list, swaying to the left. Her legs felt like wet, slippery lead beneath her.
Keep going. Keep going. Gods, keep going.
When they turned the next corner, the Shadow had vanished.
She jerked her attention up, heart fluttering in a panic. Endless doors and lights stretched out in front of her, going straight from here until the end of the universe. Silence hemmed them in. There was no sign of the Shadow.
Oh, Gods, what have I done?
Then a noise made her turn, and she immediately felt like an idiot. A carefully, pleasantly surprised idiot.
Down the opposite way, at the end of a corridor only a hundred meters long, white light framed a door that was half-closed.
As they watched, the gap between door and frame grew smaller.
Nomiki broke into a sprint.
Then, the rest of them were running.
The corridor seemed to cant and sway. Her feet pounded beneath her, and as she fixed her eye on the door at the end, the walls spread against her depth perception, moving the light ever farther away. She growled against the sensation—no fucking way were they going to lose. Not now. Not to some dumb shit Sasha had picked up in a movie stream. Her ankle twisted under her and she stumbled, pain smacking hard into her other heel as she caught herself, but she staggered the next few steps and sped on. Breath rasped against her throat in hard, panicked gasps.
Ahead, Nomiki was almost there. Karin watched her drop, gather herself, and lunge the rest of the way.
She smacked into the door with a heavy thunk. One knife rang and clattered as it hit the ground beside her. The next jammed into the gap with the sound of metal chewing through wood.
The door caught against its back.
The light flickered, but held.
The rest caught up a few seconds later. Heavy breaths sounded quick and hard through the air. Karin’s muscles shook, a light feeling returning to her head from where she’d used her power earlier. How long had they been in here? When was the last time she’d eaten?
When she looked back down the hall, she spotted their Shadow guide standing down the way, just behind the intersection they’d come from.
“Help me with this,” Nomiki grunted. “I can’t hold it.”
Clothes rustled, and Soo-jin’s shoes hit the floor with a heavy slump. Karin moved to steady her as she veered toward the wall. Marc stepped around and planted himself over where Nomiki crouched on the floor with her knife levered through the door. It had already bitten a few millimeters into the doorframe.
It yielded under his push
. Nomiki shoved her second knife through the gap and put her shoulder to the door. Together, they strained.
Light burst into the hall, pale and bright. Karin caught a feel of the sun behind it. She joined them a second later, working herself under Marc’s torso and grabbing the door handle to push.
At first, it felt like pushing through mud. Resistance shoved hard against them, not quite pushing it back closed, but against it opening further. Soo-jin hobbled in to join them. Her good side pressed against Karin, muscles hard and straining.
Then, with a pop that she felt in her bones, the door gave.
Warm, muggy air rushed through, then sound, countering the damp, cool quiet of the hall. Light flooded across her skin. For a moment, the day had whited out to her eyes. Then the treetops appeared around them, green and leafy, and the plains beyond that. Above them sat a sky full of clouds, bright and translucent with both Lokabrenna’s and Aschere’s light.
It took a moment for Karin to re-orient herself, her mind snapping around at all the changes, but the sight of the Archangel class transport parked on a faded landing pad, the odd sight of tree canopies at a downward angle from them, and the square, painted concrete that hemmed them in soon clicked.
They were on the roof. And, right smack dab in the middle, between them and the ship, Dr. Sasha had stopped dead and whirled to face them.
She lifted the blaster in her hand.
Nomiki dove off to the left as Sasha fired, performing a neat roll that sent her several meters across the roof’s bare, unprotected concrete, and Marc did something similar, some soldier instinct making him jerk away like a fish on the line.
Karin and Soo-jin flinched, too, but in opposite directions.
Toward each other.
Their eyes widened as they realized what they’d done.
The first shot slammed wide into the doorframe as they scrambled to get away. Shards of pain scalded across Karin’s shoulder as the backsplash of sparks washed over her suit. A spot of fire lit across her cheek and jaw and spit dangerously close to her neck. Her neck cracked from whiplash as she jerked away.
The second shot hit Soo-jin in the chest.
A brief, raw scream ripped through the air.
With Karin still reeling from the first hit, her eyes widened at the black mark that seemed to blossom on Soo-jin’s front. Little touches of fire burned like embers along its edges, crawling away from its epicenter. Then blood filled it. It trickled through the burn as if in slow motion, smoking where it touched the still-hot edges and tinting everything a slow, creeping red.
“No!”
Pain bloomed in her shoulder, but she didn’t even notice it as she lunged forward. The whole world had slowed down, and a kind of static crowded the edges of her mind. Her hand reached Soo-jin’s arm and gripped into it. Something was wrong with her other arm.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
For a second, Soo-jin stood still. Her head turned down to her chest, eyes widening, and her mouth forming a small ‘o.’
Then she sank.
Karin went down with her, the world brightening around her. Blood dribbled from the wound. Soo-jin’s hand found Karin’s right arm, and her attention wandered up, two fingers hooking around her bicep. As Karin struggle to get her flat, to press her working hand to Soo-jin’s wound in an attempt to stop the blood, Soo-jin’s gaze focused on Karin’s shoulder. Her shaking hand came up and touched it. Blood coated her fingers when they came back into view.
“You’re shot,” she said.
Karin knew that. A small, buried part of her had figured it out. That’s why she couldn’t feel her shoulder. That’s why her arm wouldn’t work. And that was, at least in part, why the world had taken such a monochromatic edge in her mind.
But it didn’t matter. The large hole in Soo-jin’s chest, and the fading life in her eyes, mattered.
“No! Hold on!”
Sasha had stopped shooting. Karin had lost track of the others. Behind them, the door remained open. Her foot was caught in it, she realized. She made no move to correct it. Her arms shook. At some point, her fingers had curled into Soo-jin’s shirt in an attempt to bunch it up.
Soo-jin’s head slipped back, not quite lolling onto the concrete. Her eyes focused on something distant. Beneath Karin’s fingers, her breath continued, slow and shallow. A ship sounded overhead, a gust of wind that whipped across the concrete and a low roar that should have been louder. Its shadow passed over Soo-jin for a few seconds.
She’d stopped breathing.
“No!” Karin screamed. Her fingers, slick with Soo-jin’s blood, slipped over her chest. She searched around for something—anything—to block the blood that still trickled out. She was still alive. She had to be. She couldn’t die. Gods, she couldn’t die.
Her fingers stubbed into the hard chest plate of her combat suit, and a sob choked out. A T-shirt. She could have used a T-shirt. Maybe Nomiki and Marc had one. Or—Soo-jin always carried knives. She could use one to cut into… Not her combat suit, it was designed to repel knives, but Soo-jin wasn’t wearing a combat suit. She…
Her throat closed as she struggled to search the woman’s pockets, her breath rasping in her throat. In her third pocket, near where Soo-jin had kept the tranq injector, Karin’s fingers bumped into something hard. Her slick fingers fumbled with the knife and failed to open it.
“Marc!” Her voice sounded more like a sob. “Marc, I can’t—” She choked. “I can’t do this. She’s dying. I can’t—”
Another shadow flitted across them. Marc skidded to a stop and dropped to his knees, coming in so fast, he bumped into her leg. A medical kit scraped onto the concrete next to Soo-jin’s head and opened. A second later, strong fingers reached around her and took away the knife she was trying to open. Others caught her under her shoulders, pulling her back.
For one sheer, certain instant, the world whited out.
Then a hard stretcher pressed into her back. She caught a glimpse of a military ship that had replaced Sasha’s on the landing pad before they swiveled her back around and Marc and Soo-jin returned into sight. Marc stood a few meters away from her, his arms crossed over his chest and his face in a permanent frown. Three medics dropped down next to Soo-jin as Karin watched, working in a flurry. Beside her, another soldier kept the door open as more medics filed inside.
Her stomach gave a flip as her stretcher levitated up—such an odd sensation when so much of her was numb. As she rotated again and the ship came back into view, the rest of the world seemed to wheel around, as well. Sound started to come back. Shouts, beeps, the tinny incarnation of voices over radios, the dull roar of the ship’s engines, ready to lift.
The world tripped again as they turned her around, Chamak’s gray sky dipping back into view for a split second before being replaced by a metal ship wall, and that was the last straw for her mind.
With the slightest of nudges, like a boat slipping its mooring line, she felt the back of her mind begin to unravel. Something beeped hard next to her ear, but the sound soon faded.
Then, after that, the rest of the world did, too.
A reverberation thundered through the rooftop as she crawled away. Someone was screaming. As a dull ache crept up from her lungs, and a raw, copper taste caught at the back of her throat, she realized it was her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You’re not immortal, you know.” Layla, skipping ahead of her in the field, stretched her hands out to feel the stalks of the yellowed grass smack against her palms. “You can still die.”
“You did die,” Karin said.
It was one of those lucid dreams. Not so much a memory, though it had started that way. She’d gone off script early on, somehow more aware of the experience than she normally was. Maybe it came with practice. More likely, it was because she was unconscious, not sleeping. And hurt. She wasn’t sure why, but her shoulder had a cold, twingy feel to it.
Either way, they’d gone from a dank memory of a shared treatment recovery t
o lounging outside in the full field of summer, heading on a lazy route to the ruins.
“We missed you, you know,” Karin went on, hurrying to catch up. “I remember that now.”
“Good. Let’s hope you get some more of those memories back. The rest of us miss you, too—”
Karin frowned at that. It was an odd thing to hear from a dead girl, but she assumed that this Layla was referring to herself and the others in their forms as memories as opposed to actual dead spirits.
“Hard to navigate with just a few pieces,” Layla continued.
“You’re telling me. I’m grasping at straws here. Nomiki, too.”
Layla was quiet for a few minutes. The wind blew as they hiked up the hill, bringing the hot smell of sun-touched grass and flowers along with a more subtle, damp scent that reminded her of the closed room she received her treatment in—but the ruins had swayed into view by now, and she used their thick, indecipherable gray slabs to distract her senses. The breeze blew on, replaced by the sound of droning insects and, farther off, what sounded like a plane.
When they got to the base of the ruins, Layla turned and looked back down on Karin, one hand resting on the side of the nearest monolith.
“He’s not a bad person, you know? He welcomed the rest of us.”
Karin frowned. “What? Who are you talking about?”
The smile on Layla’s mouth had a stiffness to it that she didn’t like. Not so much that she was tricking her, but withholding a grief that Karin didn’t feel yet.
Overhead, a cloud passed across the sun. The absence of heat rushed over her skin, the chill sinking deeper than it should have. In the next second, the entire sky had filled up. Layla continued to stare at her, but there was something different about her eyes.
As the dream shook around her, already breaking apart, Karin realized that they’d gone black.
