by K. Gorman
Automatically, she turned her head up to the depth of the sky above. It spread out a deep blue, almost black, sprawling high above her. Although a number of flood and spotlights filled the rooftop, turning the place into a resort at midday, a few stars managed to shine past the glare. With time, she might have been able to name them, and maybe even figure out their Old Earth names. She’d had a month-long obsession with that during her second year of uni.
But not now. She had other things to worry about. She turned her head down, slowing for a distracted moment to take in the dark fringe of forest off the roof to the left and the lighter-colored stretch of the valley below before moving her attention to the worksite in front of her.
Despite the hour, it was a hive of activity. About fifty people, most in uniform but some looking like civilian contractors, worked across the entire site doing a mix of activities. The smell of fresh-cut wood came to her nose as the whine of a sawblade rose in the air, creating a fountain of sparks that jumped and glowed over its handler’s protective visor and clothes as it cut through a metal beam.
To the right, three soldiers were working a cable winch for something out of sight. Beside them, farther along the roofline, two others were attaching a clunky metal frame over the side of the building. Three ropes steadied it in place as they fit it into its proper place. They were mirrored by two other groups fitting similar frameworks over the side. Another five frameworks sat in a line, waiting for their turn.
As Baik drew away from them, heading for a tent-like structure in the middle, a pause drew through the group. The darkness beyond the edges of the roof pulled her attention away, and she turned her gaze back to their surroundings, this time with a more assessing mind as she used her ability to see past the glare of the lights and register the landforms beyond.
The two rivers she’d seen earlier were visible, though at a different angle, snaking across the field lines and running almost parallel to the twisting blur of hedgerows that, by their continuity and lack of straight lines, she assumed were roads. A few houses and outbuildings dotted the area, along with one large piece of compound machinery that she assumed was either a really complicated sprinkler—it was close to one of the rivers—or a method for harvesting whatever the hells they were growing out here. The blurred outline of the second forest ate into the far edge of the fields, bumping up into the mountains beyond. Their peaks melded into the sky, rough and dark.
The town was still visible, albeit in a more subdued capacity. Only the mercurial white and nicotine yellow of security lights lit its buildings and roads, with the occasional LED sign blinking for attention—in other words, not a hotbed of activity. Farther along, delving past the outermost edge of the roof and on the other end of what she guessed was a highway, the city she’d seen at sunset looked even farther off now. Its lights seemed as small and distant as stars.
And, on all sides of the complex she was in, the forest was pitch black. Overtop the noise from the work on the rooftop, the air had the kind of deep quiet of someplace unaccustomed to disturbance. Baik had said this complex had been long in disuse.
Her gaze drew back to the town. It was darker now than before, with less lights, but she guessed that was more due to the time of day rather than an attack. If there’d been an attack, there would be more activity. People running around, cars leaving, ambulances… But they weren’t. So, unless everyone was dead, which was possible but not probable, she assumed that the attack the complex had suffered had been isolated, despite the grand display she’d seen and experienced earlier.
Which begged the question—why? Why attack only here? Was there something about this place that made it more attractive than others? The creature had liked killing, but if it had been going for a body count, then a city would’ve been a better target for that. Hells, even the town would’ve been better. Why attack here?
She ducked as Baik held open part of the tent flap for her, then looked up. And up. And up.
Ah. Okay. Maybe that was it.
She hadn’t registered the height of the thing from the outside, likely a result of her distracted brain and the forest-brown canvas material that covered the device, blending it better into the black backdrop of the sky than, say, neon pink would have, but now that she had, and now that she had also noticed its shape, she had to stop a bark of laughter that threatened to buck out of her lungs.
“Are you making a lighthouse?”
It had been painted black, which somewhat conflicted with what she remembered about lighthouses—weren’t they usually red and white or something? Light, easily-visible colors since visibility was their job?—with thin metal frames that reminded her of the pair of glasses one of her friends had worn in university.
Inside, several concave back-panels acted like focus-mirrors, a trace of circuity just visible on their surface when she tilted her head, making her realize that each contained a series of nodes that could be activated. An empty bulb sat in front of each one of them, propped up on a thin metal limb that gave off the impression of a long, spindly spider’s leg. Glass panels sat to the side with protective cloths on their corners, cut to fit the frames.
So, not quite a lighthouse. Just the giant lantern on top.
Her jaw had slackened, her thoughts so distracted as her mind switched gears that she almost tripped over three raised pipes on the ground, despite the fact that they had been spray-painted yellow to prevent that from happening. She faltered as she caught sight of a large slash on the one in front of her. A dark liquid spread in a loose puddle over the concrete.
“Don’t worry, it’s just water.”
Baik gave her a thin smile, and her anger resurfaced as it reminded her of his cool expression earlier and the way he’d looked down on her. On the other side of the tent, two soldiers were busy taping up a hole made by two more slashes, giving her a rough idea of what had happened. Except… Something seemed off.
“So the creature came through here, attacked your water pipes, and left?” Her eyebrows lifted. “Did it not see the glass?”
“Perhaps it was merely stupid. Wild animals have been known to cause random damage.”
Yeah, but that had been no wild animal. Karin had seen the intelligence it had displayed—but, before she could speculate further, Baik went on, switching the topic back.
“As you saw, we have been experiencing some…” He paused, his head tilting to consider the device as if tasting for the right word to say. “Events here. They started twenty-four days ago. Our scientists began detecting strange energy readings from the planet. The readings spiked at the first event and have continued to spike for each consecutive event, growing in strength and volume each time. The visual cues and transformations in the sky began showing eighteen days ago.”
“So, in other words, nothing really happened until eighteen days ago.”
“Correct.”
“And did the suns go all apocalyptic at once, or were they picked off one by one? And what’s with those bands?”
“Lokabrenna went first, then Aschere. The bands came later. We don’t know what they are, but they aren’t visible from orbit.”
She probably should have guessed that. If random black rings had started appearing across Nova Earth’s atmosphere, Fallon would have definitely picked up on that, and Nomiki would have told her about it instead of mentioning some weird energy readings—ones that likely coincided with the energy readings the Alliance had gotten. People could pick up on atmospheric details of other planets with simple telescopes. Fallon employed a lot more than those to spy on its on-again-off-again antagonistic system neighbor.
How, though, had they managed to corral the feeds? Those bands were visible for all to see, and in this day and age, everyone had a netlink. Nova Earth was especially known for its free-moving media empires and interconnectivity.
“How come no one’s talking about this? You guys censor the feeds?”
An uncomfortable silence stretched out after her sentence. She was aware of two o
f the workers, who had previously been bent over and focused on another spindle-limb for a bulb, staring at her. The crawling sensation that started at the back of her neck told her that the two soldiers behind her were doing the same.
“Technically, yes. We insulated Nova’s networks, letting only a few messages through. People can still speak with each other, but nothing unmonitored leaves the planet’s orbit. Which is why you didn’t know about it until you arrived.”
He shifted, and the movement made the shadows on his face move, allowing the worklight hanging by his foot to catch at the deep brown of his dark eyes as they watched her. “But the events are actually small series of partial quantum disruptions. Each time one occurs, we detect the presence of a different, parallel world.” He paused. “And each time it occurs, we lose more and more people to that world.”
It took her longer than normal to fully register his words, in part due to his tone, which spoke of shifting parallel worlds the same way some might comment on a selection of flowers for a funeral, but largely, it was disbelief. She’d known Dr. Sasha could create other dimensions. She’d demonstrated that ability in full with her secret laboratory and its endless corridors—but an entire world? And one that had started threatening Nova Earth at about the same time that she’d escaped Fallon?
She must have been planning this for some time.
Karin shivered as she remembered Dr. Sasha’s gaze on her, and her words, said in such a matter-of-fact way.
“You would understand. Us two, we’re parts of the same tree.”
She hadn’t known about Seirlin taking parts of Karin’s memory and doing whatever it had been doing—and she hadn’t seemed to like it. Which meant that she had different goals than the other Eurynome Project people.
When Baik had spoken about them losing people, she hadn’t been able to help but get a flash of Dr. Sasha’s laboratory and the rows upon rows of occupied stasis pods that she’d been keeping.
What the hell was Sasha up to? And what did it have to do with her, other than being different parts of the same tree?
“Have you found Dr. Sasha?” she asked. “Or her son, Tylanus?”
“No. If they’re the ones behind this, they’ve been keeping out off our radar.”
“They’re definitely the ones behind this, or at the very least, related,” she said. “I mean—who else do you know that creates parallel worlds?”
“The timing is also convenient,” Marc added. “This would have started just after she left Chamak.”
“Yes,” Karin agreed.
Though Dr. Sasha’s dimensions did have a time difference between them and this reality, this was too much of a coincidence to be someone else, and Dr. Sasha didn’t seem overly inconvenienced when they’d overrun her laboratory. Karin and Nomiki had first met Tylanus at the compound twenty years ago, and even then, he’d been special. Whatever she was doing, she’d had at least that long to plan and work.
She cleared her throat, steering her thoughts back around. “How does she take people? Do you know?”
“We don’t. Not specifically, anyway. As far as we can tell, the patterns of disappearance are random, and no one has seen anyone get taken.”
“How many have been taken?” Marc interjected. “Hundreds? Thousands? A million?”
“Eighteen million,” Baik said.
“Sol’s fucking Child.” Her eyes went wide. “Are you serious?”
His gaze held hers for a moment, then flicked to Marc. “After Fallon sent us their research data, we managed to duplicate your light spectra with several variations. It was shown to resist and weaken the disruption. We managed to hold it off to evacuate one of the targeted cities.”
“Hence why you decided to kidnap me. I—”
He went on, cutting her off. “Mid-way through the evacuation, the spectra bent, and it stopped working. Half a million people were taken, which accounts for more than had been taken in a single time before and more than had been expected given the data. We believe it was an active retaliation to our actions, but the attacks stopped for several days before starting again where they left off, which suggests that the action weakened whatever is responsible for it. We then thought that, given your ability to drive out the Shadows and our current inability to do it even with manufactured light, your abilities might prove more able against the effects of the disruption. We kidnapped you to close the gaps in our research and test that theory.”
Oh. Well, that was a bit of a bigger story than she’d thought. And it left her with a lot more questions spinning off her mind. She shut them down, instead honing in on the last thing he’d said. Her gaze ticked to the device.
“So, you want me to light it up next time it happens?”
“Yes.”
She chewed on her tongue. “What about the Lost? I assume you’ve got more of those around.”
He hesitated. “We do. We can bring more of them for you to heal. Our priority right now is stopping these disturbances. We will run a trial tonight, after we’ve fixed the damage.”
And after they put the rest of it together. By the looks of it, they’d be hard-pressed to finish it by tonight. There was a lot of timber and metal still lying around. She had no idea how it worked, but the parts had a manufactured look to them that looked functionally important.
“How do you know it’ll happen again tonight?”
“It happens every night, more or less.” He paused again, giving the device a considering look. “We can bring the Lost up here for you to heal. That way, you’ll be on site and ready when it hits. Then we can get an idea of range and collect more data. How does that sound to you?”
She resisted the urge to lift an eyebrow—he was taking her cooperation a lot for granted, considering she was a prisoner who’d just tried to escape, but at least, he had framed the last part as a question, even if his tone implied something else. It’s not like she could say ‘no,’ considering they could just threaten Marc to get her to cooperate.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “That sounds doable.”
She hid the smile she felt in her heart as she turned her gaze back to the device, giving it what she hoped came off as a studious exam. With its magnification and the boost from the bulbs she assumed already powered it—Fallon had passed on information about her ability to use and manipulate light sources around her, so she assumed by the bulbs that they meant to give her a boost—she could light up the entire footprint of the complex and then some. Which made it the brightest, most unsubtle invitation to tell her sister where she was.
She could expect Nomiki to drop down within a week.
Chapter Sixteen
A storm battered the field, bits and slices of rain streaking through the air, accompanying the thrash and fury of the wind. Above, the clouds rolled and turned, their color as gray as the stones next to her. At the far end of the field, parallel to her on the slope, the trees had turned into dark, evergreen silhouettes. Only a few deciduous stood out among the rest with their naked, scratchy arms and thin twigs. On the field, the dead, brown grass had bent and plastered against the ground, beaten there by other storms in the season.
But it was calm within the circle. She put her hand on the nearest stone, her fingers pale and striking against its weathered gray surface—and younger than she remembered. It had been a while since she’d been able to see them so clearly in a dream. The last time had been so fragmented and unfocused that it was little more than a jumble of weird, creepy images in her mind.
This one carried a clarity that she couldn’t waste. A light breeze stirred the loose ends of her hair as she stared up, examining the thick slab of stone that towered over her. Pieces of grit bit into the pads of her fingers as she shifted, her gaze studying the faint white lines that trailed across the rock.
Old. Probably pagan. That’s as far as she’d managed to get in all her research, both before and after her escape. The rest had just been a rabbit chase down unprovable trails and conjecture. Plenty of cultures carved in
stone worldwide. The stones’ location in Macedonia only narrowed it down to place, but not time—but Brazil had ruins, too, and they’d seemed to have a connection. Maybe they’d been carved in the same timeframe, albeit in two very different cultures? Different designs but, she suspected, the themes carried worldwide. Gods and monsters, heroes, saint, devils. Great tales marked down in stone. Others carved simply as a display of property ownership or territorial claim.
When it came right down to it, she had no idea what the ones outside her compound represented. Maybe they were simply happenstance, existing apart from the compound and its experiments. With the way her research had flipped about and turned back on itself whenever she thought she’d cornered it, she couldn’t expect these ruins to have any sort of meaning. Even Dr. Takahashi, who’d worked on the project, hadn’t thought them to be very important—and he’d known about the Brazilian compound, too.
Except… they were definitely related. Every single person in the system had seen them in dreams. The same dreams that warned of impending Shadow attacks. And Takahashi had been more brain-focused than interested in the compound or project’s archaeological significance. And definitely not any of the philosophical theories that may have led the Eurynome Project onto the course of committing mass infanticide.
It hadn’t always been like that, he’d said.
But neither had she, and yet, here she was. Surviving and with only vague explanations of how her powers worked and why she could do what she did.
The wind howled around the tor, turning into a whistle as it sliced across the cracks at the side. On the inside, in the lee of the circle, another light breath of wind stirred the ends of her hair. A trail of goosebumps rose in a tingle at the back of her neck, unrelated to the wind, and she glanced behind her, already knowing she was no longer alone.
He was there. Tylanus. Dr. Sasha’s indubitably genetically modified son, as much a relative to her as Karin was to Nomiki. He stood naked, prompting a rush of heat to her face—Gods, don’t let this turn into a sex dream—and the harsh, dark gray of the sky put a dull, soft blend of light over his brown skin.
