by K. Gorman
She was alone.
Well… not quite alone.
Her instincts announced his arrival long before the hallway outside the lobby of the restaurant creaked under his weight. Tall, with a broad build and a flattering physique—she still couldn’t get the image of him naked out of her head—Tylanus stepped into the restaurant as if it were his second home, the woodwork and dark notes around complementing the brown tone of his skin in a way that felt natural. He’d darkened since she’d last seen him, tanned from wherever he’d been spending his time, and he wore a loose, dark blue T-shirt and a pair of casual, burnt-orange pants, which was different from her last dream of him, at least.
Good to know that her subconscious cared about his wardrobe when it was dressing him.
She scrambled to her feet as he approached, levering herself up on the closest table. Her head rolled with the change, and her limbs shook with weakness, but she forced the feelings back.
He paused beside the next booth over, arms crossing over his chest. As his gaze flicked over her, his serious expression slipped. Part of his upper lip twitched, as if it wanted to curl back.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Well, at least he’s speaking aloud this time. As far as weird dreams went, this was certainly more normal than the last one with the dead kids and the ruins.
Still, she frowned. “What do you mean?”
His head flicked to the side, and he made a tsk-ing sound, impatient. “You’re interfering.”
Her head still reeled from the fall—she suspected there’d been at least some period of blank unconsciousness before the dream had started. She’d thought one couldn’t dream while legitimately unconscious, but perhaps the sheer amount of times she’d either passed out or been close to passing out all these years had got her some kind of frequent-flyers bonus on the whole package. Or the Eurynome Project had rewired her brain so much that it just did whatever it wanted nowadays.
But, despite the unbalanced sense of dizziness, she copied his stance, squaring herself to him and crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re going to have to be more specific. How am I interfering? And with what?”
Not that she was inclined to stop interfering. If anything, his demand made her want to double her efforts, whatever they were.
He didn’t give her an answer right away, only changed his angry, impatient look into a glower. He nodded to her, one hand coming free from his chest to jab in her direction. “That. You need to stop that. And get off this planet.”
At some point, her skin had begun to glow—likely an effect from the strange situation. It was soft-like, and diffused, which made it different from the drops and sparkles and globs that usually came when she pulled on her power. As it strengthened, she had the sudden, absurd image of herself in one of the beauty products advertised in the feeds, or that Naibty commercial where they took the whole ‘pregnant glow’ thing into a whole new level.
“I’m Project Eos. Glowing’s kind of my thing.” She narrowed her eyes on him and lifted her chin. With the blood and dirt and gods-knew-what smeared all over from her and the long, building and alley-traversing run, she imagined she wasn’t quite living up to her dawn goddess project name, but the blood and sweat and dirt made her feel scrappy. Especially compared to his clean appearance. “Your mother made me this way.”
She wasn’t sure what answer she expected, but agreement wasn’t one of them.
“Well, yes,” he said, his frown turning into one of confusion. “Of course she did.”
She hesitated. “Then I’m not sure I see the problem.”
He had black eyes, but they were different from a Lost’s. Aware, active. As if his had truly just been changed by dye or special lenses that covered the sclera. Though they contained the same kind of abyssal depthlessness as the Lost, they had a definition to them. A point that she could focus on. The light fluctuated outside. He jerked his head to the window, watching as the discus outside wavered. Parts of it were lightening again. In her bones, the echo of static started up once more.
The shift event was ending.
“It’s a problem because you’re not supposed to be here.”
“And yet, here I am.” Her eyebrow twitched. As the tingling in her skin grew into a distinct buzz, she dug her fingers into her arms, tensing against the feeling. “Coincidence, or fate?”
Even as she said it, something Marc said echoed back through her mind.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Tylanus took a step back, turning halfway toward the window. She could feel the end of the shift coming now, just as sure as she could see the light change in the disc. Far away, three hours above the horizon, the eclipses over Aschere and Lokabrenna were slipping, the bands that connected them around the planet breaking away.
Something in the air shifted, and Tylanus’ confusion turned back into the scowl he’d entered the room with. Pieces of darkness were rising from his skin, the same way light rose from hers—and, seeing the effect, she wondered just what thought process had gone into their design. Were the scientists who created them racists, or were their looks happenstance? By the hodgepodge of their genetic sources, Karin would put her money on the former, but seeing the differences between the two of them, and the inversion of each of their powers, did make her wonder.
“What’s your project name?” she asked.
He jerked at the question, almost as if he were surprised to still find her standing there, and uncertainty flickered across his face. It was gone a moment later, replaced by his former scowl.
“Leave this planet,” he said. “Get away from here.”
That sounded like a warning.
“Why? Because you and your mother are taking it over? Exchanging it?” Her lips curled back. “What are you doing with all those people you’ve taken? What—”
He cut her off with a gesture, and a wave of energy flicked through the air. She flinched back, but it did nothing more than make her skin prickle.
Outside, though… The light of the discus roiled back. The end of the eclipse sped up, the glow of the two suns shooting through loud enough for her to sense, like seeing someone open a door to the light. The event energy rose, collided with it.
He turned back to her, the sneer on his lips a mix of annoyance and frustration.
“Leave,” he said again, this time with more force.
The light fluctuated outside, the glow turning the restaurant into a sudden, shimmering mix of reflections. As the gold danced across his skin, he made to leave.
“Wait,” she said, jumping after him. “Wait. You remember me, don’t you? Back on Earth—Old Earth, I mean.” She fumbled to calculate the time in her head. “Nine, ten years ago? Nomiki and I came to your window.” She paused. “That was you, right?”
He’d stopped, his head half-turned her way. His long black hair fell down his back, partly contained in an elastic secured at the base of his neck. Parts of it stuck to his shirt, loose and springy.
Sensing he was listening, she went on, gripping her hands tight against the rough buzz that had entered her bones, a signal that the event was coming to an end. “What were you trying to tell us, back then?”
She didn’t get an answer, the end of the event riding through her in a wave and shaking the split reality of the restaurant, but she did see him turn.
Before the static overrode her vision and raked the other world away, his eyes came back into view—black and staring, but not lifeless like the Lost.
When she could see again, he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gods fucking damn it, why can’t I get any answers in this place?
Her lips curled back from her teeth, much like how Tylanus’ had, and she hissed a breath out, frustration stabbing at her furrowed brow. She stared at the spot he’d left, looking for evidence of where he’d gone, but she knew in her gut that she would find none.
Whatever had happened, he’d never really been here in the first place. W
hich posed a whole new question:
Where had she gone?
The floor creaked behind her. “Karin?”
She turned, wincing as the movement made the room spin, then stopped dead when she caught sight of Marc.
He watched her like a man seeing someone dead. His eyes were wide, his breaths slow and ragged, fists clenched at his side. She’d moved a few meters away from where she’d fallen, but he still stood above the spot, seemingly rooted. His voice had been hard when he’d spoken, with a rough-throated rawness that told her that, despite what he was already trying to hide, he was not all right.
She frowned. “Marc? Are you all right?”
Her bowl lay on the floor in front of him, noodles and broth spilled across the floor. Behind him, the disc light kept a steady glow, producing a gray-gold shine that touched the side of his face.
He still hadn’t moved, but, as she started forward, her arms reaching up on instinct, he swayed back. The emotion shuttered on his face like a wall coming down. He took a step back.
“You… you vanished,” he said, the effort visible on his face as he wrestled his panic back under control. “You were gone.”
Ah. So that hadn’t been a dream, then. She’d begun to suspect that toward the end.
“I’m back now,” she said. “Tylanus and I had a bit of a chat. I suspect we moved into his world for that.”
Seeing that he still wasn’t moving, she gave a hard swallow and directed her attention beside her, where the window stood on the other side of the booth. Though the disc light remained almost constant, she thought she could detect a small subset of blue piercing through the city on a horizontal axis, a clue that Lokabrenna was beginning to set. “How long was I gone?”
“Twelve minutes.” He cleared his throat. “I looked for you, but—”
But he thought I was gone.
She spoke up before he could finish that sentence, though the thought, and the grief, was clear to read on his face. “It’s probably good that you came back here. I wouldn’t have been able to find you.”
There was a small moment of silence. Giving him some space, she shoved the table over to one side of the booth to clear a path for her and walked up to the window for a better look. She heard him shift, take a few heavy breaths, getting his shock under control—Gods, how would she react if the opposite had happened? If he had been the one to vanish? She probably would have torn this place apart.
After a minute or so, he cleared his throat again. “Your… your nose is still bleeding.”
She touched her fingers to her upper lip, glanced down at the blood that appeared, then reached for the napkin dispenser on the table she’d moved close to. “I’m more concerned about the coming apocalypse.”
The table shuddered as he bumped against it, closing in on her back as he joined her at the window. His hand came up, touched her shoulder in an experimental way—as if to make sure she was real—then smoothed down her arm and across her chest. He pulled her into a hug, his head dropping to weigh on her shoulder.
She leaned back. Her hand went to his skin, and she smoothed her fingers across his forearm.
They stood that way for several minutes, rocking together, not speaking. Outside, the smaller sun continued to set, the blue spreading in a haze across the level. Buildings and blocks became defined in light and half-shadow, a change from the diffusion the discs offered. After a while, she closed her eyes and leaned her head back, sliding it into the nook between Marc’s neck and shoulder, her face turning toward his.
Then, when the blue had vanished and the streets outside had returned to a more-gold version of the light they’d carried before, it was time to go.
“So, I think we can both agree—that was pretty weird.” Karin threw a smile toward Marc’s back. “Next time, one of us needs to take out the netlink and film it.”
“Spoken like a true netizen,” he commented.
He’d taken the lead again, his backpack slung over one shoulder as they made their way up a lower-level street. Worried that Baik and his crew might somehow find them, they’d decided to go down yet another level, which had required about two hundred flights of stairs divided into fifteen different areas of their inter-disc block building, the areas ranging from tight, cramped, residential hall units, rusty maintenance shafts with dodgy climate control, to the finicky, fairy-garden elegance of some of the finer clothiers, spas, and entertainment venues. It had spat them out at the side-mouth of a small, triangular shopping arcade that fed into a complicated intersection of side streets.
It was more alive, down here at least. Though she wasn’t sure the addition of advertising drones was a good thing. Especially with the way they echoed off the buildings and intermixed with each other. Normally, with the streets full of noise and traffic, they had a limited range.
Now?
She could hear five of them, all between one and eight blocks away.
There were also the Lost to manage. More of them occupied the streets, collecting at varying points. She wasn’t sure whether it was the approaching night that drew them out—with Aschere less than an hour from setting, the delineation of light and shadow once again took over the cityscape, and only a few East-West aligned streets caught any glow—or the fact that with the night came more advertising automations and opening lights. Whatever the case was, there were more of them and, as always, they were creepy.
None of them actually did anything. The worst she’d had was an awkward dodge when one, a lady in her mid-fifties who looked as though she’d been at a business meeting prior to becoming Lost, had caught sight of her at the last minute and veered off her prior course, making Karin hop off the curb and skip around it in an awkward jumble.
But, as the light began to fade and the shadows stretched between buildings, it wasn’t the Lost she worried about—it was Marc.
Her disappearance had clearly shaken him, and despite his soldierly ways, there were little ticks and tells that told her that he hadn’t quite gotten over it. For one, he kept glancing behind and checking up on her, whether it was an obvious over-the-shoulder peek or a more subtle check where he stared at the reflection of a shop window they passed to verify if she was still there.
He also flinched at noises. The first time an advertising drone had come overhead, surprising them in a mid-rooftop launch, he’d almost shot the thing out of the sky.
More than once, she wondered about his combat experience in Fallon. They hadn’t spoken of it, but he’d implied that he’d seen action more than once. And she knew enough of her own PTSD to recognize its hallmarks in someone else.
So, she watched him, just as he watched her. And he noticed her noticing him noticing her. And neither of them spoke about it.
Fuck us, she thought.
Her bag buzzed. She jumped with a surprised squawk—she’d kind of forgotten about the netlink inside—and the noise turned into a swift, happy squeal. She reeled the sling-pack around to the front and pawed it open, retrieving the netlink.
Up ahead, Marc stopped. He turned, his body awash in the disjointed colors of the Novan nighttime, half from a set of neon signs marketing a virtual strippers’ joint and game center, the other half from the elegant, milk-white tube lights that lined the ceiling of the large chain supermarket across the street.
“Nomiki’s en route,” she said, a wide grin breaking across her face as she skimmed the message. “Four days.”
A thrill of excitement fluttered in her chest as she crunched the math. Nomiki must have left within hours of her abduction and gunned for Nova. Which meant that either the Alliance had told Fallon where Karin was being kept, a spy they’d tortured had known, or—and this was what she hoped for the most—the trackers Nomiki had implanted were working.
The next message confirmed it:
Go dark. We got you.
Still smiling, she waggled the netlink in Marc’s direction. “Do we still need this?”
He eyed it. “Map functionality is useful.”
“They can work offline, right?”
“Right. But they don’t really have an offline mode. Always connected to something if they can, even if it doesn’t open under normal apps.”
“A locator thing?” She frowned. “Like in vehicle tracking.”
“Kind of. Cookie explained it to me, but I can’t remember the details.”
“Christ—” Hells, she must be getting tired if she was slipping into her Old Earth swears. “Nomiki’s saying to go dark.”
“Ah,” he said. “Then give it here.”
She walked up to him and passed it over. After fiddling with a few menus on the screen, he dropped it to the ground and gave it a hearty stomp against the concrete. The runners he wore made the action somewhat less effective than his normal boots would have, but after a few tries, little bits of metal, glass, and plastic skittered across the sidewalk.
“There,” he said, taking a step back. “Deleted the history, too. Just in case.”
“Then you deleted the device.” She raised her eyebrows at the bits on the ground, then directed the look his way. “Most impressive.”
That almost got a laugh out of him. She saw the twitch in his cheeks, at least. After a moment of her staring at him, his stoic frown broke.
“What can I say,” he said, a smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. “I’m a resourceful man. Now, if you aren’t planning on—”
A scream of metal cut him off. They both jerked, Marc flinching the blaster upward. Karin, who had been half-fumbling for the water bottle in an outer pocket of the sling-sack, nearly dropped the whole thing to the ground.
Her panicked gaze darted across the low, tiered rooftops and crevices of the street, some instinctual sense directing it up rather than over. After a few seconds, she located the source of the sound.
The breath shot out of her in a single, hissing rush.
