by K. Gorman
Though she felt a guilty itch in her throat, she resisted the urge to swallow, not wanting to blemish the professional mix of neutrality and exhaustion that made her current expression. The marathon had been catching up to her for a while, and the pained throb in her legs tightened the muscles of her cheeks and jaw.
As she continued to meet his gaze, she gave herself a small reminder:
It’s Dr. Sasha, not me, who is to blame for those people’s disappearance.
Still, the number was a disheartening figure to hear. She suspected he’d calculated the number rather than the percentage to have a larger impact on her—hearing ninety percent was one thing; actually calculating that out to its number base? That was much worse to hear.
Especially since she’d as much decided to help them back in the car, while they’d still been free.
But part of her, likely the same part that had flipped Tylanus the bird while she had been tumbling out of her own dream, didn’t want to give Baik the satisfaction of knowing that.
Fortunately for them both, the larger part of her, the tired and grumpy and definitely-done-with-this-posturing-bullshit part, didn’t give a shit what Baik thought or how she appeared.
She just wanted some juice, a snack, and a nap.
“Look, just put me in the machine or whatever you’ve got at headquarters, and I’ll do as I’m told. I won’t make a fuss.”
Baik’s eyebrow twitched. “You won’t?”
“Well, I will make a fuss if you try and make me do something asinine, stupid, or dangerous, such as working me beyond my capacity, but you haven’t done that yet, so I doubt that’ll be a problem.” She paused. “Plus, my capacity is bigger than it used to be.”
Another shake of turbulence made him flinch again. As a pilot, she had the urge to roll her eyes as he continued to stand above her. Why in the ten hells didn’t people just sit down and belt up for in-air journeys? At his rate, he deserved to be slapped against the ceiling if they had to take a sudden dip.
“I appreciate your honesty,” he said, finally conceding to reaching up to the handle above the seat next to her as the shaking didn’t show any signs of slowing. “I’m told that headquarters has perfected their ability to boost, and that, at this rate, they’ll likely have the device independently functional after about a week. If we can survive that long.”
“I can do a week,” she said. “So long as my basic needs are met.”
“Good. Frankly, I’m not sure we’re going to survive another day.”
“How did you survive?” she asked. “I assume Marc and I made it through a combination of my powers and blind luck.”
And possibly a little help from Tylanus, who was trying to get her to not interfere. She assumed that even he would recognize that stealing her boyfriend was a good way to have the opposite of his wishes come true.
She paused, clearing her throat. “Did you lose anyone?”
Though it was entirely possible that they’d separated with the arrival of air support—and someone had to be flying the Arfor—she’d neglected to spot either Laika or Colahary among the group.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Colahary vanished during the first shift.”
With the way his eyes glittered down at her, she wondered if he blamed her for that. She would, if she were in his shoes.
She hesitated. “How’s Laika?”
Now, he definitely blamed her. His eyes narrowed, staring her down, and she once again found herself resisting the urge to squirm.
“Her head injury was treated, along with some superficial cuts and bruises. She’s currently at headquarters.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “And you should know—she is not happy.”
A thread of confusion unraveled at the expression—did he find this funny? And, if so, funny in a normal way, or funny in a black-humor-ironic way?
She decided not to ask. Instead, she leaned back and turned her face to the front windows. The edge of the disc had become visible, the night beyond spreading out like a dark ink at the end of its glowing edge. A highway below was visible, studded with lights that registered as little yellow dots in the window. Beyond, only a few stars shone bright enough to get past the glare of the disc. “So, headquarters?”
“Yes, headquarters.”
“Sounds like fun and excitement.”
Headquarters turned out to be in the center of Pomona, one of the planet’s twin capitals. Alas, it wasn’t the capital she had lived in—that was several miles away, funneled into a wedge made of seaside cliffs and mountains rather than steep mountain valleys—but the city’s glowing formation of discs and glittering, multi-level lights was easy to recognize.
The nighttime vista was its hallmark. At least half of all Novan netdramas, which themselves made up for more than a third of all system netdramas, had a subplot or five that took place in the city. Moon Sailor had about twelve of them, with Lin, the titular main character, berthing her ship near the top of the rugged cliffs at the edge of the disc.
Headquarters was also not located in a military base, as she’d assumed, but in a research-driven university in the middle of the city, its roads taking up a good twelve square kilometers on the eighth disc. She caught a look at them through the porthole window next to her, craning her neck to get shaky glimpses of both the permanent buildings and the temporary structure of the camps they’d set up. The military had put up fences, and, although there were camps on either side, she assumed only the inside offered any sort of protection—which meant that the other levels of the city weren’t safe, either, but she bet there were people above and below, anyway. Hoping.
When the flyer banked—she assumed to divert to a landing platform—a spindly black structure made of familiar shapes came into view along one of the main roads. An expanded version of the device she’d started to use at the complex they’d been at, except this looked like a leg of one, with lights set up at points of it to act like nodes, connected in a line by a series of metal structures.
So, not one light, but potentially twelve.
Or twenty. Another leg had come into sight, this one harder to see in the distance, half-hidden behind one of the taller tent-like structures that had been set up.
A large, boxy building rose up in the center of the campus. It had a somewhat archaic design, like the other complex, but she knew this one maintained the look as part of its marketing image instead as opposed to the casual, underfunded neglect of the complex. Hawkings-Navarro University had to be one of the most prestigious science schools in the system. Even as a humanities student—and then a pilot—she’d heard of it. Hard not to, when most of Nova’s netdramas referenced it.
The pilot angled them down to the topmost roof, where several other flyers were already parked. A ground crew waited at the edges, ready to guide them down. She lost sight of them as they drew closer, her window bumping up as the entire craft jumped and jostled—Sol’s child, what was this pilot doing? She winced as the plastic ties on her wrists cut into her skin, sending prickles into the sleeping flesh.
Across the craft, Seras, perhaps noticing her discomfort, gave her a cool look.
Yeah, they aren’t going to forget that escape attempt anytime soon. At least, they hadn’t taken it out on Marc. She’d worried about that, considering he had been the one to attack Laika and the fact that, of the two of them, he was the more expendable, but they hadn’t so much as laid a finger on him.
Her finger twitched as some repeating thoughts re-entered her mind.
Colahary. They’d lost Colahary. They had to be feeling that. However, she had the impression that the vanishings had grown too frequent for people to focus too carefully on those who had gone. With the shift events now permanently taking up great globs of Nova Earth, and the darkness very literally coming up to their doorstep, the worry was focused on those who were left.
As they finished landing and Seras came to help her out of her seat and escort her to the ramp, she got a glimpse of the ground crew as they strode up to th
e craft. The thin, exhausted strain pulled each of their faces tight. No one smiled as they went about their business. Their gazes followed after her as she was led down the ramp and into the building.
Inside, the halls were bright, white, and busy. People both stalked through and half-ran, either bent over the screen of a netlink as they walked or carrying important-looking pieces of machinery. More than once, Seras pulled her to the side as another set of crew came jogging up the hall, suited up and heading for the rooftop landing platform.
They took an elevator down to the main floor and threaded their way through the crowds and temporary workstations that had been set up in the university’s expansive lobby and extended into the hallways beyond. Paper and holosigns had been fixed to various parts of the walls and artwork, directing people where to go. A line-up had formed along the wall outside an office that had been converted into a first aid station, the paper sign tacked to the top of the door. Inside, the old desks had been shoved to the side and converted into beds and examination tables. Two mobile nurse stations sat in the middle of the room, stacked high with supplies.
The smell in the air changed as they continued down a side hallway. The upper halls had contained a closed smell, the university’s climate control being pushed to its limits with the sheer amount of people, and the sensation returned as they moved away from the wide open doors of the lobby. The air hung about her face, too warm and wet to be comfortable, like having someone breathing on her skin, but this time, it came with an underlying scent of chemicals on its edge. It made the tiredness drag at her eyes, and her exhausted, aching body swayed to the side as some of her vision speckled out for a brief moment.
Seras corrected her with a tight hold on her arm, and they continued down the hall—the same bright, white walls as the floors above, except this time made of concrete instead of straight pre-fab. Sounds echoed in an odd way around her, snatches of voices and machinery along with the occasional beep of a notification. There was a sense of constant movement. Her stomach did a little flip as they approached a door on the left, the sounds amplifying and condensing into a hive of activity. Despite herself, she felt her jaw loosen as she caught sight of the room beyond.
‘Room’ was a bit of a misnomer. She guessed it had been a theater, once. The ceiling soared between two and three stories high, and the first three-quarters of the room had a downward tilt into the last quarter. Along the rows that formed slow steppes into the hall, each lacking a guard rail—she supposed the chairs had filled that purpose before they’d been removed—there was evidence of the seating that had occupied the spot. People, tables, and supplies occupied each spot, everyone working hard and busy with their own task. Equipment stacked up in the middles and sides and also under the tables. Most of the heavy tools were stored along the back wall, where a set of metal shelves had been ratcheted in place against the walls.
At the bottom, on the area that had once been a raised stage, sat a giant metal box.
It had a buffed look, with parts of it shimmering where welders and sanders had worked it into shape, and there were about three dozen oddities and more-sophisticated, science-y-looking tools and devices attached to its sides, but its general appearance carried the image that it had been constructed in someone’s garage rather than a science lab. Someone’s metal workshop hobby garage, to be fair, but still…
Not quite what she’d been expecting.
But three ‘arms’ diverged from its sides, made with a much more consistent, factory-produced model than its center. As each of them stretched through rough holes in the wall, connecting to the ones she’d seen outside, their cylindrical metallic bodies reminded her of the splitter cables she used to see in her childhood. As her attention moved from them to the things attached to the box—lingering for a moment on the ‘door’ someone had built in its front—she got distracted by a small gathering of white-coated people off to the side of the stage. Her eyebrows rose as she caught sight of what they were gathered around.
A chair. It was a chair. And, by the machines sitting on either side of it—the entire thing looked as though it had been either taped, glued, or welded to a platform—she had a feeling that the chair was for her.
The straps attached to its arms, legs, and back raised her eyebrows further up.
Well, they aren’t being subtle about it, are they? At least they’d thought to let me sit this time, rather than stand?
As they made their way down, one of the group members tapped another on the shoulder and pointed her way. A second later, all seven had turned to look in her direction.
Yep. Definitely not going to get flashbacks from my childhood here. She pressed her lips together in a thin line, wishing she had more energy to deal with this right now—maybe they could find a quiet room for her to take a nap in before the next shift event—then turned her attention into a deeper investigation of the group.
But, before they could complete their approach, a familiar voice spoke up from her right, its tone an amalgam of surprise and shock.
“Karin?”
Her attention snapped over, her mind and body instantly more awake. “Pranav?”
She spotted the scientist a row up, a small, confused furrow on his brow, one hand lifted with a finger poised on the netlink he held in his other hand.
“Holy shit,” she said. “You’re alive?”
Baik hadn’t mentioned any survivors, so it hit her with a shock. A part of her had hoped that he’d come out of it, but that hope had died when no word had come to Baik while they’d been running. Well, none that he’d seen fit to pass on to her. If one ignored the exhausted bags under Pranav’s eyes and the roughed-up quality of his lab coat—his left sleeve looked as though it had gotten dragged through mud and then rubbed off at some point—he appeared to have come out of the attack unscathed, too.
“Yes. I hid in a food closet with one of the soldiers. His comms device had malfunctioned, and I’d run out without my netlink, so we were kind of stuck until it was over.” He lowered his netlink and came around the table toward her, bending down to be more on her level. “I’m glad you made it out.”
By the tone of his voice, he sounded like he genuinely meant it. And not in a ‘because we’d all be doomed if you hadn’t’ way.
Which both lifted her spirits and made her feel guilty at the same time. She wondered if anyone had told him that she and Marc had broken free and escaped.
As if on cue, Seras put pressure on her shoulder. “Come on. They’re waiting.”
Their group had bunched behind her, her and Seras proving a neat bottleneck on the already-crowded pathway. Unable to wave with her hands behind her back, Karin gave Pranav a sad smile and tipped her head. He lifted his hand, watching her go.
The scientists were waiting.
One of them, the man who’d been tapped earlier, stepped forward as she approached. Appearing in his mid-seventies—it was hard to tell, especially on Nova, due to the many genuine-but-expensive anti-aging treatments available, so he could have been in his eighties or nineties—he had a sagging appearance, his lab coat seeming to pull his shoulders into a downward stoop, his back in a permanent state of roundness. More gray than black colored his hair, which existed in a rough, grown-out state that suggested he hadn’t cared much for it in the past month or two, but a pair of lighter, metallic gold streaks at the top of his ear suggested a more relaxed, playful nature in his recent past. Possibly from before the Shadow attack. His light-toned, green-brown eyes caught and studied hers, a smile tugging at his lips as he pulled one hand away from his netlink and offered it out to her in greeting.
“Hello, Miss Makos. I am Dr. Toran Lamond. I understand we’ll be working together?”
Karin stared down at his outstretched hand, then directed her gaze to Seras, an eyebrow rising. Without a word, the soldier pulled out a multitool and stepped in behind her back. One hand grabbed her wrist. After a second and a brief touch of heat, the plastic ties broke apart.
She rubbed
her wrists as some of the feeling prickled back in, then shook his hand. Dr. Lamond’s expression hadn’t changed.
“Yes, I believe we will be,” she said, then directed her gaze to the chair behind him. “You wanna show me what you’ve got set up?”
“Absolutely. Please, come this way.” He stepped aside to allow her up the small staircase that had been built into the edge of the stage.
Behind her, Marc cleared his throat. “Uhh, Karin? I’m going to be somewhere else.”
She glanced back. He was still in cuffs, she noticed. Because he had attacked Laika? Or because he hadn’t needed to shake anyone’s hand? The rest of the party had hung back, Seras and one of the new soldiers both handling Marc, with David behind them. Baik was farther up the former theater, speaking with a man at one of the other workstations.
“Okay?” she said, voicing the question with her tone—she’d suspected that he wouldn’t be with her during the science part of things, but was unsure if he was okay with that.
She was also unsure if there was something soldierly that he had picked up on that she hadn’t. Either for her safety or his own. She doubted that Baik would do anything to harm him, not if he were still relying on her to save the entire planet, but perhaps Marc, with his instincts and experience, had picked up on something otherwise.
But he only nodded—and gave her an encouraging smile. “Okay.”
That reassured her.
He turned to leave, and a part of her emotions pulled to go after him. After a moment, she dropped her gaze from his retreating back and focused on the task at hand.
“That,” Dr. Lamond said, gesturing toward the metal box in the middle of the stage, “is a fucking mess of a machine, but it’s all we’ve got and, so far, it’s working. We’ve conjoined about twenty additional things inside it, mostly various kinds of boosters and scanners, but we’ve also added a producing unit on its other side. It’s a modified spectra emitting device that the boys over at Janus stripped down and fixed to emit only spectra that match your range. Five secondary energy emitters funnel into it, producing an opposing force to some of the energy we’ve detected inside both the Shadows and the event shift spikes. We believe that is why we have been successful in protecting the small area of the university, but we need more data and more time. A few field teams are out measuring the new shift phenomena now.” He paused, one bushy eyebrow rising. “With me, so far?”
