by K. Gorman
“Yeah,” Soo-jin’s voice spoke into Nomiki’s realization. “Dr. Sasha totally already tried to do that.”
“Suns’ burnt saints, yes, she did.”
Since Nomiki had switched to referring to her in the third person, Karin guessed she wasn’t being addressed anymore. She stopped trying to listen in, side-stepped around the second patch of blood where Baik had fallen, and marched to the bridge, teeth gritted against the emotions that threatened to cut off her breath.
They’d get them out. She wasn’t going to leave until they did.
A few things had been moved in the bridge, been cleaned out. Her bag, for instance, was gone, along with her wallet and purse, but that was fine. All that mattered were the crew. Marc, first and foremost, but she wasn’t about to leave any of them behind. Under the exhaustion, under the torrent of all her emotions, a raw, shaking determination built like flood water.
She’d get them out. She’d get them all out.
And the Cradle, too, if she could manage it.
Her sister seemed to be all over those schemes, but, as she turned her eyes around the bridge, the last sentences of their conversation swept back to her, raising a question in her. She turned a frown toward the Nemina’s displays, resting a hand on the back of the pilot’s chair and pressing into it with her thumb.
Could we take the Shadow ship?
Her mind snatched onto the puzzle like a piece of meat.
If they could take it, it’d likely be safer. They wouldn’t have to worry about Centauri damage or sabotage.
Or… would they? Breaking the stick in the Shadow world hadn’t had an effect on the stick in the real world—until Nomiki had snapped it herself—but was the opposite true? They’d clearly been able to land ships in the real world and have them arrive in the Shadow world, and the locked door in the real world had matched the locked door she and Soo-jin needed to break out of.
How, exactly, did that all work?
Right. They’d need to go break some more sticks in the forest. Explore this cross-dimensional bullshit further before they settled onto any concrete plans.
And she’d run her own ship diagnostics, too, just in case. Soo-jin had done one for the mechanical components, running through common disabling tactics, but Karin felt safer doing a more-thorough exam.
She flipped the switch for engine warm-up, too. If there wasn’t anything wrong, then she wanted them ready to fly as soon as possible.
After that was done, she sat back in the pilot’s chair and let out a breath, her gaze drifting over the controls and the screen.
All she could do now was wait.
She shut her eyes, closing out the dry air of the bridge and the light of the screens. The sensation this provided soothed her overworked vision, and she breathed calmly, careful to keep herself in the moment as the clicks and whirs of the bridge settled around her senses in a familiar cloud—careful to not relax too much. She could feel the exhaustion drag at the edges of her mind. It would be too easy to fall asleep.
But it felt good to close her eyes, just for now. They felt so dry and raw, she was surprised they hadn’t started bleeding.
She sank into that for a few minutes, focusing on her breathing, feeling the residual numbness from her nanos tingle through her arm and chest.
Then, something changed. She became aware of a presence behind her. The back of her neck prickled. She traced a hint of static through her blood.
She opened her eyes and looked back, twisting in her chair.
Sure enough, the Shadow that had been following her stood in the space beside the threshold, staring at her.
Right. That was a thing, too.
She stared at it. Fear flipped her gut at its sight—at its impossible blackness—but it felt secondary, more an afterthought. Automatic and underserved, rather than strong and genuine. The rest of her stared up at it with a swiftly building sense of resignation.
There was something between the Shadows and her. Something that niggled at the edge of her brain and nestled deep inside her bones.
But she just couldn’t put her finger on it.
Maybe I should just kill it.
The thought struck her mind with the clarity of an arrow thunking into a target. She felt her mind ripple like a flickering lightning storm, thunder smoldering within thick, charged clouds.
The Shadow rocked, as if it had felt the thought, too. She watched its blackness appear to slide and ripple, constantly moving.
Then, it stepped forward. Raised a hand.
“Eos.”
She flinched as its voice crackled through her mind, her back stiffening at its approach. Shadows had tried this with her before, and she’d always stopped them.
This time, she watched as its hand came down on her forearm. She hissed a breath when it sank through the skin, pushing deep into the flesh, her shoulders stiffening at the sensation.
It felt like silk. Inside her. Moving.
“If you want the full power you need to oppose Chaos, you’ll need to find my Cradle and complete your transformation with me.”
The words came in Tia’s voice. A perfect mimicry of her speech, right down to the pace and intonation—as if the Shadow had plucked it right out of her head.
She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes as it bent forward. She could feel it. Not just with flesh and bone, but as a part of her. A strange warmth hit her belly.
“Yes. That’s what I’m planning to do,” she ground out, shuddering as the warmth spread, tingling her shoulder blades. With a slight hiss, she made to open her eyes, looking up. “We’re going to find you, and—”
She stopped.
The Shadow was gone.
She snatched her arm off the back of the chair, bringing it to her chest. The warmth and the tingling smoothed out, tickling as they spread to other parts of her body, then lessened. She dragged in a shaking breath.
Slowly, she rose from her seat, walked the two steps to the threshold, and peeked into the hall.
It was empty.
She let out a breath and slumped against the doorframe.
Okay. That was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
She had a job to do. Friends to save. Ships to potentially help her sister blow up. And here she was letting Shadows touch her.
She was lucky she didn’t get taken.
A soft beep caught her attention. She sat back down and brought up the deeper diagnostics scan, skimming the results. The report said that everything was fine, but she had a paranoid streak as wide as a planet.
She brought up the first line of the deeper report and began to work her way through it, component by component.
She’d make sure they were safe.
Nomiki popped her head in when she was halfway through the read-out. “Rin, I need—”
“—to break more sticks in the forest. Yeah, I know.”
Her sister halted. A broad grin swept her face. “Hey, you’re getting smarter.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s taken me a lot of drugs to get this far.” Karin glanced around. “That was what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty much. We’re also going to rescue our humans now. Are you okay to do a shitload of those warp things? We’ll be going room to room. Well…” Nomiki’s eyes crinkled around the corners. “You’ll be dropping me in the hallway, and then, you will be going room to room. Break doors in Shadow world, pop into the real world for the rescue, pop back into the Shadow, rinse and repeat, I’ll meet you at the end. Sound good?”
Karin hesitated. Nomiki was right. That was a shitload of warping.
“I think I should practice in the forest first.”
“Dummy round with sticks.” Nomiki winked, already swiveling toward the exit. “Gotcha. See you at the ramp in a minute.”
“Five minutes, sitla,” Karin called after her. “Let me get through this damn report.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The side entrance to the compound banged further open under
Nomiki’s shove, cracking on its abused hinges. She and Jon raced through, already heading for the locked doors of the dormitory up the next hall. The first door gave way with a crunch under her savage kick.
“Remember,” she called back, already skipping for the next. “Once you drop us in the hall, get the hell out. I’ll provide as much distraction as I can. And if Karin shows any sign of weakening, then—”
“Then ignore it!” Karin growled. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
“—get her out,” Nomiki continued as if she hadn’t spoken, already turning her back.
They’d set up bombs in the forest. It had been a good practice of her warping skills as well as a test of dimensional properties. Nothing odd appeared to happen when she attempted to warp an object onto itself—in fact, it didn’t seem to warp at all, which made the whole thing frustrating—but several quick warps showed that breaking things in the real world was only reflected some of the time in the Shadow world, which put a big question mark on how much they could trust the Shadow Nemina.
If the Centauri had sabotaged the Nemina in the real world, it might have carried over to her Shadow variant. Just like Marc and Baik’s blood had.
But they had no other option. They’d just have to trust their diagnostics, hope Karin could warp an entire ship over, and go.
She glanced up as Jon cracked open the next door in a splinter of pressed wood, her heart racing with worry and fear. The third and fourth ones followed quickly.
The plan was for Karin to drop Nomiki and Jon at one end of the hallway, transport herself and Soo-jin back into the Shadow world, and work their way through the cells, warping back into the real world to grab their imprisoned friends and warping out while Nomiki and Jon wreaked violent havoc in the hallway outside. Once they’d worked their way through the cells, she and Jon would meet them at the other end of the hall, break through the real world cell door, and they’d all warp back to the Shadow world and get their crew into the Shadow Nemina’s nanotech care.
They didn’t know who was in what cell—hells, they were hoping they hadn’t moved everyone after her and Soo-jin’s big escape—but they were going to kick in as many locked doors as they could find. It wouldn’t translate over to the real world—a broken stick in the Shadow world did not translate to a broken stick in the real world—but it would allow Karin’s group to travel faster from cell to cell when she transported them back and forth.
And if they weren’t in the cells…
She gritted her teeth against the hot bundle of nerves that squirmed through her guts and the warm tug of emotion that threatened to clog her throat.
Well, we’ll just have to find them, then.
She broke into a jog as Nomiki hit the midpoint of the hallway. Inside, her body was a war between shadow and light, the two energies mingling like divergent sides of an electric shock. Power crackled under her skin, as vivid and visceral as bubbles boiling on the surface of water. Her head was awash in it, caught between the nano-induced exhaustion, the thin headiness of her Hyperspace Mouse stimulation trip, and her blinding need to rescue her crew.
She rubbed her palms as they began to buzz, ignoring the twinge in her still-healing wrist.
At the end of the hall, Nomiki pivoted. Her dark gaze caught Karin’s. Her sister still wore the suit she’d donned earlier that day, its power dials hidden from view. As she watched, Nomiki lifted her hands to her head and re-did her ponytail, twisting its end and tucking it into the band in a tight bun.
Karin’s jaw clenched, her stomach doing a small flip as she took in her sister’s tight profile.
Nomiki only did that for a serious fight.
Beside her, Soo-jin gave a mock unhappy pout. “Dammit, sitla, you’re gonna go all Veronica from Moon Sailor on us, aren’t you? And I’m not going to get any footage?”
Veronica, the ex-super-spy-assassin character from Moon Sailor who had become a beloved regular and enjoyed multiple, epic CGI fight scenes every season.
For a moment, it seemed that Soo-jin’s attempt at lightness would fall flat. Like Jon’s seemingly limited series of stoic expressions, Nomiki’s face gave no sign that she’d laugh.
Then, a smile appeared, and a coy glimmer slid into Nomiki’s dark eyes as her stare slid to Soo-jin.
“Well, we’ll always have Wolfrun.”
Wolfrun. The station where they’d managed to get multiple angles on Nomiki’s fierce, professionally death-defying run through a torture-based, murderous athletics trial, dodging killer robots, acid gas, and lasers to break her way through the final locked station door with sheer force.
But, the way Nomiki said it—the cadence of her voice—stirred something in her memory.
She arched an eyebrow. “Did you just reference Casablanca?”
Not a terrible thing, since she’d also referenced it with Takahashi in his lab yesterday. It was one of the stock of movies the compound had let them watch.
Soo-jin’s jaw dropped. “Dude, really? That movie’s old as fuck.”
“Come, now, it’s only a thousand years. Just how high a resolution do you need?”
Karin forced a smile, but the tension in her chest wavered like old film. They were trying to cut that tension, and she appreciated it. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Marc, and the bloody, unmoving, raw-meat mess the soldier had made of his face.
Nomiki flashed her a quick, pitying smile, her gaze too knowing. Then, she held out her hand in the middle.
“Ready, Rin?”
She nodded. With only a small hesitation, she added her hand on top of Nomiki’s. A trickle of nerves wormed straight through her chest as Jon’s and Soo-jin’s hands joined theirs, coming together like gravball players at a ringside pep rally.
Gods, what if we warp on top of people?
She shoved the thought away. They’d have to take that risk. They had to get Marc out.
“Three,” Karin said, her voice cracking on the vowels. She cleared her throat. “Two. One.”
Energy snapped up to her call, seeming to shoot through her and into the air. The world warped, twisted, pulled. Everything outside their small circle felt like the spin of an accelerated merry-go-round, too fast and distorted to make out anything. She got a brief flash of the ruins, and the world whirring outside of them, everything gray and black—
The lights came on. Warm, muggy air settled against her skin. Conversation muttered around them, along with the tramp of boots in the corridor.
Her eyes widened as she registered the amount of Centauri in the hall, and she didn’t breathe, rooted to the spot. Five guards stood within meters of them. At least two heads had snapped in their direction. For a second, it felt like everything stopped. Froze. The closest man’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ of surprise. She caught his eyes, feeling the ebb and pull of power inside her.
Nomiki pulled her hand back with a whisper of sound, whirled, and shoved her blade through his unprotected chest with a wet crunch. He fell with a strangled gurgle, hands rising far too late to defend himself.
“Go!” Nomiki yelled, jumping for the next guard.
Karin pulled on the warp energy again as her sister lunged for the next, blade in hand. One of Baik’s grenades skipped down the hallway. The sound of Jon’s blaster cracked through her skin.
The world twisted. A dull roar rose in her head as she and Soo-jin slid through the dimension, the other woman clinging to her hand in a death grip, her eyes squeezed shut.
Then, everything went quiet.
“Gods.”
Karin and Soo-jin clung to each other. Her arms shook. She shoved down the pull of nausea that slipped through the back of her throat and broke away.
“Let’s move.”
The door smacked open to a kick of her boot, and she caught its rebound on her elbow. Soo-jin crowded in after her. When the light shook behind them and a swathe of energy pulled across her back like a sudden cloud in front of the sun, she glanced around. Her Shadow had appeared in the doorway.
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She stared at it for a full second, her attention caught by the way the edge of its blackness appeared to blur with the light in the corridor. The visual called to something in her mind—like a half-remembered memory.
She shoved the feeling back and turned her attention away.
There was a job to do.
She grabbed Soo-jin’s arm, pulled on her energy, and forced the world to churn around them. The Shadow bled away like smoke. Energy shifted. A hum shuddered up her arm, beating through her skin.
Then, the tubelight flared above them.
She blinked, the sensation raw and scratching, as if she’d kept her eyes open in the sun. Smell came next—blood, sweat, the pressing scent of antiseptic, along with the heavy burn of smoke.
Nomiki’s grenade must have gone off.
Baik stood by the door, his battered expression in the process of registering the shock at seeing them in the room.
He looked better than when she’d seen him on the Centauri ship, which was not saying much. There were several more cuts and bumps that she didn’t remember from before, but the swelling and bruising on his face had lessened overall. He was about three shades paler than normal, which made the dark, angry gashes stand out on his skin. The bright red splatter of blood flow down his shirt had turned a darker color.
Beside her, Soo-jin squeaked and lunged, making a grab for him.
He flinched, rocking back—an instinctual action, she thought—but his elbow hit the door, cutting off the motion. Soo-jin caught his wrist and reeled him in, making him stumble forward.
Shouts sounded in the corridor, along with the sound of running feet. A pulse shock burst through the air just outside the door.
“Quick, grab this, hold on, and don’t freak out.” Soo-jin pulled Baik’s hand over Karin’s right forearm—the unbroken one. His expression of bewilderment was changing to a deeper, more concentrated version, brows coming together and mouth opening.
