by K. Gorman
She jerked as something hit the door to her right, the force large enough that the entire surface rattled. The door handle jiggled, someone trying to come in.
Before they had time to react, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
A soldier spilled in—a normal, non-metal type with a blue and yellow uniform and a blaster held in his right hand. He appeared to be in the process of aiming it at Jon, who was across the hall and engaging one of the metal soldiers in a furious hand-to-hand fight, but the man did a double-take when he noticed just how many people were in the room.
Soo-jin shot him in the head.
Blood and backsplash snapped into the wood. He slid down to the floor with a boneless thump. Karin jumped back as his broken head lolled toward where her feet had been standing.
Across the hall, the cyborg Jon was fighting glanced over to them.
His mistake.
Jon sprang, his arms moving in a blur.
With a sickening crack, he finished his fight. The cyborg jerked, then went limp.
When Jon extracted his hands, the cyborg slumped to the ground with a metallic thump. The man’s head hung off his shoulders in a loose, twisted way. Jon stepped back, breathing hard. His gaze flicked over, caught hers, and gave the rest of the team a quick look-over. Then, he turned his gaze up the hall to where the other fight was happening.
Karin’s eyes narrowed on the open door, feeling the world settle around her. Apart from the sounds of a skirmish from the left that she assumed was her sister, there didn’t appear to be a lot of fighting happening.
Maybe the guy on the floor had been responsible for the blaster cracks she’d been hearing.
She stared at him, then at the open door.
Fuck it. We only have two more to grab.
She drew in a breath and raised her voice. “Nomiki!”
An unearthly screech sounded from up the hall, so loud, it left little knelling impressions in her head. Underneath it, she recognized the low, intense growl of her sister. Metal rang on metal.
Baik made a noise in his throat when Karin lunged for the door, but he needn’t have bothered. Soo-jin beat her to it. The woman hesitated a second, head recoiling as if her brain were warring with her—which it likely was, given the situation—then stuck her head out, giving a quick glance around before she jerked it back in.
Then, she blew out a breath. “Clear of firearms. Except for him, of course.”
Karin glanced to the dead soldier on the floor. The head wound he’d taken had burned a large chunk out of his head, blackening at the edges. She didn’t think too hard about the bone and brain that had been chewed up beyond that, nor about the slow leak that dribbled out of his wound—propelled by gravity rather than a heartbeat. Instead, she stepped over him and joined Soo-jin’s side at the door.
Baik and Cookie hemmed in behind them. Baik put a firm hand on her shoulder, probably to pull her back into the room at the first sign of danger.
Metal shrieked—a great, wrenching sound that almost drowned out the man’s scream from beneath it—and something, or someone, crashed to the floor. There came another smack, and a crack. When she poked her head out, Nomiki was using one of her blades to saw the man’s head off. Her other blade stuck out of his head at an angle, reminding her a bit of a serving fork stuck in a roast.
She grimaced. That was not an image she wanted in her brain.
“Ho-ly child.” Soo-jin’s jaw had visibly slackened, mouth drooping open, and what Karin could see of her eyes going round. “Remind me never to piss that woman off.”
Karin wanted to throw up. Instead, she swallowed it back down. “Cookie?”
“Yes?”
She could feel his attention like a tickle on the back of her skull. Or maybe that was Baik’s breath. They were both pretty close.
“I’d recommend not looking at what my sister just did. I—augh!”
She cringed back as the head tipped loose. Most of the cut was clean—well, as clean as multiple sawcuts on a stump—but Nomiki had grown impatient and ripped the rest off, pulling gore and sinew and an odd mix of metal bits and weird cords that spilled a clear liquid onto the floor with a heavy splatter.
“Fuck,” Soo-jin said.
“You know what?” Cookie said. “You’re right. I don’t think I want to look.”
“Nomiki,” she called out. She’d averted her eyes from the brutal image her sister currently made, but the effort only made her realize just how many downed bodies lay strewn in the corridor, so she lifted her eyes back up. “We don’t know where the doctors are.”
Nomiki and Jon exchanged a look, both breathing hard.
“Doors,” Nomiki said.
A series of crunches sounded as they kicked in the remaining dormitories, ignoring the ones Karin’s crew had already gone through.
Nomiki stopped in the second-to-last, going stock still. She froze for a full second, eyes engaged on that middle-distance she tended to do when she was listening to what her instincts were telling her.
Then, she swore.
“They were here. About fifteen minutes ago. Takahashi, anyway. I can smell them.” Her head turned to the next, and the door crunched. “Ah.”
A slow whimper pulled into the air. Nomiki reached in, and the sound turned into a yelp of fear.
She dragged out the soldier that had been hiding, twisted to the side, and threw him down the hall as if she were bowling with bodies. He landed next to the growing patch of blood and clear liquid that the metal soldier was oozing. The man’s bloody stump of a neck sat on his one side while his severed head was on the other.
He made another small noise when Nomiki stalked toward him, a blade in her hand and a smile on her lips. Her combat suit was covered in streaks of blood and other, thicker things that Karin didn’t want to think too hard about.
“You know, sister,” she said, her voice lifting into a vein of coy-like humor as she picked the man up by his shirt and dragged him down toward them. “It’s fitting, isn’t it? I killed all those people here when we escaped. Why not kill now? It’s like an anniversary.”
“’Miki,” she said. “Normal people don’t have murder anniversaries.”
She suspected her sister’s comments had been aimed more at the man in her grasp, who was now squirming and making strange grunting, choking sounds, his heels skidding and sliding on the floor. The back of his shirt was mostly red, with a slight tinge of blue—from the liquid?—and three thicker smudges that, like the new decorations on Nomiki’s suit, she didn’t want to think about.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Nomiki gave the man an unhappy frown, her lips turning into the making of a pout that he could see. She puffed out a long-suffering sigh, like a dog who’d been ordered to give up her toy.
“That’s true. I should keep a semblance of conscience, shouldn’t I? For Reeve, at least.”
Considering she was surrounded by blood, death, and dismemberment, Karin doubted that ‘semblance’ would be very thick.
As if reading her mind, Nomiki let out another sigh.
“We only killed about half. The ones that wouldn’t stay down. And some of the cannon fodder who got in the way.” The last turned her gaze down to the man in her arms, whose formerly blue and yellow uniform and lack of metal likely labeled him as ‘cannon fodder’ to her. She rocked back on her heels, gripped his shirt higher, then pitched him down the hall. “Here. Catch.”
Karin didn’t, but Jon did. Soo-jin aimed her blaster as he grabbed the guy by the scruff of his neck and dragged him farther into the small group they made.
“They’re regrouping, by the way. Or something like that.” Nomiki tilted her head, as if listening. “I can hear them talking on their comms. The metal ones had them built into their heads, did you know?” She roved a lazy eye forward, hips slipping from side to side in a cool, confident way. She slowed as her gaze found their prisoner’s, and one eyebrow arched up. “You wouldn’t know, would you?”
He had a ve
ry obvious comm on his ear. His hand flew up to it with a yelp.
“Yes—they’re regrouping! Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m nothing, just a… semlia, what’s the word. I make the machines work.”
“Technician,” Soo-jin supplied. “Or engineer.”
“Yes—” He looked at her with wild eyes, a modicum of thankfulness relaxing his face. Until he saw the business end of the blaster she pointed at him. “One of those.”
“I might let you live,” Nomiki cooed. “But I need you to be useful. Do you know where they took the two scientists?”
She hadn’t explained what Takahashi and Tasuhada—Shinji—looked like, but she didn’t need to. They were the only two left of their crew that needed rescuing. Plus, they were probably also the only ones, except for perhaps Cookie, who hadn’t joined in on the fight in the Nemina.
Glass crunched from the front of the building. A heartbeat later, voices joined it, along with the whir and crackle of something mechanical. The light at the end of the corridor broke in a hail of something akin to blaster fire—except it was thinner, lime green, and bounced off the walls like electric ricochets.
Nomiki and Jon lunged forward, crowding the rest of them back toward the door as the first few shots zinged by them.
“Time to go. Sis, grab him.”
Hands clamped down on her arms and shoulders—all of them awkward, all of them hurried. She bent down and put her hand securely on the first piece of their prisoner that came to her touch and sank a grip into his hair.
The world warped, pulled, sucked. He yelled. She swayed.
And then, they were through.
There was a moment of quiet. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
Then, Nomiki straightened. She hit the man they’d captured with a loud smack on his face—a rigid, backhanded slap that made him yelp and jerk—then dragged him out of the dorm hall.
“Okay, party people. Our hostages are waiting. Move.”
“Christi genesi, what in the good name have you done?” asked the Centauri soldier, whose name was Daniel Lacroix—he had been quick to offer it up, possibly thinking to humanize himself in their eyes so that they wouldn’t kill him, which was a sad thought to have, especially since she knew Nomiki wouldn’t give a single shit about gutting him if it became necessary.
“We switched worlds,” Nomiki replied. “It’s a talent my sister has, apparently.”
As she said the last, she turned around to give Karin a meaningful look.
Yeah, maybe she should have told Nomiki about that last dream.
“We’re in the Shadow world,” she confirmed with a nod, her hand curling into Marc’s shoulder, reassuring herself with his warmth—she’d been following close to Baik since they’d left the other hall. The confirmation was rather unnecessary, considering there were now Shadows everywhere, and it felt exactly how it had felt when she’d crossed over on Nova, right down to the weird lighting. At least they hadn’t been mobbed like the last two times, but there were definitely more around than she remembered. Daniel was doing a good job of tracking each one and jerking whenever they got close.
According to him, the doctors had spilled the beans about the Cradle—kind of hard for them not to, considering they’d put it in the Nemina, and Karin imagined they had been in the process of carrying it into their on-board science lab when the Centauri had found them. She hadn’t expected the doctors to hold out under questioning. They were the most official-looking part of the crew to the Centauri, except for Baik, who came with his official Novan credibility literally stamped into his genetic makeup and body modification. While the rest of them could feign ignorance—no one expected a pilot to know much, for example—Shinji and Takahashi’s scientist status definitely elevated them to most knowledgeable.
Following that, the Centauri had taken the Cradle from her ship and had decided to hook it back up to the tank in the sub-basement to see how it worked.
Not her favorite turn of events this evening, but far from her least favorite. They weren’t captured anymore, at least. And Marc was on the mend with the portable nano shot. He hadn’t regained consciousness yet, but his face looked better. Not as lopsided, anyway.
Maybe the bone was starting to heal?
“We need to get the Cradle,” she told Nomiki. “The nano-injector, too, if we can. And maybe a sample of the water.”
Nomiki grunted. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”
She let a slip of a smile touch her lips. She was feeling good. Marc was back in her almost-literal arms, Cookie and Baik were rescued, and she was riding the high of their victory, her exhaustion beat out by what she could only assume was a happy rush of endorphins.
She pushed Daniel through the door to the basement first, the hinges making a groaning sound. The air pressed around them as they dropped down. The damp smell was still there, along with a cool, clammy feeling that slid straight through her skin. She ignored the chill and sparked her light, which caused Daniel to make another gasp of surprise.
The compound’s basement looked roughly as she’d expected it would—dark and dank, with the same layout and concrete grunge as its real-world version, except with an even drearier atmosphere. Even here, in a space that was made up of a predominant grayscale between its white walls and concrete floor, it managed to pervade an even more colorless look. The rust on the pipes and around light cages wasn’t so prominently brown, and the stains on the floor had a distinct lack to them that pulled at her memory. Even the smell of the place had less vibrancy, which was probably a good thing.
Several Shadows turned their way as they came into sight, their black bodies resisting the pull of her light. In her peripheral vision, she saw others from the last hall follow them down the stairs, flowing at the edges of darkness like fish in a river. Her Shadow stood more prominently, catching her notice directly behind them when she looked back.
She caught its gaze, feeling the odd, rippling sensation creep up her gut again, the way it had seemed to connect to her.
What was that? Something to do with her new ability to shift through worlds? Or was it to do with her light? They had, after all, always been more attracted to her than others, and they had definitely been talking to her before her new abilities started.
Of course, given Tia’s information, she’d always had the potential to develop the world shifting ability. So did others, if they all shared the Eurynome base.
She gave herself a little shake and refocused on their task. They had a job to do. She could think about this after they’d retrieved both doctors and the Cradle. Hells, she and the rest of the team could all think about it then and bounce ideas off each other until they found a working answer.
The surgery theater was as they’d left it in the real world, with the one chunk of counter absent from where Nomiki had ripped it and chucked it to the floor. She spotted it toward the side, tucked away behind one of the beds. Her light glinted on the metal bed frames as they moved forward. The elevator doors stood bare and obvious, giving a dull, blurred reflection of their group in their steel surface.
“We closed it up after we left,” Soo-jin informed her in a quiet voice. “But I guess they found it, anyway.”
She only nodded. She hadn’t expected the Centauri to not find it, not with the two doctors in their care as prisoners. Hells, even the Nemina could have found it with her scanning technology, and she’d bet Centauri ships well out-weighed her on the tech side.
“Will it even work?” Cookie slid forward, a finger heading toward the doorpad in a ponderous, hesitant way. “I mean, isn’t the power out?”
“Power’s not out,” Karin said. “At least, it wasn’t out on the Nemina. I think this place just fucks around with the lights.” She spared half a glance to the dormant tubes in the ceiling. “I’ve seen Shadows fuck with lights before. Maybe it’s related?”
“Eos.”
The name slid a bucket of unease down her spine. Everyone jumped. Daniel swore. To her left, her s
ister dropped him and drew her blades with a hiss that had a slight electric edge to its sound.
She swung her hand out. “Leave it, Nomiki.”
“What the fuck?”
“We’ll deal with it later. For now, we have to—augh.” Karin sucked in a breath as a Shadow’s hand slipped over her shoulder. Distracted by the door, she hadn’t noticed the Shadow come around her right side, but she felt it now. Its hand slid through her skin, trailing numbness and static in its silky wake.
She clenched her fist, stiffening at the sensations. When she glanced up, she recognized the Shadow as the same one who had touched her.
The connection grew between them. She could feel it changing. With each second that passed, the sense of familiarity between her and it blossomed and matured, like the keenness of a blade in the process of being sharpened.
Before she could raise the question, the Shadow’s hand dropped from her shoulder. It drew back, its steps soundless. Part of its hip slipped through the edge of one of the bed frames as it retreated.
She stared.
“Are you… are you just going to keep randomly groping me?”
It didn’t respond. She hadn’t expected it to, and the joke fell flat in the air. She was shaking.
She gave a hard swallow and straightened, not taking her eyes from the Shadow.
Behind her, Nomiki moved for the door.
“Come on. Let’s get this done. Then we can deal with…” Nomiki’s lips pressed into a thin, unhappy line as she turned to observe the Shadow. “This.”
Yeah. Whatever this is.
They piled into the dark elevator and went down.
The basement was just as they’d left it, except for the lack of light. Like the upstairs, every tube light and caged incandescent sat dark in its fixture, and no amount of flicking switches would fix it. While the outage had been an odd annoyance in the upper level, where the outer light could still provide a passable-if-dim illumination, the basement was in complete darkness. Only Karin’s light bounced off the grungy walls and grime-coated tile. Dull highlights gleamed off the lips of dust-covered glassware, both on the counters and stored in the glass-line cabinet at the end. Her orb floated forward, slipping toward the ceiling with a thought.
