by K. Gorman
Strength and power roared in her arms. She moved in a blur, grabbed the side of soldier’s head, and slammed it into the cabinets, the actions racing along new instincts in her mind. Wood and metal screamed and snapped. He staggered, yelled. Nomiki scrambled back behind her.
Rage flooded through her body as she watched him stumble away, the stump of his gun arm gushing blood. Her arms shook. Breath came fast and wild.
The whole thing had taken her less than a second.
Tia spoke into her mind again, a delicate whisper.
You should kill him. You should kill them all.
Power crackled like lightning through her veins. She felt the room bend and shift.
She started forward.
He tried to scramble away, but she was too quick. Reality vibrated at her touch, pulled around him at her command. The man parted like tissue paper, blood and organs collapsing in a hot, wet gurgle, some on this side of the world, some in the Shadow world. Neat slices tore through his body like butcher marks.
He died almost instantly.
The shock of a violent death hit the room like a thunderclap. Tension snapped. Someone gibbered. As she became aware of movement—soldiers raising weapons, Leisler shouting orders, one man lunging for her—she turned, grabbed Nomiki by the scruff of her shirt, and slid her across into the Shadow realm.
Silence fell over them.
Blood dripped.
Her sister stared up at her, wide eyes frozen between the cool, logical assessment of her program and plain human shock.
Karin met her stare, expression neutral, waiting. Blood splatter decorated the cabinet beside her, along with a pool on the floor. A chunk of the man’s arm, a slice above the wrist about four centimeters long, leftover from when she’d disarmed him, sat near her foot, muscle and bone visible, the fabric of his uniform sliced as neatly as if she’d done it with a laser. In her peripheral vision, her pale skin was slick with red.
Assessment won. A cloud clamped down on Nomiki’s expression, and her genetic programming rode into dominance. Her usual calculation slid back behind her eyes, whirring.
Karin stepped to the side, grabbed a thin knife from its stand on the counter, and cut through her sister’s bonds.
Nomiki hissed as they let go, her left hand snapping up to grab what was obviously a broken arm.
Karin glanced at it. Full fracture, midway up the radius, with a second, more severe compression fracture turning her wrist lopsided. Bruising along the skin, and several knife wounds over the swelling of her broken bone—all of them careful and straight, inflicted for pain rather than in attack—showed where they’d tortured her. She remembered her own bones clicking together not that long ago.
We’ll need nano for that.
Closest reliable nano was on the ship.
“Did the Nemina get away?” she asked her sister.
“Yes.”
“Was Marc on it?”
“Yes.”
She paused, considering. “Did you make contact with Fallon or anyone?”
Nomiki shook her head. “No.”
That would make getting back more difficult, especially with Centauri swarming the area. Either they went for the village, or they killed their way through the Centauri and abused their ship’s communications.
Her lips twitched.
It wouldn’t be much of a fight. Not if she could rip people apart between dimensions.
“Takahashi wanted to monitor you,” her sister said, answering the unasked question that was floating in the air. “That’s why I stayed behind.”
No, that was her excuse for staying behind. Her reason for staying behind was because she was Karin’s sister.
“Where is he?”
“Don’t know. They took him away. Hit him first.”
Her mind whirred, power rippling through her. She gave her head a shake, resisting the pull of the dimensions.
Kill them, Tia urged. Protect the Cradle.
She turned away, going to the bag she’d deposited in the Shadow world earlier and pulling the spare blaster out. She activated it with a click, and, hefting the strap on her shoulder, headed back to Nomiki and offered it. Her sister accepted it without a word, the glow of its plasma pack gleaming in her dark eyes.
After a moment, and a second assessment of the room, she lifted the bag and deposited it on the counter.
Less blood would get there.
Nomiki watched her, as rapt as a prey animal on a wolf.
“You’re going back in there, aren’t you?”
Karin froze. Her head ticked to the left, glancing at Nomiki in her peripheral vision. Her sister stood, bad arm limp at her side, the blaster glowing with readiness in the other.
In her mind, Tia whispered.
Kill them. Protect the Cradle.
She didn’t need to reply. Her sister had already read the answer in her body language.
Nomiki nodded, once, then checked the blaster. “I’m going with you.”
A smile twitched her lips. That was the thing about her sister. Nomiki would never judge her for bloodshed.
“No, you’re not,” she told her sister, her voice like warm liquid, deeper than she remembered, accent rolling with humor. “Not with that arm.”
And with that, she called on her powers and slipped through reality, leaving Nomiki behind.
The Shadow world wouldn’t kill her sister while she was away, and the time dissonance was negligible. She could leave as many people as she wanted in there, for a short while anyway.
Tia had fed her that information.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Reality slid over her like light through a river. The room came back, a background drone condensing into deep male voices—two, speaking close by. Air currents slipped across her neck, shoulders, cooled the press of wet hair on skin, blew against all the naked parts of her that weren’t normally exposed. The blood from the man’s death came next, potent, like an open vial of copper and rust had been shoved, wet, up her nose.
Close by, someone gave a sharp intake of breath.
She’d been noticed.
Her body moved without direction, already ducking the crack of blaster bolt that hissed over her head. The man who’d fired died in a burst of blood and guts, spray hitting the counter and floor, several drops arcing into the metal cabinetry above, the ripple of the dimensional warp shuddering the space around him in her senses. Half his chest disappeared—a rough, octagonal hole gaping like a cannon blast—and her extraneous senses felt it fall in the Shadow world in an equally bloody display.
She was already moving when he collapsed, going for the throat of the woman next to him. Metal scraped her fingers as she ripped into it, a piece of biomechanical reinforcement that was useless against her. Tia’s program had removed the neurological limits on her muscles, and the fusing of their minds had jump-started all of the neurological paths with which to use them. The soldier jerked, her yell cut off in a gurgling squelch, hands flying uselessly to cover the bloody mess of her neck.
The third didn’t even get his scream out. She ducked under his guard just as she’d done with the cyborg in Macedonia and shoved her elbow into his larynx with a snap of bone.
A blaster cracked. She jerked. The shot slid through her, bent through the haze she’d made of reality, and split into the wall behind her. She sliced the blaster in half with her dimensional powers, the cut-off piece falling with a sharp clink to the floor of the Shadow world, and the weapon exploded in the soldier’s grasp, destroying his hands and fingers in a burst of hot plasma.
The room fell quiet. With a frown, she realized that it was a lot emptier than it had been, even with the dead bodies.
Only three soldiers—two men and a woman—remained, each of them frozen to the spot, staring at her red-splashed form. Pools of blood and viscera spread on the floor. Her nose filled with the smell of wet copper and burning flesh.
Bile threaded into the back of her throat.
Oh, gods. What have
I done?
She’d killed before. A couple times, during their escape. But, now, the thick spread of blood took her attention. The room seemed to expand around her head, vision narrowing onto its slick, dark surface.
In her flash of seeming inattention, one of the three who were left charged in a silent rush.
Panic rushed her. Without thinking, she moved fluidly into a block, arm coming up to deflect the laser-knife he wielded. They twisted together, wrestled for a moment. She had him on the floor a half-second later, a knee smashing into his wrist.
Combat reflexes. Neurological paths forced through by nano, Tia said into her mind, ignoring her panic. You’ll need more real-world practice to cement them.
As the thought came to her, she had a sudden knowledge of the process, a feeling of her body jerking around in the tank while she slept. Belatedly, she felt the ache in her limbs.
You rewrote my neural patterns?
That was probably why her body had felt so disjointed and out of sorts when she’d awoken. And likely why Takahashi had seen a need to stay and monitor her.
It was definitely why she was suddenly so good at fighting.
A slow, creeping unease moved through her. What else did she change?
Before she could continue the thought, the second soldier acquired the courage to charge. Adrenaline shredded her doubts. She wrenched the knife out of the first soldier’s hand, spun it into her grip, and gave a wild slash through the air. He dodged, as she had expected, and she made to follow and stab upward—but a blaster crack snapped her back.
She phased into the Shadow realm, the world blipping out in a rush of cool air and silence. She caught a glimpse of a surprised Nomiki bent over the half a chest she’d pushed through.
She twirled the knife, gave her sister a salute, phased back over to the normal world, and stabbed the knife into the soldier’s gut hard enough to pierce through his cyborg armor. He crunched up in pain, and she used the momentum to shove him into the tank.
Blood spread in the water.
The soldier who had fired the shot cried out.
“Put it down,” she hissed, meeting her eyes.
Fear, guilt, panic, and desperation flashed vividly across the woman’s face, already telling her what she was going to do. Pity pooled in Karin’s chest like cool water, easing under the tepid, practical aggression of her new combat reflexes.
Don’t do it, she silently begged. Just put the gun down.
But she didn’t. And, the second she brought the gun up, Karin exploded it in her hands. The woman gave a yell that quickly turned into a whimper, molten plasma burning through her clothes, blackening skin, hissing like acid on metal.
Then, she collapsed, the pain too much.
Karin switched her attention back to the door, already moving.
Leisler was on the move, down the hall, nearly at its end—she could hear him—and she really wanted to kill him.
In a violent, bloody way.
Probably with some torture in the middle.
Images came to her mind of what she could do to him. How she could make him bend, break. Exactly how much blood she could exact.
Her step faltered. Cold shock hit her chest.
I shouldn’t be thinking like this.
Shivers ran through her. She glanced down, taking in her naked form for what felt like the first time. Hysteria bubbled through her body like chaos. Blood covered everything—her hands, her breasts, her abdomen. She could feel it on her face, sticky, cooling in the air. Several rivulets rolled down past her knees. Her right hand throbbed, pain lancing from where the backsplash from the blaster had hit her, and with the sensation, as if reminded of itself as an echo, the older, half-healed wound in her shoulder began to twinge, blood darkening the white of its bandage in a vermilion splatter.
Slowly, the knowledge of the changes came to her.
Neural blockers against pain. Modifications to mental function for efficiency. Emotional inhibitors and restructuring. Resources from her limbic system accessed and restructured for greater neural capacity.
A part of her froze when she realized the extent of the modification. Her attention slid to her abdomen, where a straggling piece of viscera clung to the skin.
I should be horrified. Disgusted. In shock.
But holding onto those emotions was like catching a ghost. Already, the shock was fading, the horror sliding away like rain into a stream. In their place settled a heavy, calculating acceptance.
She’s turned me into a psychopath.
Well, almost. She could still feel, after all.
A sociopath, then?
Hells, I need a college psych textbook.
Not right this moment, however. Leisler was getting away, and she really wanted to kill him.
Before she got to the door, Tia whispered to her again.
Protect the Cradle.
“Fuck!” She spun around, giving the room a glance-over. Two people were still alive. One slumped on the ground, unconscious, with a mess of burns on their arms and fingers. The other, she’d accidentally knocked out when disarming the knife.
Ergo, probably not going to do much. Maybe the first would dunk her burnt parts into the tank for cooling, but the dead body of the soldier’s comrade was half-floating in there, his blood turning the water a distinct murky shade of red, so she didn’t think so.
Still, when she made for the door, something stopped her.
Protect the Cradle, Tia whispered.
The order pressed harder, dragging at her mind and catching the nerves in her head and neck like a physical presence.
She sucked in air. What the fuck?
Was Tia more than just a ride-along?
It’s fine, she thought back, dismissing her alarm. No one’s going to touch it.
Hells, she doubted the Centauri would harm it, anyway. Who the fuck would destroy a clearly cybernetic floating brain in a mad science set up?
Tia’s response was imperious.
I’m not taking that risk. That is me in there. I will not allow harm to come to my body, fucked up bit of leftovers that it is. You will secure it.
Karin made a frustrated noise in her throat—then, acquiesced. With a thought, she shifted over to the Shadow realm.
Nomiki bolted for her, blaster jerking in front of her, broken arm limp behind.
“Karin,” she hissed, bringing up the weapon between them. “Fuck you. Don’t you fucking leave me here. I swear to the ten hells, I’ll—”
Faster than a blink, she caught her sister’s gun hand, swung it up, and smashed it into the corner of the doorframe. To Nomiki’s credit, she didn’t drop the blaster.
But she did get the point.
She wrestled her arm back and jerked it out of Karin’s grasp. Teeth bared in a hiss as she moved to attack again.
Karin put up a hand between them, warding her off.
“I’m taking you back over,” she said. “But stay here. No one touches the Cradle.”
“Takahashi’s here,” Nomiki reminded her. “If you see him—”
“Yes, I know. We have incoming.” She glanced at Nomiki’s hand. A red mark scored an angry line across her knuckles, but she hadn’t broken it in her strike.
She stopped, realization hitting her like the rock of a wave.
Suns, I just attacked my sister.
She swallowed the horror that came with the thought—and the jarring shock—and felt as the two emotions flitted away like leaves down a stream. Numbness came to her, and a hyperawareness of her surroundings. Leisler flicked back into her mind, his presence like a target on a map that was slowly getting away.
With barely a whisper and a glance to the Shadow that had followed them out, she slipped them back to the real world.
Three blasters cracked her way. She shoved Nomiki back into the Cradle room and phased, a hot flash warping the air as the bolts passed right through her. Her attention shifted up the hall. Two dimension-ripping bursts blew apart soldiers’ arms, plasma er
upting in a fountain of burning neon yellow. The third blaster fired another shot before she found it. She ducked to the side to avoid the bolt and exploded it, too.
A grenade rolled down the floor toward her.
She strode up to it, phased it into the Shadow world, and kept going.
At the end of the hall, she caught sight of Leisler’s broad, blackened shoulder passing through the door to the stairs before it swung shut.
She started running.
Shouts echoed up to her, strange and staccato, lilting in the Centauri language. Chaotic, panicked, crashing at her ears—but her power sang through her veins. With each step, she felt strong, lethal, precise. A leaping kick slammed one soldier to the wall, his hands still glowing neon yellow from the burning plasma of the gun she’d exploded, and the momentum took her almost past a second.
She split him apart when he grabbed at her, her dimensional power burning through her mind and body—it felt like an extension of her, a fifth limb, like she was reaching out and undoing a zipper between worlds, anywhere she wanted. Fresh blood sprayed across her face and side, lighting her skin with warmth. She winced as it hit her mouth and cheek, then she was twisting her upper body, dancing to slide by another soldier.
His throat broke under her elbow, and she had a moment of déjà vu, remembering another soldier and another place—in the sunlight, her black hair tied up, a training uniform gleaming white against the blue of the mats, her adversary a tall, blond Caucasian man with a lean build.
My memory, Tia whispered. Mine, not yours. Me, not you.
The soldier collapsed with a whistle and a gurgle. She halted, staring, rooted to the spot. Fresh shock and horror choked her chest, narrowed her world down.
Oh, gods.
Another soldier aimed a blaster at her. Panic took over, and adrenaline. Striking like a snake, she knocked its muzzle toward the ceiling, diverting the shot, and punched its owner in the throat.
