by Gorman, K.
It felt like there was something missing.
She frowned. Her shoulders were beginning to ache from her position. She relaxed them, let her fingers slide forward and then off of Soo-jin’s cheeks as she straightened, and glanced around her.
The light moved, half liquid, half dust. Motes of it shimmered in the air, warping the light into curves of fluctuating energy like the lingering birth dust of some white-washed new star.
She frowned, glancing around. Her gaze settled on the flashlight Marc had used. She remembered the way Soo-jin’s eyes had seemed to give a bit as he’d put it closer.
Her frown deepened as she turned back to Soo-jin. The light swirled around her as she tilted her wrist, controlling it as if it were on strings. Some of it coalesced on the pads of her fingers.
Those Shadows—attacking hadn’t been their goal. They’d been trying to get inside.
Maybe if she tried to… push it out?
She took the thought and stepped forward again. The light shifted as she rolled her shoulders, then stooped down. She put her palms across Soo-jin’s eyes, called on her power, and pushed.
Suddenly, Soo-jin was no longer compliant.
The chair bucked upward. A foot caught the side of Karin’s calf in a vicious kick. She leaned forward, pushing her knee up on Soo-jin’s lap to hold her down. Fingers clawed at her legs and shirt. Soo-jin’s features contorted under Karin’s hands.
Marc grunted as she fought. She felt him lean back, anchor her down.
Then he gave a sudden yelp. His arms vanished behind the chair.
Soo-jin’s hands clamped around Karin’s throat. The room tipped sideways, and they tumbled together onto the floor. She screamed. Light flooded through them.
Then, after a few seconds of thrashing, Soo-jin went limp.
The Shadow roared out of her body, massive in the room. It loomed over her, both hands reaching down.
Marc tackled it into the table. Its claws raked across the back of his shirt, drawing blood. She heard him gasp from pain and effort.
She slammed down all the remaining light in the room into its head.
The room went dark. Light and Shadow skirmished like an electrical storm, except without the sound.
Then it stopped.
When the lights came back on, flickering as if there’d been a power cut, only the shreds of the Shadow remained. They lifted into the air, fading fast into the light.
Marc took a few steps back from the table, breathing hard. Sweat gleamed on his arms and forehead. After several long seconds, he turned, gave her a quick glance, then walked past her. Karin rocked back against the wall as he picked up Soo-jin, cradling her in his arms.
He checked her nose and mouth for breath, holding his hand in front of them for a few seconds. Then, one finger shaking, he pulled up the top part of her eyelid.
White sclera showed underneath, along with a piece of her brown iris.
The breath blew from Karin’s body in relief—but she tensed a second later when Marc turned her way.
He didn’t say anything, just stared.
Then he got up, straightened his shoulders, and headed toward the door. He plugged in the security override, opened it, and left without a word.
Chapter 21
Left alone, Karin sank back against the hard walls of the Mess and let out a breath.
So, her secret was out.
She supposed it had only been a matter of time, considering the universe had thrown a sudden attack of Shadow people against humanity. If it hadn’t, she might have stayed hidden—even on the occasional times that a nightmare chased her light powers into action.
Private cabins were useful for that.
She glanced to her side. Soo-jin lay limp on the floor where they’d left her. She did not look asleep, but like she’d passed out—a very important medical difference in terms of bodily function. Karin crinkled her nose as the smell came to her, then took a shallow breath and crawled over, pulling Soo-jin into a more recovery-capable position.
They should get her to Med. They could put her on the monitors. See if she really was okay. The Shadow had only been in her for a few minutes, but they had no idea what it had been doing in there. It hadn’t reacted to Karin’s light until after she’d started pushing it in—so either it hadn’t seen and recognized the threat, or…
The fog cleared from her mind as the thought struck her.
She had just saved Soo-jin's life.
Her. Her power.
She froze. The unexpected emotion rolled over her—half fear, half awe. She laid the back of her fingers against Soo-jin’s throat, feeling her warmth, and then switched them around to get a pulse.
But, before she could count, Soo-jin groaned and moved her arm. Her fingers flexed weakly against the floor.
Then she coughed.
Karin snapped her hand up, moving as Soo-jin shifted. Anticipating what might be coming, and suddenly thankful that the woman had dreads that were easy to pull out of the way, she grabbed them back and swung her legs away just as Soo-jin threw up on the floor.
Her whole body convulsed. Karin crouched behind her, switching her free hand to pat her shoulder in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. Soo-jin’s eyes fluttered open after a minute, then squinted against the light.
It took them several long seconds to focus, finally finding Karin’s face and then wincing away at the light.
“Wha—” she said as she turned away, looking around at the mess. “What’s—the Shadow. Did it—?
“Shh,” Karin said, patting her arm again. “You’re okay.”
A heavy shudder went through Soo-jin’s body. She tried to get up, but her muscles were too weak. Karin saw her elbow shake when she tried.
“What happened? Did you guys—did you guys take care of it?”
The door to the room hissed open again. She flinched at the sound, but relaxed when Marc stepped back in, one of the Medkit monitors in his hand.
He looked relieved to be seeing Soo-jin awake and moving.
He strode over and crouched on her other side, unbuckled the monitor without a word, and wrapped it around Soo-jin’s bicep.
“I’ve locked down all outbound transmissions from the ship. Including netlinks.”
He said the words with a casual tone, but they struck right into Karin’s chest. She almost sagged against the wall with relief. That, combined with all the stress and panic and grief of the last several minutes, came crashing down on her. Tears pricked at her eyes.
“Thank you,” she managed.
He didn’t look at her as she turned away, wiping the errant tears off her face. Emotions clumped in her neck and throat, and she forced herself to swallow them down.
The monitor beeped. Marc tilted it toward him and skimmed the data.
Then he unwrapped its band from Soo-jin’s arm.
“How do you feel?”
“Like shit.” Soo-jin groaned. “Eugh. Did I make this mess?”
“I’m afraid so.” The grim expression on his face belied the lightness of his tone. He put a hand under Soo-jin’s elbow. “You think you can move? I want to get you checked out a bit more in Med.”
“Sure, but let’s take things slow.” Soo-jin pushed herself up with a grunt and then shuddered. “Maybe the ship will stop spinning so much.”
Karin took her other side and helped haul her to her feet. Together, they minced their way toward Med.
*
“What was that? Some kind of augment?”
Karin hesitated, then shook her head. “Not exactly.”
Marc lifted a hand from his arm. “Then what?”
She shook her head, glancing through the room. They were all in the bridge again where she saw, by the flashing icon in the corner of the big screen, that Marc really had halted outward transmission. Soo-jin was the only one sitting, having assumed Karin’s vacant spot in the pilot’s chair. Everyone else either stood or leaned against the walls or dashboard panels.
They all st
ared at her.
“I was born on the other side of the ERL gate in a scientific research compound,” she said.
“And this light, I take it,” Marc said, voice slow and even, “was part of that research.”
“Somewhat, yes. They were actually looking for… other things. They never told us.”
Senton raised his eyebrows. “Us?”
Karin winced. She hadn’t meant to drag Nomiki into this.
“So you really can shoot light from your fingers?” Soo-jin made a slight gesture with the drink box she held. “Seriously?”
Her jaw tightened. “Yes.”
“Oh, come on—don’t hold out on me. Seeing is believing. Put up, sister.”
“No.” Karin gave a half-glance to Senton.
“I saw it,” Marc said. “It’s real.”
Soo-jin craned her head back—and then winced at the movement.
“I’d rather no one saw anything, actually.” Karin glanced through them all, her gaze lingering on Marc. “Can you not tell anyone about this?”
“Hey, wait—” Soo-jin waved a hand. “Is this why you wanted to go on the Ozark? To test it?”
She stiffened. “Yes.”
They all paused to process that. At once, both Marc and Soo-jin directed their attention to Ethan, who’d taken up position just inside the door.
He still held the crowbar, she noticed.
“I guess this means we owe you an apology,” Soo-jin said.
“Someone owes him an apology, anyway,” Marc said.
Guilt twisted her gut for a moment. Then a small voice spoke from behind her.
“This means you’ll heal my dad, right?” Ethan said in a smile voice. “You can go back and heal them all?”
Her throat constricted again. She was shaking—apart from her sister, up until now, no one else on this side of the gate had known about her powers. That number had quadrupled within a week.
It made her feel naked. Vulnerable.
“Guess we know what we’re doing after Enlil,” Soo-jin commented. “Hope you packed enough to make the trip past Caishen again, Captain—unless you want to offer up Karin’s miracle services?”
“That is a decision we’ll make later, once we’ve processed.” He glanced over to the display. “We don’t even know what it’s like on Enlil’s surface.”
Someone cleared his throat to Karin’s left. Senton lifted a hand from where he leaned against the wall. From his angle, the colors on the dash lit him up head to toe. His eyes focused on hers. “Sorry—did you say you came from the other side of the gate?”
Her spine grew much stiffer than it had been. The other two hadn’t caught that part—but clearly, he knew a bit more.
She gave him a stiff nod.
“That was before the incident, or after?”
Suddenly, all eyes were on her. She opened her mouth, doing a quick calculation.
“Before,” she lied. “We got through just ahead of it.”
Few people came through the ERL gate nowadays. Communications with the Sol system had come to an abrupt halt seven years ago when she and Nomiki had come through.
They hadn’t been directly responsible for the incident, but they sure as hell had made sure it happened.
For the first few years living on this side of the gate, she’d been terrified that people would find out, but, apart from some major headlines that faded after a few months, no one seemed to have noticed.
It helped that Fallon had chosen that time to pull out of the Alliance. On this side of the gate, that was the bigger news. People still lived in the Sol system—or, at least, they had when she and Nomiki had been fleeing their way through the spaceports—but both systems had grown rather isolated in the past century. Only the really rich could have afforded tickets to visit Old Earth back when passage between the gate had been possible.
Nova Earth, in the Sirius system, was a much more happening place.
But Senton hadn’t exactly shied from money when bartering passage with them. He hadn’t bartered at all.
And now, he was giving her suspicious looks. “You look… young, is all.”
Soo-jin snorted. “Well, at least you didn’t say she looked old. Let’s get back to the whole magic powers thing. You say it hurts Shadows?”
She nodded. “I’ve killed a couple with it.”
“And it heals. Huh.” Soo-jin turned. “I don’t know about you, Cap, but I don’t think there’s much Karin can do to get fired.”
He grunted. “She’s signed a contract, anyway. Unless she pisses in your underwear drawer, we have her for five trial gigs.”
Soo-jin lifted her brows. “You actually put that in the contract? And she signed it?”
“It was in the fine print.”
Karin, too, had lifted her brows. “You guys are taking this whole magic thing fairly well.”
“I’m still processing,” Soo-jin said. “My mouth gets smart when I process.”
“Your mouth is always smart,” Marc grumbled.
Soo-jin tipped a thumb his way. “See? Him, too. Processing.”
Which left the other two members of the room. The ones who hadn’t been smart and had, in fact, been rather quiet. Karin flicked her gaze to Senton. She didn’t think she had anything to worry about with Ethan—he had a dad who needed healing, after all—but Senton was an unknown.
“And you?” she said. “How are you taking this?”
“With great skepticism and disbelief.”
“Are you planning to tell anyone about what I can do?”
His eyes shifted. “The captain has disengaged communications, last I checked.”
So he had checked. Karin’s jaw ground tighter. She turned back to Marc and Soo-jin, her eyes catching each of theirs for a few seconds.
“And you?” she asked. “Are you planning to tell anyone?”
Silence took the bridge. She stared at them, aware of everyone’s attention on her. Their faces had gone stone sober, having lost all the previous minutes’ humor in a dead second. Her lungs constricted as the seconds ticked by, her ribs turning into a rigid tube. Fear sparked in her heart.
Marc and Soo-jin turned to each other. Soo-jin nodded.
“We won’t, for now at least. Senton? What’s your take?”
He curled his lip back. “My take is that I don’t like to have my communications blocked.”
“I will unblock them. I’m sure you understand why—”
“Oh, I understand just fine. I just really, really don’t like it.”
“That’s on me, then, not on her. And you’re stalling.” Marc narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Probably because there’s an Alliance ship coming toward us,” Soo-jin commented, pointing at the screen.
A second later, the comms signal went off. The bottom of the screen flashed a notification for the incoming call.
Marc sighed, watching the screen with a kind of resignation. Then he turned back to Senton. “All right, what do you want?”
“My wife, my daughter—I want them healed, if need be.”
Marc quirked a brow at her. “Karin?”
Her stomach did a flip. She nodded stiffly. “Sounds fair.”
“And in exchange, you’ll keep your mouth shut?”
The comms tone went on. It seemed impatient, somehow. In the window, she could see the Alliance cruiser—a small, close-range vessel—approaching their orbit.
“Yes,” Senton said. “I will.”
“Good.” Marc leaned over Soo-jin, reaching for the comm control. “Now, everyone shut up.”
He entered in the security override. The flashing notification vanished from the corner of the screen. A couple of keystrokes later, they were looking up into the washed-out face of an Alliance officer.
He didn’t look happy. “What took you so long?”
Marc ignored him. “I’ve got the ship reg and license, as well as the license info of my navigator, ready to ping.”
The man waved a hand. “Send it, t
hen prep your air bridge. We’re coming alongside you.”
Karin quietly handed over her license card to Marc, who slipped it into the reader. They hadn’t asked for it yet, but it was a good thing to keep handy if they got picky.
Though she had to admit, they didn’t look very picky at the moment. The dashcam might have washed out the officer’s face, but it wasn’t enough to hide the dark smudges under his eyelids—and one of his eyes looked like it had become severely bloodshot.
The patrols must have been swigging through the Alliance’s supply of stimulants over the last week.
A few minutes later, they all lined up in the junction as three men stepped on board. One had a scanner. They flashed a light in each of their eyes, swiped their registrations, and nodded.
Ethan posed a small problem.
“He’s not one of yours?” The officer in charge—Captain Finn Legan—glanced between Soo-jin and Karin, then let his gaze linger on Senton.
“We rescued him from a ship. His parents… well, they’d been...”
“Lost,” Soo-jin said. “That’s the official term, right?”
The three men stiffened.
“Did you bring them back?” Legan asked. He nodded to his other officers, and the two slipped past the group and down the hallway, weapons rising in front of them. A second later, they heard the sound of the first cabin door—Senton’s—opening.
“No,” Marc said, watching them go. “We weren’t sure if it was… safe.”
“Is this everyone you have on board?”
“Yes.”
“So my men will find no surprises?”
“Only if they decide to search my underwear drawer,” Soo-jin said with a grin.
Marc sighed. “No. No surprises. We just want to check in on our families. Word has been… lacking.”
The two officers came back down the hall and ducked through the junction, headed toward the two storage holds. One gave Legan a quick nod before they vanished.
“Comms have been tied. You know what to do if they’re Lost?”
“The Infodump said you were keeping them at Nuenbar,” Marc said. “I haven’t found anything in the database yet, though.”
