by Rachel Bach
If I hadn’t known what their aversion meant, their desperate scrabbling would have been funny. Part of me wanted to run forward and scatter them anyway like a kid with a flock of pigeons, but I kept pace with the xith’cal and Brenton as we walked toward the center of the cave.
There were so many tiny phantoms, I didn’t actually see what we were walking toward until we were almost there. In the middle of the cave was a phantom that was much bigger than the others. Its body was about the size of a large dog, though it was closer to a horse once you added in all the legs. This phantom alone stayed put as I approached, though not because it wanted to. It was trying to run, its spindly legs kicking frantically, but it was held fast by a long, glowing spike that had been driven through its middle.
That description didn’t make a lot of sense even to me, and I was looking at it. But that’s what I saw: a big, glowing bar stabbed right through the phantom’s center like a spear, pinning it to the stone floor. As I got closer, I realized I could actually see the phantom’s blood around where the bar bit in, running down its side like a soft, wet shadow against its frosted-glass body. The sight sent a shiver through me. The blood would be slippery to the touch, I bet. Slippery and icy cold.
When I was close enough that the circle of empty space around me brushed the pinned phantom, its struggles went from terrified to frantic, sending a snow of white lines across my remaining cameras. I stopped immediately, but it was too late. The phantom’s screech dug into my head like a claw hammer. It wasn’t anywhere near as loud as the emperor phantom’s had been, or the one on Mycant, or Ren’s for that matter, but it still hurt like a bitch. My only consolation was that everyone else heard it, too.
Brenton and the xith’cal, even the slave girl, winced at the sound, and then one of the xith’cal threw out her hand. When her claws were fully extended, a barrier appeared around the phantom. It looked no thicker than a soap bubble—it even had the same rainbow sheen—but it cut off the thing’s screaming like a switch, and I sighed in relief. Of course the xith’cal dealing with this would be plasmex users, I realized. Nova had said the xith’cal were more sensitive to plasmex than humans. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to give them the credit. Now, I was glad of it.
“Nice bubble,” I said.
The Highest Guide made a soft sound, almost like a trill, and the human slave said, “You saw?”
“Of course.” I pointed to the other xith’cal, the one who’d thrown out her hand. “She put a bubble around the phantom to stop the scream, and…”
My voice trailed off. You’d think I’d be used to people staring at me like I was crazy by now, but getting the stink eye from xith’cal was a whole new level of uncomfortable. Brenton, on the other hand, looked like a kid who’s just spotted his birthday present.
“You can see it!” he cried, grabbing my shoulders and spinning my armored body around with his bare hands, something I would never get used to even if I lived the rest of my life with symbionts.
I shoved out of his grip. “Of course I can see—”
A xith’cal screech cut me off, and the human slave stomped forward. “Describe it,” she demanded. “You see the invisible as well as the eater. Describe.”
I looked at Brenton. “You saw plasmex and the phantom,” he clarified. “They weren’t expecting that. Just tell them what you see.”
I looked back at the cave. How did you describe a room full of glowing bugs to a lizard? I didn’t even know if xith’cal ships had insects.
“Well,” I started. “There are a lot of little phantoms and the big one, which is about this big.” I spread my arms to show width, then height. “That one has a spike pinning it down through its back, and now there’s a bubble about it.” And thank the king for that. On the other side of the bubble, the speared phantom was still throwing ten kinds of a fit. If not for the shield, the screams would have fried my suit for sure.
I’d tried to keep my description as simple and accurate as possible, but as soon as I finished, all the xith’cal began hissing and screeching so fast the slave was having trouble keeping up. “How many, how little, and what do you mean by spike?” she said at last.
“I couldn’t even begin to count,” I said. “The whole cave is swarming with them. As for size, except for the big one, they range from pinprick to a little smaller than my hand. Oh, and they glow blue white, like moonlight.” I smiled as I looked around. “It’s pretty.”
The xith’cal fell into a heated conversation. Before their hissing could get too intense, though, Brenton grabbed my arm. “We need to get on with the test,” he said. “You’ll have plenty of time to identify her other abilities later.”
Interrupting three clearly powerful xith’cal plasmex users seemed kind of dumb to me, but to my surprise, the lizards settled down. As usual, it was the Highest Guide who addressed us, speaking in a haughty metallic staccato. “No eyes see the invisible,” the human slave translated. “Stoneclaw’s weapon is strange indeed in a lesser race. But John Brenton is right, the time for full testing comes later. First, we must see if the weapon can be used.”
As the human finished, the xith’cal pointed at the phantom. I scowled, but the xith’cal just pointed again, hissing this time.
“What does she want me to do?” I whispered to Brenton.
He looked at me like I was stupid. “Prove the weapon works,” he said. “Kill it.”
My eyes went wide as I looked back at the phantom. It was still thrashing against the spike that pinned it, clearly terrified out of its mind, if phantoms even had minds. I took a deep breath and thought about all the damage these little menaces could do. I remembered the broken ruins of the aeon planet and the invisible monster that had nearly taken me out on Mycant. But as I watched the phantom thrash silently behind the barrier, all I could think was that it looked pathetic, like a dog with its leg caught in a trap.
But everyone was staring at me now, so I walked forward until I was standing right beside the phantom. Its thrashing got wilder as I got closer, and though I couldn’t hear its screaming through the bubble, the other phantoms must have, because they’d begun to flee, slipping out through the walls like ghosts until the cavern was empty except for the big one, who couldn’t get away. I walked up to the edge of the bubble and glanced over my shoulder at the lead xith’cal. I didn’t expect her to understand, but my meaning must have been clear enough, because the bubble vanished. The second it was gone, the phantom’s scream hit me like a boulder, sending my suit black.
I cursed and staggered as the Lady’s unsupported weight landed on me. Fortunately, my suit flickered back on almost immediately. As soon as my systems were up again, I started turning them off just like I had on Mycant until I was down to the most basic movement controls and my clock, which I could still see clearly at the edge of my vision, thanks to my neuronet. Already, the seconds seemed to be ticking over more slowly, but I didn’t really believe what I was seeing until I took another step and the numbers stopped moving altogether.
At this point, I was practically standing on top of the phantom. It was howling at my feet, its spindly spider legs bumping against my suit like it was trying to push me away. I drew my gun and aimed at the squirming mass of whisker-like feelers I could only guess was its head. I don’t know if that was right, but I must have been close enough, because the phantom’s screaming stopped on the second bullet of Sasha’s three-shot burst. I sighed in relief as the pressure in my head faded and holstered my gun while I figured out what to do next.
The phantom on the ground was clearly not dead. It wasn’t screaming anymore, but it was still wiggling. I didn’t actually know why my bullets hurt the thing. The little ones didn’t seem to care about physical objects at all, but the bigger ones clearly felt them. Maybe it was a side effect of the big phantom’s ability to distort time and space?
I dropped to a squat, peering carefully at the wounded phantom. Now that I could see the thing, I could actually watch the bullet’s damage mending. Sasha�
�s burst had ripped three holes in the phantom’s frosted-glass body, but the wounds were repairing before my eyes. No, not repairing. It was like the damaged phantom was turning into jelly and reforming, and as it rebuilt itself, I felt the pressure of the scream begin to rise again.
“Anytime, Miss Morris.”
I ignored the threat in Brenton’s voice and kept my focus on the phantom. Then, reluctantly, I removed my glove. I’d killed Evelyn with a touch, so it made sense I’d need a touch to kill a phantom. Screwing up my courage, I reached down, brushing my fingers over the semitransparent body. Its flesh was just as cold and slick as I remembered from Mycant, only now I could see the thing’s slimy blood on my skin like a shimmering stain. I suppressed my shudder and pushed down harder, digging my fingers into its freezing, squishy, glowing bulk.
I don’t know what I expected from my efforts. A plague of blackness, maybe. What I got was pain, intense, terrified pain shooting up my arm.
I snatched my hand back with a yelp, staring at my fingers, but I didn’t see any black stuff, just the fading glow of the phantom’s freezing blood. But even as my eyes told me I wasn’t wounded, I could feel the pain echoing through my body, bringing with it a terrible fear. Fear of the death bringer.
I stopped, eyes widening as the realization hit me. The pain and fear wasn’t mine at all, it was the phantom’s. To be sure, I touched it again, just a tiny brush, but even that was enough to send the pain shooting up my arm before I could snatch my hand away.
By this point, I was getting pretty damn sick of things moving into my mind without my permission. For once, though, even my anger couldn’t beat out the heavy feeling of pity, because though I was now certain the pain I’d felt was coming from the phantom, I was just as sure the thing wasn’t doing it on purpose. If anything, the phantom was desperately trying not to touch me, wiggling weakly against the spike that pinned it in a desperate attempt to get away from my hand. It probably couldn’t help projecting, I realized. The phantom was a creature of pure plasmex; it probably just sent things out. It certainly didn’t seem intelligent. In fact, the more I watched it struggle, the more I was sure that the phantom really was like the wounded dog it had reminded me of when I’d first seen it.
Suddenly, I felt sick. I’m a soldier for hire, I kill things, that’s my job, but this was different. This wasn’t some inimical space monster plotting the death of mankind. It wasn’t even another soldier. This was an animal in pain that didn’t even understand why it was here. All it knew was that I was its death. Me, the death bringer who had shot it and now stood watching as it nearly ripped itself in two trying to get off the spike that trapped it beside the thing it feared most in the universe.
I took a deep breath and fell to my knees, plunging my fingers into the phantom’s back again. The pain shot up my arm the second I made contact, but I ignored it, pressing harder as I willed the virus to work. Not because I wanted to prove something to Brenton or his xith’cal, but because there was no other way besides a daughter to put this creature out of its misery, and I was not going to make them bring poor, broken Enna in here to do what I could not. I had no idea how to reach for plasmex, no idea how to trigger what I’d done when I’d killed Evelyn, but I still tried with all my might, digging my fingers into the phantom’s soft, freezing flesh until it whimpered.
The sound cut right to my core. I could feel its pain like the fingers were digging into my own back, but that wasn’t what made me bare my teeth. My eyes were locked on my fingertips, which I could see through the phantom’s translucent flesh. Fingertips that were still clean without a trace of black soot.
I punched down harder, suddenly furious. After being such a pain in my ass, coming and going whenever it saw fit, I couldn’t call the black stuff up when I actually needed it? The phantom was crying below me, its pain sawing on my brain, and I couldn’t even put the damn thing out of its misery.
But while virus failure was enough to make me want to punch something, what really made me angry was the thought that this, this was why daughters were taken from their parents and sacrificed to Maat. To kill these poor, stupid animals when they blundered into planets. This phantom was less of a threat to humanity than the xith’cal standing behind me, and yet it was the root of so much suffering: Maat’s, Ren’s, Rashid’s, even Rupert’s. So much goddamn tragedy over a stupid invisible animal who probably didn’t even realize it was doing harm.
But as I sat there getting madder and madder, I realized the pain shooting up my arm was fading. I blinked in confusion, snapping my attention back to my fingers, but what I saw stopped me cold.
The hand I’d dug into the phantom’s back was completely black. I’d been so angry, I hadn’t even noticed the pins and needles replacing the phantom’s pain. Now I could actually see the black stuff inching up my wrist, but the real sight was the phantom itself.
It was frozen midstruggle, its light shining painfully bright in every place but one. On its back, where my hand dug in, a black stain was spreading through its frosted-glass body like ink dripped in water, seeping down the phantom’s legs, through its tentacles, and up to the nearly healed place where I’d shot it. The blackness spread so quickly, I couldn’t do anything except watch. I didn’t even try to pull my hand out until I realized the stain was starting to creep up the spike that held the phantom down.
I jumped to my feet, bracing as I tried to tug my hand out of the phantom, but the thing’s freezing flesh was locked around my fingers. I set my suit and pulled with all the Lady’s might, but it did no good. I was stuck fast. I was just about to try ejecting Elsie to cut myself free when the blackness finished its spread through the phantom.
The moment the last tentacle blackened, the world cut out like a switch.
It happened so suddenly, I thought I’d passed out. The fact that I could think that proved I hadn’t, though. I was clearly still conscious, I just couldn’t see anything. Or move. I was trying to work out why that was when the pain hit.
Back when I was a stupid teenager, I’d hurt my back messing up a flip I never should have attempted. The injury was long healed, but every now and then I still got twinges in the weirdest places, like some muscle I’d never known I had was cramping. That was how this felt, only it was in my brain.
At the center of my mind, in the space I envisioned as being behind my eyes, something seized up. The pain was intense at first, like snapping a joint, but it faded just as fast, leaving not the blinding headache you’d expect, but a strange feeling of emptiness. I felt hollow, not like something was missing, but like I’d been widened. Suddenly, I had this enormous sense of space, like the first time you get back under the open sky after spending months crammed into a tiny ship, and my whole body was twitching to uncurl.
Caught up in the exhilaration, I let it, pushing out into the emptiness. It was the strangest feeling I’d ever experienced, like moving an arm I hadn’t known I’d had until that moment. Encouraged, I pushed further, reaching out until the strange new feeling began to ache. But even that was a good ache, like stretching after a workout. I was savoring the sensation when I realized I was not alone in the dark.
I don’t know how I knew. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything except emptiness, but I knew they were there just as I knew I still had all my toes. Something was waiting out in that vast emptiness, and as I became aware of them, they became aware of me. I could actually feel their attention sliding over my mind, a cold, dry brush, like a stranger’s hair brushing your shoulder on a crowded street. For a second, the touch was soothing, almost friendly, and then it snatched back in alarm as a new pain hit me hard.
If the first pain had felt like a joint snapping, this was like being hit head-on by a sonic train. It landed with a slug, whacking me out of the emptiness like a flyswatter. But even while it was happening, my momentum felt trivial. Unimportant. Because as I flew, I heard it.
“Heard” is the wrong word, actually. The thing I caught wasn’t a sound. It wasn’
t even an image. It was an impression, almost like when Rupert’s memories popped up, but with none of the familiarity. In it, I got the strangely distinct sense of a crowd turning in unison to look at me in alarm. The great threat had resurfaced, the death of us, only us didn’t include me, because I was the threat.
That was the last thing I got before I left the emptiness like a shot and slammed back into my body, my eyes popping open to see Brenton right in my face.
“Deviana!”
He had me by the shoulders, his face red and panicked. He’d clearly been shouting for a while, but I hadn’t heard a thing. Now that the emptiness was gone, though, the world came rushing back. Suddenly, I could hear alarms blaring everywhere. Behind me, the three xith’cal females were flat on the ground with the human slave curled up beside them. The woman was so still, it took me a second to realize her dull skin was now black as soot.
I jumped back with a curse, head whipping down to look at my feet. What I saw was not what I’d expected, though. I’d thought to find a carcass, some black, desecrated mass of dissolved phantom, but there was nothing. No body, no ooze, not even a lingering feeling of cold. The phantom was just gone. They all were, leaving the cavern dark and empty except for the flashing orange emergency lights.
But while the phantom was gone, the legacy of what I’d done was not. My hand was as black as the dead slave girl’s flesh. I couldn’t see how far up the black stain went because of my suit, but I could feel the pins and needles all the way up to my elbow on both sides. Trembling, I lifted my hand to my open visor, holding my black fingertips under my nose.
I was expecting it, but that didn’t make the smell of rotten meat any less horrifying. It was very faint, not nearly as strong as the stench I remembered from the ghost ship, but it was there, and now that I knew what it meant, I couldn’t stop shaking. I was still standing there quivering when Brenton grabbed my shoulder.
