by Rachel Bach
The Highest Guide opened the air lock and stepped back, motioning for the warriors to place me inside. The lock itself was pretty large, but it opened into a small room with glass walls roughly half the size of the bunk I’d shared with Nova. There was barely enough room to fit the bubble, and I got rattled like a nut in its shell as the males wedged me inside.
When I was finally in, the Highest Guide closed the air lock. The moment the seal clicked, my bubble began to dissolve, leaving me standing inside the glass cell. One prison to another wasn’t much of an improvement, but at least I wasn’t being carted around anymore. I tried to feel happy about that as I examined my new cage.
It didn’t take long. The prison beyond the air lock was basically a clear glass box at the end of a larger room that looked like an observation area. The setup made me feel like I was on exhibit at a zoo, though I didn’t think they’d be bringing classes of baby lizards down to see me.
There were two doors I could see, the air lock I’d come in through and a second, larger door on the far side of the observation room. The only furniture was a large box set into the wall across from me. The low light and the thick, smudgy glass of my prison were messing with my cameras, so I couldn’t make out details, but the box seemed to be made of metal, and I could pick up a faint heat signal inside it.
That was a little creepy, because on my scanner, it almost looked like there was a person in there. The box was about the right size, too, like a coffin. But these morbid thoughts weren’t helping, and there was absolutely no reason I could think of for the xith’cal to keep me in a room with a coffin, so I forced my eyes away.
The observation room had been built to accommodate male xith’cal, but my prison was human scale, which meant my ceiling stopped well before the room’s did. Unlike the walls, though, the ceiling of my cell wasn’t clear, so I could only guess that the vents up there led into some kind of closed air recirculating system meant to keep in contagion. That made sense, but what I couldn’t figure out was why a clearly dangerous bioweapon like myself was being kept in a glass box like some kind of exotic pet.
There was no window in the air lock behind me, but I could hear the lizards moving in the other room. I leaned against the glass on the opposite side of my cell, waiting for them to come in and start the interrogation, but no one came. Minutes turned into hours, and still I was left alone. I’d fully expected to have been subdued, stripped out of my armor, and cut into alphabetically arranged pieces by this point, but I hadn’t seen so much as a lizard snout since they’d shoved me in here. It was almost like they’d locked me up and forgotten I existed.
You would think I’d be ecstatic at this turn of events. I wasn’t being vivisected or put in jars or any of the other horrors my brain had imagined. The worst things I’d had to endure so far were boredom and the fact that I was getting hungry, but as the hours built up, so did my anger.
I hate, hate, hate being helpless, and helpless was what I felt at the moment. I’d steeled myself to face anything, to fight to the death, and instead I was locked up with nothing to do. The xith’cal must have taken the crew’s coms, because I couldn’t raise anyone. Not surprising, but it pissed me off to no end to know they considered Nova and Basil a greater threat than me. They weren’t even taking me seriously enough to bother removing my guns, which I took as a personal insult.
By the time we exited hyperspace somewhere around the beginning of the third hour, I’d gotten mad enough to fire half of Sasha’s clip into the glass walls, which was how I’d learned they were exceptionally bulletproof. Not that it mattered. Even if I’d shattered them, I had nowhere to escape to. I was alone and lost in a tribe ship the size of a major city. I couldn’t even play hero because I had no idea where Caldswell and the crew were being held, assuming Caldswell hadn’t been eaten already. I was trapped, useless, and helpless, and it was driving me crazy. It was even worse than when I’d been lost in the mine. At least there I’d been able to walk. Here I couldn’t do anything except pace and brood. I was doing just that, and working myself into a rare fury in the process, when I felt the telltale prick of pins and needles.
Anger turned to fear in a flash. I knelt in the corner of my clear cage and yanked off my gloves. Sure enough, my fingers were solid black, like I’d dipped them in coal dust, and the stain was still growing. It blossomed before my eyes, sweeping down my hand and up my arm under my suit. But even though I couldn’t see it moving anymore, I could feel the pins and needles crawling up my arm nearly to my elbows before finally slowing down.
“Shit,” I whispered, shoving my hands back into my gloves so the xith’cal, who were almost certainly watching, wouldn’t see. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Why was this happening now? Had the xith’cal pumped something into my cage to trigger the virus? It was possible, but up until I’d taken off my gloves, I’d been sealed into my suit, which ruled out anything airborne. A plasmex attack then?
Since my seal had already been broken, I shoved up my visor. The bitter taste of the arsenic-heavy air made me feel queasy, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. My cameras couldn’t pick up plasmex, but my eyes could, and if I was under attack, I wanted to see it. As my visor went up, though, the black stuff on my hands shrank to a minor concern.
The walls of my cell were no longer clear. When I’d had my cameras on, I’d seen plain, slightly cloudy glass. Now, looking with my naked eyes, I saw the truth. The walls of my cell were covered in a fractal pattern of glowing plasmex so thick and bright it hurt to look at. The patterns spilled out into the observation room as well, spiraling over the walls, floor, and ceiling until I felt like a fly caught at the center of a giant, glowing, mathematically inclined spider’s web. But while the fractal patterns came together around my cage, they started at the mysterious box on the wall.
I pushed my face against the glass, peering through the glowing patterns. I still couldn’t tell what the box was made of, but I could clearly see the thing inside it now. More than see, actually. The shape was glowing through the box like the sun through paper, filling the room with light. But the brightness brought me no comfort, because the shape was a girl’s silhouette, one I knew far too well.
I jumped back from the glass like I’d been burned. There was a daughter of Maat in that box that began the net of plasmex, and I was standing in the middle with my hands black as sin. I could have already killed her, but I didn’t see the inklike stain of the virus spreading through the patterns.
Since it didn’t seem like I’d infected her, at least not yet, I began to pace around my cell. This could be my break. I didn’t know how or why Reaper had nabbed a daughter, but if Maat had reached me through Ren, maybe she could reach through this girl and break me out again.
Feeling like a right idiot, I moved to the edge of my cell that was closest to the box and called. “Maat?”
I got no answer but silence, and the feeling of idiocy deepened, but that didn’t stop me from calling again. “Maat!” I shouted, pounding on the glass with my gloved fist. “Maat! Wake up!”
Nothing. I pushed off the glass with a curse, turning around to start pacing again, and nearly ran into the dark-haired girl standing right behind me.
My suit jumped me back automatically, landing in a crouch at the far edge of my cell. Maat’s too-bright eyes followed the movement, but she didn’t comment. She just stood there with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at me.
She looked slightly different than the other times I’d seen her. The white hospital gown was gone, replaced by the same drab, simple clothes Ren had been wearing when she died. This, plus the way her skin seemed to glow in the light of fractal patterns around us, gave me the uncanny feeling that I was speaking to a ghost.
“Maat,” I said when I found my voice at last. “You came.”
The girl said nothing, and I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but if she wasn’t going to talk, I’d best get straight to the point.
“I need your help,�
�� I said. “The xith’cal have me trapped, they have your daughter, too. They’re using her for something. I don’t know what, but it can’t be good, see?” I pointed at the patterns. “If you can blast me out again, I swear I’ll get her as well. I’ll set us both free, promise, I just need you to get me started.”
I finished with a smile, but Maat’s scowl only deepened. Why would Maat help you?
I winced. I’d forgotten how cold and hateful a whisper in my mind could be.
I asked you for one thing, Deviana Morris, Maat said quietly. All Maat wanted was freedom for freedom. But you betrayed me.
“What?” I said. “No! I tried to—”
LIAR!
Maat’s roar tore through my head, sending me to my knees.
Do you forget? The voice pounded against my skull, and I felt the awful sensation of a hand in my mind again, shuffling through my brain. Maat sees your memories, idiot. Brenton gave you the chance to free Maat, but you denied him! You ran away, ran to the Eyes. You even made a deal with that man!
She moved forward with each word until she was almost standing on me, her little fists clenched at her sides. Liar! she screamed, her mad eyes filling with tears.
“I didn’t betray you!” I yelled back, finally getting my head back together. “That deal was my best shot at helping you. And Brenton wasn’t coming to set you free, he wanted me to kill you.”
Exactly! Maat roared so loud my eyes crossed. He was loyal! He kept his word! You are a traitor!
The echos of her rage were still battering me when Maat collapsed. All Maat wants is to rest, she whispered, curling up on the floor and covering her face with her bony hands. The watching Eyes, they’ll never let Maat die. Never never. Only you could free me, but you betrayed Maat. She curled tighter. Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed.
Her words faded into babbling after that. I tried to reach out to comfort her, but my hands passed right though her shoulders. She didn’t even notice, so I leaned back on the glass wall to think.
I was pretty sure the daughter in the box was Brenton’s. Enna was the only daughter I’d seen who was thin enough to match the glowing profile I saw. That actually gave me hope. Enna had been on Reaper’s asteroid, and if she was here, then maybe Brenton was still alive as well. I was trying to think how that could help me when I realized the light in the room was getting brighter.
The other two times Maat had come to me, the phantoms had followed. This time was no different. When I looked up, the room was full of glowing bugs crawling on the fractal patterns of plasmex that surrounded my cage. Maat’s crying must have called to them, because more appeared with every silent heave of her chest. As always, nothing got close to me, but the rest of the room was filling up so fast I could barely see the daughter’s glowing outline anymore.
That couldn’t be good. I needed to stop Maat’s weeping before she attracted something bigger. I was trying to figure out the right thing to say when Maat suddenly stood up.
It doesn’t matter, she said, sweeping to her feet as fast as she’d collapsed. Maat found a new ally, one who will not betray. Already, he got you for me, and now, with Maat’s help, he will end it for me as well.
My whole body went cold as the full implication of what she’d just said clicked in my head. “It was you,” I whispered. “You told Reaper about me.”
He already knew about the virus, Maat said with a sneer. Maat just told him where to find you after the lelgis left. Her tear-streaked face pulled up in a haughty smile. Brian stole me from Reaper, you know, back at the beginning. That’s why Reaper hates him. Of course, Maat wasn’t Maat then …
Her smile vanished as her voice trailed off, and she glared at me bitterly. I begged Brian to kill me then, too. He refused, but at least he didn’t lie about it. But it doesn’t matter. Maat will win in the end.
Her words chilled me to the bone. I wasn’t sure how much of that was crazy talk and how much was real, but my eyes had already drifted to the patterns on the walls of my cage. Patterns that ran to Maat’s daughter, who I now knew was willingly working with the lizards.
“What do these do?” I demanded, pointing at the web of plasmex.
Maat smiled wide, the same horrible, too-wide, doomed smile Ren had given me in the lounge so long ago. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
Her words were singsongy nonsense, but I refused to let her madness derail me. I stepped forward, thrusting my hands at her face. My gloves hid the blackness, but I knew the stain was still there. I could feel it prickling, the pins and needles like little insect feet crawling up my arms. “Did you do this to me?”
Maat actually laughed at that, a jittery, mad sound. If Maat could make you bloom, she would have done it hours ago.
“So if you’re not making this stuff spread, what’s all this for?” I demanded, jerking my head at the glowing patterns.
Maat shot up on her tiptoes, getting in my face despite being almost a foot shorter than I was in my suit. Maat and Reaper made a bargain, she said, eyes dancing. The xith’cal dare not get near you as you are now. A very poor weapon, very unstable. But even in your tiny plasmex, Stoneclaw’s virus is kindling. She reached out, resting her fingers just above my elbow, right on the very edge of the pins and needles. See how far it’s spread.
I jerked away, but Maat just laughed. When the blackness covers you completely, you will die. But Maat, clever spider, made a web. She looked up at the plasmex patterns. Maat will catch your death as it kills you and finish what Stoneclaw couldn’t. Maat will give Reaper the weapon he seeks, and when it is done, we’ll both be free, Deviana.
“We’ll both be dead!” I shouted.
Maat turned back to me with a soft smile. Exactly.
I opened my mouth to tell her she was crazy, but Maat beat me to the punch by proving it. Do you know how long I’ve waited for death? she whispered, folding her ghostly arms over her chest. Maat doesn’t even know anymore how long she’s been alive. Their lives, my daughters, they tangle inside me. I see my father killed in front of me, and though I know it’s not my father, I remember. Her eyes filled with tears again. Oh, Papa.
The words shot through me, because when Maat said them, her voice in my head went breathy and broken, exactly like Ren’s.
Maat can’t even remember which of those faces is her real father anymore, she murmured. But it doesn’t matter. They’re all dead. The Eyes take them all away and tell Maat she makes a great sacrifice. But no one ever asked Maat if she wanted to sacrifice, and I’m so tired.
Her tiny voice just about broke my heart, but as much as I felt for her right then, I couldn’t let her do this. “I know we’ve done you wrong,” I said, trying my best to ignore the pins and needles that were now creeping up toward my shoulders. “I want to make things right, Maat. Read my mind and see for yourself. But it can’t end like this. Reaper is our enemy. If you finish Stoneclaw’s virus for him, he’ll use it to enslave everyone.”
Maat’s hands clenched to fists. Do not tell me what I can and can’t do, she hissed. Maat and her daughters have sacrificed a thousand lifetimes to save humanity, now humanity will sacrifice to save us.
She stepped away, staring at me with so much hate I could feel it on my skin, sharp and jagged as a serrated knife. You will all suffer, she hissed. And Maat will not care, because Maat will be dead. Maat will not hurt, not anymore. I will be free, just like you promised, and there is nothing you can do about it.
“I won’t let you!” I shouted.
Let me? Maat sneered. What can you do? You can’t even control yourself enough to slow the spread of the corruption. She shook her head. You’re already dead, Deviana Morris, you’re just too stubborn to know it.
My answer to that was to swing at her head, but my fist passed through her without even a tingle, and Maat laughed. Bye bye, rabbit.
I roared, a mindless bellow of rage, but it was too late. Maat was gone, leaving only the glowing web she’d woven to catch my virus. The virus that was now up over my should
ers and spreading across my chest with alarming speed.
I dropped to my knees with a curse. All around me, the phantoms that had followed Maat were starting to back away, and for once, I knew why. My whole body was on fire with the virus, my skin crawling wherever the black stuff spread. The plasmex web was already starting to glow, and I realized this was it. I was going to die.
The thought hit me like a slap in the face, and I gritted my teeth. No. I had not survived this long and fought this hard to go out like a chump now, dying on my knees to a virus. Maat had taunted me that I couldn’t control myself enough to stop the spread of the corruption, but that implied a way existed. I just had to find it.
Panting against the needles crawling down my chest, I forced myself to ignore my body and focus. What made it spread? I thought back to all the other times it had appeared, looking for a common thread, but the only thing I could remember was that I’d been upset each time before the black stuff appeared.
That couldn’t be it, though. If the virus spread every time I got mad, I’d have been dead days ago. Now that I thought about it, though, I hadn’t just been mad when the virus appeared. I’d been furious, the kind of superhot rage I really had to work up to, just like I’d worked myself up over being locked in this box right before the stain had appeared on my fingers …
My eyes went wide. That was it. The virus fed on my rage. And with that realization, I slammed my eyes shut and focused on calming down.
Taming my anger isn’t exactly a skill I’ve spent much time developing. Back when I was a recruit, my commanders used to lecture us constantly about the danger of rage, but I’d never really bought their warnings. In my experience, anger made me stronger, not weaker. Now, though, for the first time in years, I went back to my training and clamped down, forcing my mind to be still.
I didn’t do very well. Even when I added in the stupid breathing exercises, I was just too mad. Mad at Maat for selling out all of humanity to Reaper just so she could escape, mad at being trapped, mad at the stupid black bullshit I could now feel spreading over my stomach. I was also scared, and not just of the death I could feel breathing down my neck. If I failed here, Maat would die, too. Caldswell hadn’t explained why that was so terrible, but he’d been willing to let me shoot myself rather than even talk about freeing her, so I was pretty sure it was bad on an epic scale. There was also the part where Reaper would be in possession of Stoneclaw’s completed virus, which was a catastrophe I didn’t even want to think about.
