by Rachel Bach
I didn’t know how long Caldswell had been in there. It had been almost half an hour since I’d seen him on the screen, but I was willing to bet he’d been fighting a lot longer. The captain was panting and pale, and his clothes were soaked through with blood and sweat. When I’d first seen him, he’d been facing off unarmed against three xith’cal warriors. Now they had him fighting some kind of huge, hairy, sharp-toothed animal I didn’t recognize.
At least he had a weapon now, a heavy xith’cal knife that was way too big for him. For all that, though, he handled the oversized blade deftly, waiting on the alien to charge before stepping aside with blinding speed and planting the knife neatly in the beast’s spine like he’d been doing this all his life. If I hadn’t already guessed he was a symbiont, that little stunt would have clinched it for me.
“Why hasn’t he transformed?” I whispered.
“He is old,” Rupert whispered back. “The symbiont heals, but the change is hard on the body. Caldswell doesn’t do it unless he must.”
“I’d say we’re past must,” I muttered, leaning closer to Rupert to get a better view as the captain yanked his knife out of the dying creature’s back. “I wonder why Reaper hasn’t killed him yet?”
“He is sworn prey,” Rupert said, his voice disgusted. “That means spectacle. Caldswell humiliated Reaper, and pride must be paid.”
“So they’re toying with him,” I said, looking up.
At the far end of the arena, a huge, brightly lit box hung suspended high above the bloody sand, and Reaper was sitting on it like an idol on an altar. Even this far away, I was struck again by the size of him. If I hadn’t known for a fact Reaper was a xith’cal, I’d have sworn he was a different species entirely from the warriors that stood crowded around him.
“All right,” I said with a deep breath. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Rupert might not have liked my plan, but to his credit, he didn’t waste time now. We were getting the first missile ready when the crowd’s screaming kicked up a notch. When I jumped back on the pipe to see why, my breath caught. “Rupert!”
He was beside me in an instant, and I heard him mutter something that sounded like a curse. Now that Caldswell had killed the huge beast they’d sicked on him, his next challenge was being brought in through the gate on the arena’s far side. The captain watched the rising barrier with calm acceptance, the knife easy in his hands. But Caldswell had never been nearly as good at bluffing as Rupert, and when his face flashed up on the xith’cal’s huge screens, I could see the hints of fear. When I looked back at the arena gate, I saw why.
Something was coming out of the dark, dragging chains behind it. It walked jerkily, like it was sick, but it wasn’t until it stepped into the light that I realized the thing was a symbiont. One with broad shoulders and a stocky build I recognized all too well.
“God and king,” I whispered. “That’s Brenton.” I frowned at his shambling steps. “What’s wrong with him?”
“They’ve enraged his symbiont,” Rupert said quietly. “The alien part of us was taken from the xith’cal initially. It still responds to several of their drugs.”
“Why would they drug him?” I asked. Having spent a day in the man’s company, I was pretty sure Brenton would jump at the chance to kill Caldswell all on his own, no drugs needed.
“Because they mean this to be the end,” Rupert said. “When Brenton went rogue, he was one of the two best fighters the Eyes had ever produced. Caldswell was the other, though for my money, I’d have bet on the captain every time. Now, with the drugs and Caldswell wounded?” Rupert shook his head.
“Then we’d better get a move on,” I said, hopping down. Rupert could finish setting up the missile. It was time for me to do my part.
Ever since the incident with Maat, the little phantoms had been following me. I hadn’t seen them at first since I’d had my cameras on, but once Rupert had agreed to my plan, I’d pushed up my visor to check on them every few minutes. I pushed it up again now, and there they were, a little cloud of light drifting just out of reach.
“Remember what I said,” I told Rupert as I sealed my helmet again. “Don’t get near me once I start. And don’t touch me, whatever—”
I cut off as Rupert’s arms circled around me, hugging me tight through my armor.
“What did I just say?” I snapped, struggling, but Rupert only hugged me tighter.
“Just in case,” he whispered, leaning down to press his scaled mask gently against the side of my neck.
He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to. His body said it all as it wrapped around mine. I’ve been held by a lot of men in my life, but not a one of them had ever come close to making me feel as precious, loved, and wanted as Rupert could with a single gesture, and it took an extraordinary act of will to pull away.
“Rupert,” I said when I finally managed to step out of his arms, doing my best to form my breathy voice into a warning.
“I know,” he said, cutting me off. “But I’m not sorry.”
His hands settled on my shoulders as he spoke, turning me gently but firmly until we were standing face to face. For a second, I was staring up at his alien mask, and then his chest flexed, and the scales receded to reveal Rupert looking at me with the same defiant determination that had prompted Caldswell to grumble that I’d ruined his best Eye.
“I meant every word I said before,” he said, trailing his black claws down my arms to gently cup my hands. “You’re what’s most important to me, and I will not lose you. Remember that before you decide to do anything stupidly brave, because I will come after you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
I stared at him for a second, and then I started to laugh. It was horribly inappropriate, but I couldn’t help it. He just looked so serious, like if I ran into that arena and started randomly shooting lizards, he’d run in right after me without even hesitating. And that stopped my laughter, because as he looked down at me, I realized he would. I might not be ready to trust him on a lot of things, but right now, I knew to my bones that Rupert would follow me anywhere.
“I’ll keep that in mind before I jump off any more cliffs,” I said. “Now shove off and let me work.”
Rupert leaned over, dropping a quick kiss to the top of my helmet. Before I could react, he was gone, his scales folding back over his face as he returned to his missile. I stared after him for several seconds, and then I shook myself like a dog and got back to the task at hand.
I strode down the hall for several dozen feet. Then, when I’d put what I judged as a safe distance between myself and Rupert, I sat down and pushed up my visor. As always, the phantoms had followed. They were all around me now, drifting through the dark, dirty walls of the slave road.
I looked around until I found a nice fat one, and then I stopped, taking a deep breath. Back in the hangar, I’d treated this part of the plan like a given. My confidence had been vital. If I’d shown any hesitation, Rupert would never have agreed. Now that we were down to the wire, though, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t sure this would work at all. I’d only done it once, and not on purpose. Still, no one got anywhere by not trying, so I shoved my worries aside, closed my eyes, and focused on getting mad.
It didn’t take much. I’d been fighting my rage since I’d realized it was what made the black stuff spread. But it’s not my nature to hold back, and the moment I stopped trying, the righteous fury came roaring back like a furnace.
I bared my teeth, thinking about how Maat had sold us out even after I’d put my life on the line to save her daughters. That made me more sad than angry, though, so I thought about Caldswell instead, how I’d risked everything to get him on board, and now those idiot xith’cal were butchering all my hard work. That got me going nicely. Nothing pisses me off like having my sacrifices undermined.
And Brenton. I could hear him up there, roaring like one of the xith’cal as he strained against his chains. The sound made me furious. He might be nut
s, but Brenton was up there because he’d stayed behind so I could get out, and I wasn’t about to let him die for some lizard’s amusement. I wasn’t going to die here either. Neither was Rupert. I wasn’t giving those lizards a goddamn thing.
By this point, I’d worked myself up so well that I didn’t even notice the pins and needles until they were racing up my arm. The black stuff spread faster than ever before, passing my elbow in seconds to shoot up my biceps and over my shoulder. When I could feel the crawling edging down toward my chest, I snapped my eyes open.
The phantoms must have known something was up, because while my eyes had been closed, they’d all drifted away, but not far enough. The one I’d had my eye on earlier was still floating about ten feet down the hall, a fist-sized semitransparent blob with a dozen tiny kicking legs. I took careful note of its position as I slid off my glove. The moment my ink-black skin was free, I jumped.
Every time I’d grabbed at one of the little phantoms, they’d run away before I could touch them. I’d never made a serious try, though. Now I was serious as the grave, and the bug didn’t have a chance.
I flew at the blob like a bullet, snatching it out of the air with my bare blackened hand. The little phantom was surprisingly soft against my palm, its surface cold and slick and slimy as a mud skink in winter. For a moment, it was surprisingly difficult to hold on to, but the phantom’s struggles stopped when the stain of my sickness began to seep into its body.
Just like the phantom on the asteroid, I could see the blackness curling through its frosted-glass body like ink dripped in water. But this phantom was much, much smaller than the one in the cave had been. My blackness ate it in seconds, and as its light died, the emptiness bloomed in my mind.
It was only for an instant, but an instant was all I needed. The second the darkness fell, I reached out with that strange otherness, straining far and fast. It actually was much harder than I’d expected, like trying to throw a knockout punch with an arm you haven’t used in ten years, but I didn’t have the luxury of failure. I’d suggested this plan, I was going to see it through, and I reached out with all my might, throwing myself into the dark as hard as I could.
I was still reaching when the phantom died. I could actually feel it dissolving in my hand, and as it fell apart, so did the emptiness, but not before I felt them. Just like before, they were there, waiting for me. I didn’t have time for more than an impression, but what I got was enough. They’d seen me, and they were coming.
I slammed back into my body with a gasp, looking up to see Rupert right in front of me. His scales hid his worried expression, but I could hear his fear just fine. “Devi!” he cried when he saw my eyes open, but I was already scrambling away from him.
“Stay back,” I warned, throwing up my hand, the one that was still gloved. My blackened right hand I kept pressed against my chest. Rupert’s eyes flicked to it, and his mouth tightened to a thin line.
“Just stay back,” I repeated. Brenton had said symbionts were resistant to plasmex, but I didn’t know if that mattered to the virus, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I could smell the rot of my sickness now, and I didn’t want that anywhere near him. When I was sure he’d stay away, I closed my eyes and focused on calming my anger, pushing my mind down until the pins and needles faded. It was much easier now that I wasn’t trapped, and when I opened my eyes a minute later, my hand was clean.
“Devi.”
I looked up to see Rupert standing over me, his fists clenched. I didn’t know if it was safe for him to be so close yet, but I couldn’t do anything to stop him as he reached down and pulled me to my feet. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I breathed, letting myself lean into his chest. I wasn’t as disoriented as I’d been when I’d woken up to three dead xith’cal and Brenton screaming in my face, but I wasn’t ready to trust my feet just yet. “Guess that looked scary, huh?”
Rupert’s silence was answer enough. “Please don’t do that again,” he whispered, pulling me a little closer.
“I’ll try to keep it to a minimum,” I promised, absently running my gloved hand over the scales on his back I’d admired earlier. They were surprisingly smooth, my foggy brain noted, like a snake’s. “Did it work?”
Rupert pulled away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t—”
The rest of what he said was drowned out by a deafening alarm. A split second later, the floor shook under my feet as something crashed into the tribe ship. Something big.
“Hyrek!” I shouted, dropping my visor back into place.
When there was no answer for several seconds, I started to get worried, but then Hyrek’s text filled the bottom of my screen. The next time you suggest a plan, remind me to say no. Before I could ask what he meant by that, a new camera feed patched into my suit, looking out through a small port window at the fleet of beautiful fishlike ships that now surrounded the tribe ship.
“And there’s our ticket,” I said with a grin, shoving my glove back on. “Go time!”
Rupert didn’t need to be told twice. He was already kneeling over the missile he’d set up. “On three,” he said as I got in position behind him. “Two. One.”
Rupert hit the charge, and the missile launched, slamming into the ceiling of the slave road. The blast was so big I couldn’t see anything for several seconds, but when the hot white smoke started to clear, I saw the huge hole we’d blown in the arena’s floor.
The explosion had knocked us both over, and though Rupert got up first, I was right behind him. Together we jumped through the hole, Rupert with the second missile, me with my gun, landing on the sandy floor of the arena with enough smoke left to cover us. I could hear the xith’cal all around me, their alarmed screeches like tearing metal in my ears, but I didn’t pay them any mind. As soon as my feet were steady, I charged forward, throwing myself in front of the shocked, panting Caldswell just as Brenton’s crazed symbiont began to charge.
CHAPTER 15
I’d always said I’d shoot myself if I ever got roped into an arena fight, but to be fair, I don’t think I could have envisioned this. The bloody sand was soft beneath my boots as I skidded to a stop, the lights overhead like small suns as the alien crowd roared, literally. But my attention was on the alien in front of me, the one that had once been human.
Brenton charged with a roar of his own, launching at me with terrifying speed. Now that I was close, I could see the tube in his neck where they’d drugged him. They must have used a lot, because though he was fast as ever, the Brenton I knew would never have tried such a straightforward attack. He charged me like a bull, leaving me a good two seconds to jump if I wanted. But I didn’t jump. I held my ground, leveling Sasha until I’d lined up a perfect shot.
When Brenton was only a foot away, I fired. Sasha’s round struck him square in the head, right between the eyes just like Rupert had showed me. Of course, Sasha wasn’t a disrupter pistol, but I didn’t want to kill Brenton this time. I only wanted to blow him back, and there, at least, I succeeded. Sasha kicked him hard, and Brenton flew backward as fast as he’d flown at me, landing in the sand across the arena. I shot him again when he hit, trusting my targeting system to line up a shot that would get the tube on his neck. My pistol jerked in my hand, and I saw the tube go flying as the sand exploded around Brenton’s head.
I lifted my gun, scanning the arena for the next enemy, but all I saw was Caldswell gaping in my rear cam like he’d just seen me raise the dead. “Morris?” he got out at last. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Saving you,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Come on.”
The captain was normally faster on the pickup, but all the fighting must have left him a bit punch-drunk, because he just stood there staring at me like my words made no sense. I didn’t have time to explain it again, though. The crowd was already getting louder as two more doors opened on either side of the arena, letting in a wave of warrior xith’cal. High overhead, Reaper was on his feet in front of his throne, ro
aring out orders loud enough to rattle my suit.
The sight of him almost made me drop my gun. Seeing the tribe leader on camera had been scary enough, but that was nothing compared to seeing him right above you. It wasn’t just his size, either. That was nothing new, but I hadn’t expected the feel of Reaper. Even though he was standing on his balcony almost fifty feet away, his presence was like a force of nature, a huge, undeniable gravity far larger than any physical size or charisma could account for.
I’d heard the xith’cal speak of their leader in awed tones plenty of times, but I’d always thought that whole “Reaper’s flesh” thing was just propaganda. Now, I realized it was much, much more. Reaper’s power was plasmex. A lot of plasmex, and he was using it with ruthless efficiency, soothing the panic even as another lelgis cannon strike shook the tribe ship. And when his huge, yellow eyes swept down to meet mine, I felt his control land on me.
I bared my teeth in response. Wrong merc to mess with, pal. “Rupert!” I shouted. “Do it now! Take out the head!”
Caldswell whirled around in surprise. “Rupert?”
The word wasn’t out of his mouth before Rupert ran up beside me, our final strategic anti-tank missile hoisted on his shoulder. There was no countdown this time. He took one second to line up the shot, and then the missile exploded off him in a blast of burning smoke.
Since it wasn’t aimed at a ceiling this time, I could actually watch the missile go. It streaked across the arena, flying so fast Reaper didn’t have time to move. He didn’t have time to do anything except stare as the missile shrieked through the air to land in his chest.
The explosion knocked me off my feet. I hadn’t realized until it blew how much stronger this missile was than the other. The explosion had blown Reaper’s entire platform down in a ball of black, billowing smoke. The wreckage landed in the sandy arena with a crash that sent a wave of sand flying into my face. For two heartbeats, all I could hear was the echo of the crash bouncing around the arena, and then every lizard in the place went insane.
