by C. G. Hatton
It was weird being in there without NG. And the thoughts he couldn’t help picking up from Evelyn were desperately private.
She sat behind the desk, almost reverently, silent for a long while. When she did speak, her voice was quiet. “When the Man left, NG didn’t want this position. And I’m damned sure I don’t.”
LC sat, rubbing his wrists gently, trying to ease the ache that wouldn’t seem to shift.
She looked up, shaking it off. She filled one goblet with wine and poured half the rest into the jug. She rested her hand on the packet. “Apparently, the Man used this on NG. ‘To open his mind…’ It’s a narcotic. I’ve been told it was the only substance that could ever get NG drunk.”
She was thinking about how much she was missing him.
LC felt her glance up at him. He was keeping his head down. He didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to pry any further but she didn’t care, as if she wanted him to hear.
She was thinking about how much NG meant to her, dammit. He’d welcomed her in, never made her feel like she was anything but special and valued. He’d shown her what it was like to be part of an organisation, a family, that gave a shit about its people. Wherever they’d come from. And now everything was different.
“I want you to try it,” she said suddenly, caressing her finger over the embossed wax seal.
He raised his eyes.
It wasn’t an order.
She was waiting for a reply. As if he could refuse.
Christ, he hadn’t been able to get drunk since he’d contracted the virus. He’d never seen NG drunk. That would have been funny.
He nodded. Why the hell not.
He could pick up that she was nervous. She had medical staff on standby. And Hal Duncan waiting outside, at her request. Christ knows who else she had out there. He couldn’t sense anything beyond the room.
Evelyn opened the packet and laid it flat, taking a pinch of the black powder between her thumb and finger. She sprinkled it into the jug, expecting a reaction but still surprised at the voracity of it as the wine erupted into bubbles, steam billowing up in spirals. A pungent aroma swirled outwards.
She gave it a second to settle, added another pinch and poured some out into a goblet.
LC reached for it, catching her eyes with a half smile. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
She couldn’t help the smile then, despite everything.
“Don’t,” she said but there was a warmth there as if the chemical reaction in the jug had somehow released something more. That there may be a point in all this where everything could be okay again.
She nudged the goblet. “Try it. Don’t drink it too fast. We have no idea what it could do to you.”
Hence the medical team outside.
He took a sip. It wound its way down his throat, warming as it went, soothing beyond any medication he’d been given, the heat that filtered down into his stomach alluring beyond any liquor he’d ever consumed.
They were worried about how the virus would react. He didn’t feel it snatch the way it did with go-juice or krak. He took another sip, shrugged at Evelyn, and downed a mouthful. Tendrils of warmth wrapped round his limbs, a warm caress that was extending down to his fingertips. He blinked. He didn’t so much feel his head swim but there was a sudden, not unpleasant, sensation of heightening. He could hear Evelyn’s heart beating.
He glanced deep into his memory, fast, just to see if it was any different. The Bhenykhn intel swirled in a dizzying fog.
It was no different.
He took another long drink, watching over the top of the goblet, through the spirals of steam, as Evelyn raised hers and joined him, her goblet only half full of the undoctored wine.
“You should try this,” he said.
She smiled, softening, feeling bad that she was even asking him to do something that could cause him more harm. “Is it working?”
He shrugged, tossed back the rest of the wine in his goblet and held it out.
“I need some more,” he said, feeling a slight tug of inebriation that almost made the last year feel like it hadn’t happened. He leaned forward and reached for the black powder as she picked up the jug, throwing in a couple more generous pinches before she could protest, and flinching back as the steam billowed upwards.
Evelyn frowned but she topped him up.
He grinned and took another drink. It felt like the rest of the galaxy faded away. As if for the first time since he’d felt that needle jab into his neck at the lab they’d been blackmailed into raiding, the virus had settled, like it didn’t have to fight him every second of every day anymore.
He swirled the goblet, peering into it to see it was already only half full. It was going down way too easily.
He sucked in a deep breath and exhaled, blowing delicately at the rising wisps of white, making them dance. He went cross-eyed watching them. It felt like he was twelve again, without a care in the world.
“Are you okay?”
Evelyn’s voice sounded far away.
“LC?”
“I’m fine,” he said, aware that he was slurring his words, downing the rest. “Really, you should try it.”
“It’s supposed to be helping you process the data.”
He leaned forward, put the goblet on the desk to invite another top up, and folded his arms, resting his chin down, nose about an inch from the black metal of its stem. The twisted design seemed to move, atoms shifting as he stared at it.
He closed his eyes and that shimmering expanse remained, extending outwards in all directions.
He’d always been able to see patterns, since he was old enough to write and play stupid games. He’d been able to manipulate AI logic strings before he’d even come to the guild, way before they’d shown him any of their tricks. He could solve math, see numbers, manipulate data in his head without any implant or neural enhancement. The Senson had just made it easier to communicate it all externally. He didn’t need the Senson to do it and he’d never become that reliant on it. He’d got used to it and it was weird not to have it. But he didn’t need it.
He opened up the mass of data, spread it all out before him in the pulsing, undulating darkness that was sparkling all around him. He nudged. Subtle. But it went spinning away from him.
He flinched and blinked. Rested his head down on his arms and closed his eyes. He couldn’t do it.
“Try some more.”
He was balanced precariously on that knife-edge precipice between backing off and going all in. He had a feeling he could get lost in it. Dangerously lost. But he’d never backed away from anything.
And Evelyn wanted him to.
He sat up and nodded, pushing it and picking up the bottle as she picked up the jug. He looked her in the eye as she filled his goblet and he filled hers, to the top.
He rested the bottle down and raised his goblet, inviting a toast.
“No one messes with us,” he said before she could say anything.
She nodded and clinked it with her own, the sound of metal on metal loud in the still chambers.
Two bottles later and they were down to competing over bragging rights. He won hands down on worst injury, fastest combat drop, most cash lost in a poker game, and longest time stranded alone on a deserted orbital. She beat him on highest ranking Imperial dignitary ever dated. If it had been a third cousin of a minor statesman seven times removed, she would have beaten him.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done,” she said, conspiratorial, more tipsy than he’d ever seen her.
Half the candles had gone out, the chambers closed in around them as if they were the only two people left in the universe.
LC drained his goblet and blinked at her with half a laugh. “You’ve seen my file.”
“I’ve seen your personnel file. I want to know what it is that’s missing from it.”
“The worst thing ever?”
She nodded, smiling as she finished her own.
LC stood up, looked at her so
lemnly and wandered over to grab another bottle. He swayed slightly, couldn’t read any of the labels and picked one at random.
“The worst thing I’ve ever done – ever?” he said as he sat back down and cracked it open. He pushed it across to her. He was fairly sure he was sobering up.
“Yeah. Ever.” She topped up the jug and her goblet, reaching for the brown paper and nudging his hand as he got to it first.
He picked it up and just shook the rest of the powder into the jug. “I hacked into the Alsatia’s main control system. I set the Maze up so it increased all the parameters by twenty percent whenever Hilyer logged in.”
“What, like gravity?” she said as she poured, blood-red wine splashing into his goblet even as the chemical reaction was still intensifying.
“Gravity, electrobes, temperature… Everything except time limits for lock codes – I got it to cut those.”
“Just Hil?”
He nodded.
“What happened?”
“He thought he was screwed when his times plummeted. He almost quit.” LC took a sip of the wine through a cloud of billowing white that stung his eyes. Christ, that was strong. “It backfired,” he said. “I thought I’d best reset it before he threw himself out of an airlock, and he’d gotten so good he almost trashed my record on his next run through.”
Evelyn leaned forward, hard pushed not to laugh. “Does he know?”
“No.”
They did laugh then, then LC said, “I miss it,” and killed the moment.
“What about you?” he said. “Worst ever?”
She had a weird pensive look on her face as she regarded him. “I fell in love.” Then she laughed again, waved her goblet at him and shook her head. “You don’t want to know and I know hacking the Alsatia is not the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
He looked at her and said quietly, “No.”
She looked even more thoughtful then. “Tell me what you didn’t include in your briefing.”
He felt his cheeks flush.
She pushed it. “You refused to talk to anyone after the first time you got caught by the Bhenykhn. And I know you’ve not told us everything this time. What are you not telling us?”
He shook his head slowly, heart thumping.
“Come on, LC, what happened?”
He downed half the concoction, burning his throat and feeling his head spin. He breathed through it, looked at her and downed the rest. His hand was almost trembling as he set the goblet down.
He closed his eyes.
The intel appeared as sparks in a midnight-black expanse around him. There was a hum to it, a resonance that felt like he was part of it. He turned slowly, nudged, watching it move. He felt the pieces start to drop into place, minute motes of intel clicking together. He started to speed up, tweaked the pattern he was spinning through and stopped. Froze.
Sick to the pit of his stomach.
He could see it.
He could see all of it.
They weren’t just being outgunned.
They were being played.
Chapter 5
“You must have known.” Again, an accusation. He’d shared intel with Nikolai enough that he understood how that dizzying swirl of alien intel could confuse. But there was no way the Man had not known what the Bhenykhn were intending. “Why didn’t you tell them?”
The Man kept quiet, refusing to engage.
Sebastian stared across at him, this alien being who had imprisoned him in his own body, toyed with him, experimented on him, wielded such power in a galaxy not his own.
“And where in all this are the rest of your kind?” he said. “There are others, are there not? Don’t bother to deny it. What was it? A council? An actual gathering of elders. And to think, you maintained the illusion of a Thieves’ Guild council of elders for so long that they believed it.”
The Man sat still. “It was a necessary fabrication.”
Sebastian gave another harsh laugh. “And while humans squabbled and fought and played at deceiving themselves, the Bhenykhn manoeuvred into a position where they could strike, on their terms, despite anything the human race could have done?”
“I know you don’t care, Sebastian. About Nikolai, about Luka, about the human race nor this entire galaxy.” His voice was hard. Cold. “So why are you doing this now?”
“The game has just escalated. With this second wave and all it entails, this game has just entered a new phase and I, for one, intend to enjoy it.”
•
He opened his eyes slowly, eyeballs burning, throat raw, a queasiness beyond nausea dragging at his stomach. He felt dehydrated, like he’d been hung out to dry. As a hangover went, it was quite possibly the worst he’d ever had. And he’d had some doozies. He had a second of weird panic that the virus had gone, died, that he’d fucking killed it, and bizarrely he wasn’t sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. Bad thing, he decided. And that was disturbing to realise.
He reached out cautiously, touching minds close by and withdrawing before any definite thoughts could batter his brain cells any further. So it was still there. It wasn’t doing much to fix the self-inflicted damage though, almost as if it was suffering as much as he was.
Someone put a bottle in his hand, helping him lift it to his mouth so he could take a sip. From the heat, and sweat trickling down his ribs, he was still in the Man’s chambers.
He squinted, managing to focus on the jug in front of him. It was still, no vapour, most of the candles gone out. He had no idea how long it had been, no sense of time passing at all.
Sienna was crouched on one side, Hal Duncan on the other.
Evelyn was still sitting across the desk from him.
“That last one might have been a mistake,” he muttered.
His hand was trembling.
“Did you get anything?”
He thought that was Evelyn but it sounded disembodied, echoing.
It was a real effort to speak. “Not about NG.” His heart was beating too fast. “But we have a problem,” he said. “They’re going to hit Aston and Hanover.”
He felt Evelyn’s stomach flip in horror. “We’re evacuating to Aston,” she said. She stared at him, standing, the effects of the wine still swirling around her senses.
Sienna had her hand on his wrist. “Do you need to go to medical?”
He couldn’t shake his head, didn’t like to even think about moving, but he mumbled, “Yeah, but I need to get this onto a board. We have to get this out. They have those places targeted for breeder units. I’m sorry, I should have seen it.”
If he was too late, he’d never forgive himself.
“Where else can we evacuate to?” Evelyn said, vaguely.
He still had his eyes fixed firmly on her. “There is nowhere else. They’ve been letting us think they were safe places, giving us that space to run to, because they want as many humans there as possible when they hit.”
“What else?” She knew him too well.
“They know about the virus.” He took another sip of the water, hand shaking, wishing it was something stronger. “This pause in the attack… it hasn’t just been to herd us where they want us, they’ve been waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Sienna said.
Duncan took it out of his mind as he struggled to speak, saying it for him. “They’ve been waiting for the shamans to arrive.”
It made his breath catch to just think of it. “They know what we can do. They’re here to hunt us.”
Us. The infected. The hybrids. The few mutated humans who were the only chance of beating them. The elite, the cursed.
Evelyn frowned. “How the hell do they know about that?”
He didn’t want to think, fighting to contain a flashback and on the verge of throwing up as the memories surfaced.
“Their FOB,” Duncan answered for him.
Sienna squeezed his hand.
He felt his eyes closing, like he could sleep for a week.
“If you
want this intel now,” he mumbled, “I’m gonna need a hand.”
He pushed the board away and sprawled backwards on the bunk, one leg dangling over the edge, one hand brushing the scattering of empty vials that lay where he’d discarded them.
The medics monitoring him had been one short of stopping him from using any more.
He could feel he was a hair’s breadth from passing out but he was done.
The IV line in his arm tugged as he fell back. His stomach was churning. He was way too hot. Every nerve ending felt as if it was on fire.
He pinched the top of his nose, trying to relieve the pressure, breathing through the nausea. He knew that if he closed his eyes he would fall into the gravity well of the recurring nightmare and that dark maelstrom wasn’t somewhere he was prepared to go right now. As a hangover, it was bad. As a reaction to the virus, it was almost on a par with those few weeks when he’d first been infected.
If someone had walked in right then and offered him a deal, his soul in exchange for turning back time one year, he would have taken it. Snapped off their hand. Take it back ten years? God, what would he give for that?
He pulled out the IV line himself before the medics could reach him and he lay there, trying to gather himself to move. He needed to go to Hanover. He needed to run full pelt, right towards an oncoming enemy and hope to hell he got there before they did.
If he’d ever needed to pay penance for what he’d done, it was now.
He let them check him over, showered fast, changed into field-op kit and walked out. Straight into Hal Duncan and Hilyer who gestured to the guards to stand down and dropped into step beside him, not stopping him but making it clear he wasn’t free to go anywhere alone.
Duncan was the first to realise that he wasn’t heading to his quarters.
“LC, what are you doing?”
He turned towards the science labs.
“I want a shaman staff.”
The lab was cool, verging on cold. The staff lay suspended in the centre of a clear-walled test chamber, horizontal, the knotted threads of beads and knucklebones hanging down.
