Vicious Circle

by Elle E. Ire

  On my way out of the chamber, I stopped in front of Kila, cupping her chin and forcing her to meet my eyes. Her initial flinch at my touch hurt me more than I could have imagined. I’d come a long way from the person who wanted everyone around me to shudder at a lot less than physical contact. “I’m still in here,” I assured her. “But this needs to be done.”

  A hesitation, then she nodded. “I know.” She reached up to kiss me lightly. Her lips brushed the skin of my flushed cheek. “Just try not to want it so much.” She turned away.

  Then I was running for the surface, navigating the maze of tunnels, slowing only to check my corners before rounding them. I didn’t think Yesenia would risk coming underground. Being older, I knew the passages better than she did, every twist and alcove. No, she’d stay topside and level the playing field.

  Kila’s words haunted me as I ran, repeating in my head over and over. She was right. I wanted this. I wanted to kill. The shiver that passed through me came from more than the absence of my jacket. Too many steps down this road could lead to my moral destruction, but, as Micah had always taught, recognition was half the map to finding my way back. Kila would provide the other half. Something for later consideration. I had other concerns right now.

  I cut the last corner a little too close, scraping my knuckles on a broken femur protruding from the stone wall. I felt the skin tear and the welling of blood, but when I glanced at it, the gash was already closing.

  Oh, this was going to be fun.

  As I passed through the hologram of rock, the night air hit my skin and cooled some of the fire burning within me. I stood under an endless sea of stars untainted by man’s artificial light sources. The full moon, low in the sky, lit the desert floor, drawing every rock, every object in dark outline, including Yesenia’s aircar.

  She hadn’t bothered to conceal it beneath the available camouflage netting and heat sensor deterrents. It sat out in the open for anyone to see. After all, if she planned on killing everyone, what point was there in continuing to hide the Guild’s location?

  I snorted. The rogue assassin left the Guild far more visible than I had by bringing in Kila and Jaren.

  Keeping my back to the rocks around the tunnel entrance, I skirted the outcropping and made my way toward the flat expanse, where the ventilation shaft expelled the Guild’s smoke. I’d fully intended to behave in a manner befitting my profession, sticking to cover until the last possible moment, sneaking up on her if I could, but when I spotted Yesenia kneeling next to the aperture, fumbling in a large knapsack with her one good arm, I snapped.

  Somewhere along the line, my gun found its way into my hand, and I raised it now. I stepped from the concealment of the rocks and strode toward her at a brisk pace, avoiding several steam geysers and closing the gap between us. In twenty strides, I’d brought myself within range. She spotted the motion, rising with her ripper drawn.

  She’d been using a small hand lamp to fiddle with whatever equipment she carried, and it lay at her feet now, discarded. The lamp’s failing battery made the light flicker, but I could make out what looked like an explosive device.

  “Always have a backup plan,” Micah had instructed. She’d learned his lessons as well as I had. After all, she, too, benefited from his personal tutoring.

  The Guild’s survival must have stunned her, but she’d chosen a much more direct method of annihilation this time, and she had the right plan for success. If that bomb went off in the audience chamber, it would kill at least half the assassins present, putting them beyond Jaren’s abilities to help. It would also bring the ceiling down on everyone left alive, potentially disabling Jaren if he weren’t blown to bits. She’d have her revenge on them all for reinstating me. Ironic, since they’d decided to kill me for something else, but Yesenia’s sanity left her when Micah died.

  The others might have evacuated the main room of the temple, but I doubted it, given Jaren’s newfound connection to the place. I certainly couldn’t depend on it. In that chamber the assassins had immortality. With that much power at my disposal, I knew I would never want to leave it. Disturbing thought.

  Later, Cor. You need to lure Yesenia away from the explosive. Psychological evaluations could wait.

  “How’s the shoulder?” I taunted. One hung lower than the other.

  Yesenia glared, but she didn’t move to take the bait. She trained her ripper on my chest. My laser pointed at her head. I could fire, but it might set off the bomb. Never a good idea to use that much energy around a demolitions device.

  Standoff. Again.

  Overhead, two shuttles roared by, one coming from Weathered Palms, the other flying low over the dunes from the opposite direction. Judging from their configurations and camouflage armor plating, these were military vessels. Either they’d followed Yesenia from Lissex on whatever transportation she’d found to get here, or they’d traced her from the oasis city, or both. But they’d pinpointed her location, and by connection, the location of the Guild.

  A lot of hostile company was about to come calling, and no one was available to answer the bell.

  Priorities. Epiphany. It could not complete its mission for He-Who-Had-Created-It if its priorities were skewed.

  It used the assassin to bring it to this seat of power, but now she interfered with its ultimate goal. The Core of Sardonen could not be controlled, and her insights set up barriers. It must destroy her before it destroyed the Chosen.

  When Jaren moved from the altar to see to individuals’ needs, those who suffered injuries when they fell or convulsed in the throes of the gas, his power weakened. The ephem reasserted itself over Kila’s will. It drove her from the audience chamber, and in the aftermath of the assault, no one noticed her departure.

  Kila didn’t know her way through the maze of corridors, but the entity remembered, and when it faltered, the scent of Cor’s blood and essence guided it onward.

  Outside, it enhanced Kila’s vision, allowing her sight to pierce the darkness and scan for her prey. When she rounded the rocks, she spotted her target and honed in.

  Cor and Yesenia stared each other down, and the entity hesitated. The rogue assassin might do its job for it, but it made the mistake of leaving its work to others before, and Cor had Jaren’s power within her.

  This time it would wait to see the results, use Kila to commit murder if necessary, watch Cor’s life drain from her body, and perhaps let Cor see her lover one last time as the light left her eyes. And when it allowed Kila to return to herself, that memory would stay with the girl and drive her to despair.

  There could be no more mistakes. Already it felt the pull of its master’s call. Soon it would have to obey, whether it succeeded or not.

  Chapter 25

  PUTTING ALL my faith in Jaren’s power, I holstered my weapon and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Come and get me.” Let her think I was desperately trying to draw her away from her explosives, which, in effect, I was.

  I knew she wouldn’t approach, especially not with her injury, and she didn’t disappoint me. “You’re a bigger idiot than I thought you were.” She fired the ripper.

  Sometimes I wondered if I had some kind of death wish. Growing up surrounded by killing, it wouldn’t surprise me.

  The ripper blast knocked me backward, and the soft sand broke my fall. The unrefined energy tore open my chest with a shredding agony that wrenched a scream from my throat. I lay there, eyes closed, panting for breath, cursing the stupidity of this ill-conceived plan and clinging to consciousness by a thin wire. Beside me, a steam geyser erupted, singeing the hairs on my forearm, but I fought to remain motionless.

  The wound closed. I shuddered at the strangeness of feeling blood sucking inward rather than pouring out, nerves and muscles and my very heart reforming and healing, my skin drawing together over the injury. Even the steam burn vanished, the redness fading to my normal ivory tone. The pain ebbed, then subsided. I held myself still and tried to slow my breathing.

  Ye
senia could not resist checking my body. In training, Micah instructed his apprentices to be sure of a target’s death, no matter how fatal the wound appeared. Personal shields were rare, expensive, and often faulty, but not unheard of. It never hurt to be certain.

  Until today.

  When she stood over me, I swung a booted foot up and into her forearm, sending her gun flying across the sand. Her stunned expression brought a smile to my face as I leaped to my feet and slammed my fist into her nose. I felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage. She staggered backward, blood running over her lips, and scanned my torso with wide eyes, probably searching for some sign of body armor under my clothes.

  I laughed and raised my shirt to show her the forming scar, then laughed harder as she paled. A small part of me distanced myself enough to view my actions from the outside. Showing humor made me sound insane, but I could not stop it.

  “How? How did you…?” Yesenia shook herself and drew a knife off her belt, consummate assassin to the end. Before I could pull my laser, she threw the blade, driving half its length into my thigh.

  “Aim’s off,” I scolded. The skin closed around the sharp edge, healing fast, and I yanked it free before the weapon became permanently embedded. Then I returned it to its owner, via her abdomen.

  Yesenia doubled over the wound, sinking to her knees with a grunt and a string of curses. The landing shuttles drowned out whatever else she intended to say, both of them setting down near the outcropping of rocks hiding the tunnel entrance. So much for obscurity.

  Pulling the comm from my pocket, I opened the channel. Static assailed my ears while I dialed down the volume. “Jaren, pick up.”

  It took several seconds. In the meantime, ramps lowered from the two vessels, and dark figures swarmed out of them. Yesenia wrapped both her hands around her own knife in preparation to remove it. Foolish. That would speed the loss of blood. But she was no longer thinking rationally, hadn’t been for a long time. She must have loved Micah more than I ever had. A small part of me pitied her for half a heartbeat.

  “I’m here, Cor,” came Jaren’s anxious voice over the comm. “You all right?”

  “Fine,” I assured him. “Better than fine. But we’ve got a lot of visitors. Tell Guild Leader Benn I’m going to need reinforcements, if anyone is able.”

  A pause. Shuffling and indiscernible voices. “Let me see what I can do.” He clicked off.

  I stood over Yesenia, looming like Death itself, watching her writhe and spout blood. I pictured the torture she’d planned for me and the others. Another kick drove the blade deeper into her gut before she could pull it out.

  My fury exploded, a blind anger blocking out everything else, and I drew back my leg again, but when I swung it at her head, she grabbed for it and brought me down in the sand beside her. She yanked out the knife and thrust it into my forearm, then sliced me twice more along my rib cage before I drove the heel of my hand up into her chin. Her teeth clamped shut on a muffled scream.

  No more curses rained from her mouth, only blood. I think she bit off the end of her tongue. She spit the bit of flesh into the dust.

  While she fell back to regroup, I took stock of my injuries. My arm closed up until no more than a thin red line remained, but the cuts on my side seeped red that added more dark stains to my ruined shirt.

  The power was fading. Fleeting invincibility.

  Yesenia propped herself up on one elbow, but I stood and kicked it from beneath her. She grunted as she hit the sand. Images of Kila and Jaren suffocating from the Issiumoxide, torn apart by a fragmentation explosive, or crushed under a cave-in flooded my mind while I continued to strike her again and again.

  I cracked her ribs, ground my heel over her fingers, and pummeled her face until it became unrecognizable and she ceased breathing. The rage urged me to continue, a desire to deface and damage beyond her death. I fought it like a physical thing, forcing it down, drawing it into myself, where it boiled and burned and tried to claw itself free.

  When my vision cleared, I found myself on my knees beside her broken body, and when I saw the destruction I’d caused, tremors shook my limbs until I had to wrap my arms around myself to stop them. I could accept elimination of an enemy, but pure, uncontrolled destruction meant something else entirely. If I intended to continue using Jaren’s power in the future, some sort of mental discipline would need to be developed. It was wondrous but dangerous in the extreme.

  I crawled to Yesenia’s abandoned explosive device and examined it. Every Guild member had basic demolitions instruction. Some even specialized in it, though I found that method messy and unrefined. I pulled the activator circuit, rendering it harmless. Then, with the little strength I had left, I threw the circuit across the dunes where the next sandstorm would bury it forever.

  Kila’s body strode across the sand, her steps strong and purposeful. The dead assassin’s gun lay several meters from her body where Cor kicked it. Eyes focused on nothing, Kila wrapped her fingers around the grip, and she drew the weapon to her side.

  Another figure moved in the darkness, oblivious to her, crouched there in the shadows, but well aware of Cor. It raised a pistol and pointed it at Cor’s head.

  No more waiting. No more chances. The entity would end them both.

  Kila raised Yesenia’s gun and aimed, but her arm trembled. Her aim wavered. Whether it stemmed from a lack of training or an unwillingness to comply, the ephem didn’t know, but it would have to move her closer to be sure of the kills.

  The sand muffled the girl’s footsteps as she crossed soundlessly to stand behind Cor’s new assailant.

  Deep within Kila’s soul, she raged against the entity’s control. The ephem ignored her.

  I didn’t register the presence of another living being until the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against my temple hard enough to leave an indentation. Ice formed in the veins of my neck. I resisted the urge to jerk away. Any sudden move might trigger a most unwelcome response.

  “Stand slowly.”

  The voice was male, low and gruff. I obeyed its command, climbing to my feet while the power-high receded from my body. I felt its absence like the loss of a tangible thing and ached for it. It reminded me a little of palotrin withdrawal, and I inwardly groaned. The last thing I needed was a new addiction.

  Once I was standing, the new arrival turned me to face him, hard eyes appraising me and the damage I’d done to my last victim. He wore military gear and fatigues, beige and brown splotches that would blend with the desert in daylight. His jaw bore several days’ worth of stubble, and his pallor suggested he lived more on ships recently than a planet’s surface. I recognized the insignia on his collar—crossed rifles and a grenade. He was a merc from the local unit that trained nearby, the same unit that saved me all those months ago.

  I doubted I’d get sympathy this time.

  The shuttles disgorged their occupants, and behind him dark figures milled about, scouting and searching, difficult to see with the shifting smoke and puffs of steam. A few engaged in combat with one another, rodents squabbling over the right to hunt Jaren, the largest piece of cheese. Half had to be the rest of this guy’s team. The others I could only guess at.

  A distant glow on the horizon indicated the approach of dawn, and it outlined the two vessels that landed, their underbelly searchlights scouring the dunes. Neither was an Annihilator, the ships favored by the Believers, so I doubted any of these folks were members of the Givers of Life.

  “I know you,” the merc growled. “You’re Guild.” He stared at the brand on my wrist, visible without my jacket to cover it despite the shadows and sparse light from the ships.

  “What of it?” Exhaustion dropped on me like a block of stone. I’d strained my physical resources to the last, and I was so damn tired of fighting.

  “You’ve got Jaren T’ral. Folks are offering big credits for him.” His brows drew together in a thoughtful expression. It stretched his facial muscles in ways that seemed unnatural for this muscle
-bound oaf. “We knew you were out here, you assassin types. Never located your base. Now you can show me where it is.”

  I shook my head, even that small motion taking a toll and spinning the landscape. “Not in this lifetime.” Besides, they’d find it themselves, soon enough. All I wanted was to lie down.

  “How about the next one?” The merc adjusted his aim, centering the laser pistol on my chest. My eyes focused on the lethal circular opening at the barrel’s tip.

  I shrugged. The fleeting power had left me with a kind of apathy I could not fight. If I did have some secret death wish, it was about to be fulfilled.

  The gun fired, and I braced myself for the pain before my mind registered it produced the wrong sound. A ripper made that kind of low hum-whine. A second later, blood and gore from the merc’s blasted skull spattered the front of my already disgusting shirt. Thank the gods he was taller than I. The remainder of the unfocused energy went over my head and dispersed in the fading darkness. All but headless, the body toppled, revealing his killer.

  Kila stood behind him, Yesenia’s discarded weapon clutched in both her trembling hands, a look of pure horror distorting her angelic features. She’d taken a life. Willingly. For me. And I knew she would never forgive herself.

  Hells.

  Encouraging Kila to kill the merc had been relatively easy. The entity convinced her conscience firing the weapon would save Cor. Her heightened sense of moral values rallied against it, but only for a moment. Cor’s life held greater value for her. But as the soldier’s body toppled into the sand, the ephem detected exactly what that meant and recognized its fatal error.

  Any force strong enough to make Kila betray the principles of her religion was also strong enough to defeat the entity itself.