Hyperion
Copyright © 2014 by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Excerpt from These Broken Stars copyright © 2013 by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. Excerpt from This Shattered World copyright © 2014 by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New
York, New York 10023. ISBN 978-1-4847-2419-4
CONTENTS Title Page Copyright Page One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Epilogue
Letter from the Authors Preview of These Broken Stars Preview of This Shattered World
“Hey—it’s okay. Shhh. I’m right here.” “What? I—sorry, beautiful. I was dreaming.”
“No kidding. Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?” “Mmm. You’re warm. You’ve been stealing the blankets again.” “Stop trying to distract me. I thought I was supposed to be the one with the nightmares.”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” “Do I ever?”
“Good point.” “Who’s Sanjana?”
SIX MONTHS BEFORE THE ICARUS
CRASH...
ONE
THE SUN’S WARM ON THE BACK OF MY NECK, bird-song filtering down from the trees lining the edges of the walking track. Unlike my last posting on Avon, surrounded by mud and swamp, this part of Patron is all blue skies and grassy hills. This far from the nearest town, I could almost forget I’m not home, that my parents’ cottage isn’t just beyond the next rise. Almost—except for the gun at my hip, the dim outline of Patron’s rings faint across the afternoon sky, and Private Gil Fisk crunching along behind me.
“Listen,” I tell him as we crest the hill, sweating a little under the heavy carbon fiber composite of my flak jacket. “All I’m saying is there’s an argument to be made for coming in a little gentler. You lead by saying you miss her, not that you miss getting—look, it’s about poetry, Private. Her eyes, her lips. Didn’t you ever do poetry in school?”
Gil snorts, coming up alongside me, scratching behind his ear. “Yeah, but it was all roses and clouds, and if I start comparing her to a flower, she’s gonna think I’ve lost it. You really get girls to go for you by talking ’bout their lips, sir?”
I hide a grin. This patrol takes almost as long by hover as on foot and isn’t usually sought after—but now I know why Gil traded two days of mess hall duty for this patrol shift: to get me to help him win back his girlfriend. “I know, it’s a mystery. Listen, when we get back from patrol, I’ll show you a couple of poems, and you can try something based on those.”
“Can’t you just write it for me? Cole said you wrote his whole letter to his boyfriend on Babel.”
“I wrote Cole’s letter because he can’t write,” I point out. At this rate I’m going to have to start charging my men a fee.
“What about you, Captain?” Gil kicks a rock half buried in the road and sends it skittering off into the grass.
“Nobody in particular,” I reply. “I can’t see myself settling down.” I’m about to continue when the comm patch on my vest crackles to life. We both slow as we listen.
“Patrol three-six-five, this is HQ. Do you read? Over.”
Fisk raises a brow as I thumb the talk-patch and reply. “HQ, three-six-five. Go ahead, over.”
“Patrol, just a heads-up. VC-Delta opened a comms channel a few minutes ago, but we got no broadcast before it shut off again. They’re not responding to hails. We think their system is glitching, but they may not be aware. Request you have them run a systems check on arrival.”
“Will do. Thank you, HQ. Three-six-five out.”
Fisk is pulling a face as we set out again. “How long’s a full systems check gonna take, sir?”
“Long enough,” I reply, trying not to grimace myself. “I had a card game tonight. That’s shot now.”
Fisk shades his eyes against the setting sun, surveying the hill ahead of us. “I can go check it out if you want to start heading back, sir. No reason you gotta miss your game.”
But something about this doesn’t sit right, and the prickle down my spine is one I’ve learned not to ignore. “No,” I say slowly. “No, let’s both go check it out. It’s probably nothing, but if it’s not, better to have two of us.”
“You sure, sir?” Gil’s impatient, and I suppress a smile—he really wants me to write that letter to his girlfriend. “Those things are always breaking. Scientists got their heads in the clouds, don’t bother with main-tenance. Call it my punishment for being late to the yard this morning.” I snicker. “You’re learning to recite a sonnet for being late to the yard,” I tell him, setting off to move a little quicker than before. “And then you can write to your girlfriend and tell her it reminds you of her.”
He curses under his breath, and jogs a few steps to catch up with me. We’re still at least a quarter hour on foot from VC-Delta, the VeriCorp research facility we’re checking on this evening’s patrol. “What d’you think we’ll find there?”
“Probably some idiot who spilled a drink on the comm set,” I reply. “But that’s what I think, not what I know. There are other reasons their comms could be down.” And however long a shot, those reasons are why we’re here.
We circle around to come in toward the base from the west—the approach up the road is completely open, and if anything’s up, we’d be sitting ducks.
There’s no reason it should be anything other than faulty equipment; Patron’s been peaceful for years now, but for the occasional incursion by raider ships, and these patrols are more a courtesy than anything else. Part of the government’s contract with the corporations that terraform these places. This isn’t Avon—no rebels lurking in the wilderness, no discontented townsfolk to wrangle. It’s supposed to be an easy posting, so I can recover from my time on the front lines.
We’re both silent as we work our way through the scrub, climbing along just below the ridgeline to avoid our silhouettes showing, until we can get a better look at the valley below.
It dips down to a gentle bowl, trees scattering the slopes of the hills around the facility itself. A long mound bisects the valley and curves back around through the hills—it’s the research facility’s particle accel-erator, a layer of earth and grass concealing whatever manner of science they keep inside there. Not my field of expertise. All I know is that they build their facilities out here because the land’s cheap and they can make their equipment as large as they want.
Fisk starts to stride down the hill toward the compound, but I reach out and snag his sleeve, pulling him back. I know I’ve spent too long on the front lines, that the caution Avon drilled into me is still too fresh, but something’s still warning me not to walk in blindly. We stop instead at the edge of a copse, crouching between the tree trunks to get a better look at the compound itself, the large courtyard visible within the walls from this height. I pull up my goggles from where they hang around my
neck, blessing my commander for insisting we patrol in proper gear, and thumb the button to magnify the view. Two figures walk out across the courtyard, taking a curving path between the tables and chairs set out there to catch the sun, an old satellite dish dumped in the open space. The wind in the trees around me melts away, my world turning silent. They’re in fitted body armor, but though it’s almost like military issue, those aren’t soldiers. I know every face on my base, and these two aren’t among them.
“Gil,” I murmur, looking across at him to find he’s staring down at the compound too. “Those look like our guys to you?”
“Not so much, sir,” he replies. “We—” But he gets no further—he’s cut off abruptly by a scream from the courtyard below, carried only faintly on the wind, followed by the quick, sharp shriek of a weapon rending the air.
Dammit. “Call it in, Fisk, use the sat phone. They could be monitoring our comm frequencies, we can’t risk that. I’ll try to get a better look at the approach.”
“Yes, sir.” Suddenly he’s all business—no longer the guy who tries to wheedle poems out of me, who can never get anything quite right no matter how hard he tries. In this, at least, he’s sure of himself. He swings his pack off, dropping to one knee to pull out the sat phone, reaching up to adjust his goggles where they sit behind his ear. “Try the southwest entrance, I think the trees come in closest there.”
I nod, using hands and feet to make sure I don’t slide down the slope, keeping to the shadows of the trees. My mind’s scrambling, compet-ing thoughts and questions all shoutcompet-ing for attention. No sign of their vehicle; no military hovers, no chopper. Either they came on foot, like Fisk and me, or—more likely—they were dropped here. They’re too well organized to be raiders looking to strip the facility, and since they’re not military, that means they’re mercs. There’s a reason hiring mercenaries was made illegal decades ago: no regulation. No way to stop the people hiring them from forming their own private little armies on the edge of space.
It’ll be impossible to know who hired them—a rival corporation after VC’s tech, probably, but which one, I doubt we’ll ever know. They’ll be covering their tracks. People like these don’t leave witnesses behind.
Assuming our commander mobilizes units the second he hears Fisk’s call, there’s only three ways the cavalry arrives—on foot, which will take an hour we don’t have; via road, which will take even longer thanks to the winding roads of Patron’s hilly countryside; or via air, which will give the game away completely. The facility’s staff will be dead before our guys can land.
Which means it’s on us. Me and a private I like just fine, but a guy I wouldn’t choose to partner me in a game of cards, let alone a two-man military operation. I almost wish I was back at my last posting on Avon, with half a dozen soldiers I’d choose over Gilmore Fisk, who’s never seen action like this.
He’s just setting down the satellite phone and turning an anxious gaze on me as I return a few minutes later. I make my voice sound steady when I speak, completely sure of myself. “Okay, good news is there aren’t many of them in the courtyard. Bad news is that shot was an execution. One of the civilians. We can’t sit here and watch them take out the others while we wait for reinforcements.”
Fisk nods, swallowing hard, and stows the sat phone before coming to his feet and pulling his Gleidel from its holster. “Yessir.”
I draw my own gun and check its charge, then take point. We work quickly and quietly down the hillside, using what cover there is to get close to the wall, then easing in along it to make our way to the gate.
My brother Alec was caught alone, when he died, and I’ve wondered countless times what he was thinking. Whether he knew he’d screwed up, getting himself cut off like that. Whether he kept trying or knew he was done. Whether he was scared.
But I’m not alone, I remind myself, looking back at Gil, who’s white as a sheet but gripping his Gleidel in a steady hand. And this is our duty. We can’t sit up there and watch them executed while we wait for backup.
“It’s too late to shout at you now for going in there, isn’t it?” “You’ve shouted at me for plenty of other reasons.”
“Well, you do insist on being brave a lot.”
“Of the two of us, Lilac, I think you still win in the category of doing stupidly brave things.”
“He was on your mind a lot, wasn’t he?” “Who, Fisk?”
“Alec. He was on your mind when you were delirious, too.” “I don’t think something like that ever changes.”
TWO
THE COURTYARD IS EMPTY NOW, except for the white-coated figure sprawled on the far side, blood slowly trickling away from him to pool in a dip in the paving.
“Oh God,” Gil whispers behind me. “Oh God, he’s dead.” When I look back, his normally olive-tan features have paled a few shades, and he’s got that same pinched expression I saw half a dozen times on Avon. No amount of training prepares someone for the first time they see combat—for the first time they see death.
“Let’s concentrate on the live ones.” My spine’s pricking all over again that there’s nobody out here keeping guard, but I allow myself just a sliver of hope that they’re amateurs. That there’s a chance we’re going to catch them unawares.
The back door’s unlocked, and that sliver of hope widens a little. Guns drawn, we make our way silently down a long, empty corridor leading into the heart of the station. I’ve been here only once or twice before on a patrol; usually we stay outdoors. But I’ve got a rough idea of the layout, and I keep scanning for any sign of the intruders. Voices rise at the far end of the corridor, and exchanging a glance with Fisk, I keep low and creep further along toward the source of the sound.
I crouch to get a look through the crack where the door sits ajar— better to avoid eye level, where they’re most likely to spot you—and take a beat to absorb the sight of three white-coated researchers backed up against a wall, with half a dozen armor-clad mercs standing between
them and us. Their clothes are good enough to pass as military, unless you know what you’re looking for. Their posture tells me more, though. They’ve clearly had combat training—I can see it in the way they stand, the way they hold their weapons. That shooting outside wasn’t amateur hour, it was a deliberate decision, and judging by the way the researchers are pressed against the wall, they know it.
The mercs are carrying the latest in cutting-edge combat rifles, the kind whose shots aren’t stopped by armor or metal, like those from my sidearm are. For the first time, my Gleidel—designed for use in space, where an errant shot could trigger a decompression—seems inadequate. Even if I were in full armor, like them, they’d still have the edge.
The leader—obvious from the way the others are looking at him—is a sandy-haired guy in his late thirties with the edge of a tattoo climbing up out of his uniform collar. He’s just finished speaking, and is looking expectantly at the trio clad in white.
It’s the woman who answers. She’s in her early twenties, with a dark ponytail and a light brown complexion, and attitude enough to make up for her fearful coworkers. Arms crossed, brows crowded together in a frown, she’s leaning forward to argue with him. Even that posture, though, can’t hide the fear tensing her frame and making her voice breathy, close to cracking. “There’s nothing like that here. This is a par-ticle accelerator, pure research. There’s nothing here raiders would—”
A woman dressed as a lieutenant backhands her, sending her stum-bling back to crash against the wall. “We’re not raiders,” she hisses.
I adjust my grip on my Gleidel, shifting my weight, ready to ease up to my feet.
And then something cold and hard presses against the back of my neck. “Sorry, Captain.” Fisk speaks loudly enough that every head turns, though when he reaches past me to push the door open and expose us, nobody looks surprised except the white-clad researchers.
My brain stutters and simply stops for a moment, trying and failing to latch on to what’s happening. Fisk? Gil Fisk? He’s been in my platoon for months. He’s barely competent. This is some sort of misunderstanding. “Private,” I try, keeping my voice low, calm. “You haven’t done this yet. You don’t have to.”
There’s a soft sigh from behind me, but the pressure of the gun against my neck doesn’t waver, and I know his answer in that moment. “It’s already done, Captain. Did it years ago. Put your gun down on the floor, slowly, two fingers.”
I comply, though it kills me to ease my Gleidel down and set it on the floor, where Fisk kicks it far enough away for one of the mercenaries to pick it up. I clench my jaw as the man inspects the weapon and, grinning, tucks it into his waistband. I take another careful look around the room. The other mercenaries are herding the three scientists into the far cor-ridor and out of sight, and only the leader stands watching us now.
“I’ll have your flak jacket please, Captain,” Fisk continues, all traces of his corn-fed country accent gone. He sounds like a completely different guy, hard-edged and competent. I grind my teeth as I unzip the vest and then yank open the straps along its side. Keeping my movements slow, I shrug it off my shoulders and let it slide to the floor. With it goes my comm patch, and all hope of signaling for reinforcements.
When he speaks again, he’s once more Private Fisk, pressing his thumb to the transmit button. “HQ, this is three-six-five. Please acknowledge, over.”
The patch crackles to life. “Three-six-five, go ahead, over.”
I want to shout a warning, I want to fight. But one wrong move won’t get just me killed; every hostage in this place will die if these mercs decide they have to burn and run.
“We’ve run the comms check here,” Fisk continues. “Just a glitch. The locals have invited us to stay for chow, so we’ll be a little late, over.”
“No problem, three-six-five, enjoy your meal. HQ out.” The comm crackles and falls silent, and my lifeline is gone.
“Where are you holding the others?” Fisk asks the tattooed leader. “Room for him there, too?”
The other man shakes his head. “Just take him out back.”
My gut knots. All three of us know what “out back” means. In my mind’s eye, I can see the trail of blood from the dead researcher slowly seeping across the pavement outside.
Only now does the pressure of the gun barrel against the back of my neck lift. Not enough for me to risk trying something, but I can feel
Fisk’s hesitation in the way he shifts his weight. “We might need him yet,” he says, giving me a flash of hope that he’s thinking twice about shooting me. “If they ask for him on comms and he’s not there, what do we do?” Then again, perhaps he’s just hoping someone else will handle the execution, when the time comes.
The blond man looks us both over, gaze measuring, and I feel my pulse thump-thump-thump as I wait. Half a dozen tactics and appeals flash through my mind, but I can read the man well enough to know that the smartest thing I can do right now is keep my mouth shut. After a lifetime, he nods. “If you think it’s worth the risk of keeping him alive, he’ll be your responsibility. The others are in offices down the hall, there should be plenty of room.”
Fisk prompts me to stand with a silent nudge of his gun barrel, and I keep my hands out to my sides as he walks me down the hallway.
I wait until we’re alone to speak again. “Nothing’s done until it’s done, Gil. We’ll say these mercs mistook you for their contact and you went along with it to get the jump on them.” Keep it familiar, try and draw up those months of memories, all the times I’ve looked out for him. “We’ve trained for situ-ations like this, you and me.”
“Just shut up, sir,” Fisk replies—and despite everything, there’s still a note in his voice that’s at least a distant relative of respect.
We reach the open office doors, and I glance right, then left—I like the office on the left better. There’s a paperweight on the desk, a vent high up on the wall, an extendable pointer on the windowsill. Weapons, ways out. I turn left, and he lets me. I stop in the doorway, spinning to face him in the faint hope he won’t follow me in.
“There’s still a way out of this if you want it,” I say quietly. I’m not pretending when I search his features, registering the way the lines of his mouth have hardened, his jaw has squared. How could I have mistaken him so badly?
Fisk meets my gaze without flinching, without any sign of regret; a rueful half-smile flickers across his face. “I’m not some kid they bribed with a pack of cigarettes and the promise of a promotion.” He gestures with the gun for me to keep moving, and my heart sinks as he follows me into the room. “This isn’t what you think it is, Tarver.”
Hearing my first name from Private Fisk’s lips is a jolt nearly as tan-gible as when he pressed his gun to my neck. “I don’t need to know what you’re doing here, Fisk. You’re breaking your oath, and that’s exactly what I think it is.”
“You think I’m some sixteen-year-old fresh off Paradisa. Bad with girls. Impatient with books. Never quite good enough at drills. Endear-ing. Like someone’s kid brother.” He shrugs. “Not your fault, just means I did my job. But I’m twenty-three, and I’ve been doing this a hell of a lot longer than you have.”
He tried to get me to turn back, to return to base rather than investi-gate the call that led us here. I search his face for some sign of that boy, the one who didn’t want me dead, but he’s utterly blank. We used to play poker in our off hours, me and Gil and a few others; Gil lost every time. Even off duty everything about him was a lie.
When I don’t answer, he squares his jaw and shrugs again, the gesture so familiar and, at the same time, so out of place on this new, warped version of my friend. “Just stay quiet, and I’ll try to keep you alive.”
He doesn’t speak again. He yanks the cord from the desk lamp and gestures to the chair, and this time I don’t bother hiding my frustration. Coming back from being tied up is going to be a lot harder, and we both know it. I focus on keeping my wrists as wide as I can, but by the time he’s done, the cord circles them and binds them to the bar at the back of the chair, already cutting into my skin. He conducts a quick sweep of the room, pocketing a pair of scissors and a metal ruler, shoving the paper-weight down between the desk and the wall, where I’ll never get to it.
Once he’s finished, he looks back at me from the door, slowly replac-ing his gun in his holster. He reaches up to scratch behind his ear as I’ve seen him do half a dozen times today. But this time he peels away a small skin-colored patch: a transmitter. Dammit. That explains the empty courtyard, the easy way in. They were laying out the welcome mat so they could take me without a fight.
“Don’t try to escape,” he says quietly. “You cause problems, he’ll shoot me first, then you. He’s not playing. Got it?”
“Day I’m having, there’s no way I’m lucky enough that he’d shoot you, too,” I mutter, drawing a quick, mirthless grin. I force myself to hold
still, without testing my bonds. “I understand. Get this done, get out, and hope we never meet again.”
He seems to take me at my word, nodding slowly. “All the world’s a stage, sir.” So much for the kid I thought hadn’t read so much as a sonnet. “Not time for either of us to make our exits yet.”
“You look like your head’s about to explode, Lilac.” “But that...I could kill him. He was in uniform.” “He saved my life.”
“It shouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.” “No, but he still—it’s more complicated than that.” “Everything about this story is, isn’t it?”
THREE
I ALLOW MYSELF THE LUXURY of a full thirty seconds of silently mouthing curses that would horrify my parents, and then I get to work. Standing with the heavy chair strapped to my back is out of the question, but its wheels allow me to move around the office. I try strain-ing with all my strength to see if I can stretch the lamp cord. I try anglstrain-ing forward to see if I can catch the knot on the sharp corner of the drawer handle and loosen the ropes.
A faint scuffling sound comes from the other side of the vent, and I remember: the researchers are locked in offices, too. I raise my voice as loud as I dare, hoping the guard, if there is one, is out of earshot. “Can you hear me?”
There’s a muffled clatter from the room next door, and a long silence. Then comes a woman’s voice—quite clear, like she’s up close to the vent. “Yes. But you shouldn’t talk. They shot Nico because he was trying to talk them down.” It’s the dark-haired one who was standing up to them before; I recognize her voice. Good. If I had to choose one, she’s the one I’d pick.
“Worth a try, Nico,” I mutter, then lift my voice a little so she can hear me. “They’re going to shoot us, too, unless we do something about it. Their faces are on the security cameras, but they can wipe those. They can’t wipe our memories, so we have to go. I promise you, the only thing you can do from here is improve your chances.”
Silence from the room next door.
I take a deep breath, realizing too late that telling a civilian she’s about to get shot might not be the best way to encourage her. I try a different tactic. “What’s your name?”
“Sanjana Rao,” she replies, so quietly I can barely hear her. She pro-nounces her name with the same inflection I heard in Little Bangalore, on the northern continent of Corinth, when I was there on leave. I won-der, fleetingly, if that’s where she’s from. If she has a family there, waiting for her, the way mine is for me in the little garden cottage in our valley.
“I’m Tarver, Sanjana,” I say, hoping conversation will ease her fear enough that I can enlist her help. “Captain Tarver Merendsen.”
“You’re military?” Her voice rises with surprise. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“Because they’re not military, they’re mercs. As was the guy I was on patrol with, it turns out. I’m the only real soldier here.”
“Well,” she replies, “no offense, but your track record so far doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
Against all the odds, her quip makes me laugh, and my breath comes a little easier. “Not my finest hour,” I allow. “But the day’s not over yet. Still time to redeem myself.”
“Look,” she says, “I have no intention of sitting here and waiting for them to shoot me.” Underneath the fear in her voice, there’s a note of resolve. That hint of steel means she hasn’t given up, and that means I’m not out of cards to play just yet.
“You sound like you’re up near the vent, are your hands loose?” “I am, but it’s sealed down, the windows, too. But I’m nearly out, I can go for the comms panel in the main office.” A pause, as my words catch up with her. “Your hands aren’t loose?” Short, choppy sentences try to hide the shake in her voice.
“Tied up,” I tell her. “There’s just no trust in this world, you know?” From the other side of the vent there’s a soft huff of laughter. That’s good. I need her to breathe, to think.
“How are you nearly out?” I ask.
“The door’s got an electronic lock,” she replies. “Not my specialty, but I’ve nearly got it. You weren’t the only one with a partner who turned on you. Michaela’s with them. She must have reprogrammed the locks,
because mine won’t recognize my thumbprint.” “Can you do mine, if you get out into the hallway?”
“If there aren’t any guards. It takes about ten minutes.” I can hear the nerves creeping back in, and frankly, I don’t blame her.
“Listen,” I continue, before she can start to panic. “We can’t use the comms. I guarantee they’re monitoring the military frequencies. In any event, the lead time on a rescue mission is too long, especially if they hear us calling for help. We need to do this ourselves. But we can do it, I promise you.”
I wish I felt as certain as I sound.
Sanjana doesn’t answer me, but I hear her exhale, the tension in that single breath carrying through the vent. I don’t have to strain my imagi-nation to picture her fear. Hell, I’m scared myself.
“You know, when we get out of this, you and I are going to have to seriously review our choice in companions.” I try to smile, hoping it’ll carry through my voice. “Unlock my door, though, and I think I could really get to like you.”
“Easy, buddy, I’ve got a girlfriend.” But it worked—her voice is a little lighter. “Okay, let me get it open and check for a guard. I’ll tell you through the vent, or else if this doesn’t work, I guess you’ll hear me being shot.”
“You’re a real comfort,” I whisper. There’s a muffled thud as she climbs down from whatever she’s standing on to reach the vent, and pre-sumably she gets back to work. And so do I—for all I’m getting nowhere trying to untie my hands, I’ve got nothing else better to do, and this is no time to be without a Plan B.
It’s about twenty minutes later when I hear her at the vent again. “Tarver?”
“Still here,” I tell her. “Though the service is terrible. I’m seriously considering complaining to management and trying a different hotel.”
“You’re telling me,” she mutters. “My door’s open, but there’s a guard out there. He had his back turned, but it’ll take me at least ten minutes to get yours open, and if he turns around...” She doesn’t have to finish the sentence.
We just had to be taken hostage by professionals. I hate well-organized opponents. “Okay,” I reply. She’s not going to like what’s coming next, and I
know it. I force my voice to stay low, calm, confident. “I’ll try calling him in here so you can slip in after him and come at him from behind. You’ll need to hit him, and hard. Can you find something in there that’s heavy enough?”
Her hesitation speaks volumes. It’s one thing to think about violence or see it on the HV, and another entirely to commit it. I wish I didn’t have to ask a civilian to get involved, but I’ve got no other choice. Sanjana’s voice emerges from the vent, finally: “Yes. Yes, I can do that.”
“Good. We’ll make a soldier out of you yet.”
“No, thank you,” Sanjana replies, her voice dry. Then she falls silent before I can think of another joke to lighten the mood.
“Sanjana,” I say quietly, abandoning my attempt to find humor in our situation. “If we don’t get ourselves out of this, they’re going to kill us, your colleagues, and anyone else who’s seen their faces. Soldiers choose to accept the risk of taking a life when they enlist, and I know you never asked for this. Truly, I wouldn’t ask you if there was another option.”
She takes a long, slow breath in, then exhales audibly. “Okay.” Her voice firms, and I know she’s made up her mind. “Call him in.”
I reach for the version of myself that knows how to keep a raw recruit moving, that doesn’t flinch when missiles fly overhead. There’s a head-space for that kind of thing, and I need to find it now, because what comes next is going to demand a lot of her. “Just think about the actions, put everything else out of your mind.”
Still not alone, Alec. Still fighting.
I push my chair over to the door, using one foot to stomp at it, hoping the sound will carry down the hallway. “Hey! Is anyone out there? I need someone in here.”
I count to ten, then stomp again. I repeat this six times before a shadow passes across the strip of window in the door, followed by the fuzzy outline of a head as the guard peers through it. “Fisk said you’d try something,” he barks through the door. I recognize the voice—it’s the same guy who took my Gleidel. “I’m not buying.”
“I’m tied to a chair,” I reply, trying not to let anger color my voice, and push back from the door. “I’ll stay on the other side of the room if it makes you feel better. But you need to take a look outside, because
there’s someone out there, and it’s not one of your people. If my guys worked this out and try to start something, I’m not interested in dying in the crossfire. You take a look, and if it’s them, you get on the comm and tell them you have a hostage, right?”
He hesitates for a few more seconds. “Other side of the room,” he echoes finally. “And turn your back so I can see your hands.”
I turn, and a moment later I hear the lock on the door open with a pop, then the sound of his footsteps. Trying not to think of the gun that’s probably aimed at my head right now, I talk, hoping I can cover Sanjana’s footsteps as she moves. “Just between the trees out there, there are two thick tree trunks, I thought I saw someone between them, but I can’t stand up on account of I’m tied to a chair. Fisk did a good job, I have to grant him that.” I turn my head to catch a glimpse of the door. It’s spring-loaded, swinging closed way too fast. Dammit.
But an instant before the door closes, Sanjana’s fingers appear in the crack, and rather than closing and sealing, it slams on her hand. I wince and force myself to keep talking as she starts to push it open “Thing is, if I were you, I’d be asking myself this: if Fisk managed to fool me for months to get ready for this raid, if he’s that good an actor, then how can you be sure—”
“Will you shut up,” he mutters, leaning over to look out the window as Sanjana slips into the room and out of my line of sight. “Fisk didn’t mention you like the sound of your own voice so—”
There’s a crash, and I swing the chair around, the cord biting into my hands. The guard’s on the ground, and Sanjana’s standing above him, a desk lamp hanging from one hand, chest heaving, eyes closed.
My own relief threatens to overwhelm me, my mind coming up with half a dozen jokes I’d use with my platoon to keep them grounded—but they never look this traumatized. I let my breath out in a rush, then try to sound as gentle as I can. “Well done. Now we’ve got a chance.”
She only just stops herself dropping the lamp, instead setting it down on the carpet and walking over to crouch behind me. “Nice to meet you,” she manages, still shaky as she starts working at my bindings.
“You too,” I say with a hint of a smile I don’t expect. “You might just be my favorite person on the planet right now.”
The lamp cord comes loose, and fire rushes into my wrists as the blood returns. I drop to my hands and knees, crawling over to the guard to retrieve my Gleidel and return it to its holster at my side. Such a slight weight, but with it, I already feel better.
“Is he okay?” she whispers behind me.
Blood’s starting to pool underneath the guard’s head, and his eyes are staring vacantly at the wall. But I put myself between the body and Sanjana, reaching down like I’m feeling for his pulse. “Yep,” I lie, trying to sound relieved. “He’s out cold, but he’ll live to fight another day.”
“Oh, thank God.” She sinks down onto my chair, nursing her bruised fingers.
“Does he have a security pass?” I check his belt, pulling aside his jacket to look for a lanyard around his neck.
When I glance back at her, she’s shaking her head. “It’s all thumb-prints, no passes. Makes it harder for outsiders to infiltrate.” Her gaze acknowledges the irony of that and confirms what I’m realizing—it’s going to be impossible to move unnoticed around the station. I could cut the merc’s thumb off, but the scanners won’t work without proper blood flow, and that would completely shatter the tenuous grip Sanjana has on her calm. I don’t have much experience with civilians in life-or-death situations, but I’m pretty certain that dismembering people isn’t going to help.
“What do we do now?” Her voice is soft, shaking. “Now we take the fight to them.”
“I like Sanjana.”
“Me too. Reminds me of another girl I know. Not afraid to do what had to be done.”
“Is this story going to end badly for her? Something about it gives you nightmares.”
“Just sometimes. I have them about that other girl, too.” “Oh, Tarver.”
“We’re not going back to sleep, are we?” “I’ll make us something hot to drink.”
FOUR
WE CAN SPARE ONLY A FEW MINUTES to make a plan. Assuming Sanjana’s friend Nico is the only casualty among the staff, and Michaela’s the only defector, there are probably ten others locked in offices along the hallway. Which means we don’t have the hundred minutes it would take for Sanjana to hack all their locks.
But if we leave them here, the mercs will bail and shoot the research team the moment we’re discovered missing. We need a faster way, a way to open them all at once. Sanjana’s best guess is the administrative office, at the end of our hallway—there’s a chance she might be able to reset security from there.
We make our way down the hallway in silence. I take point, a flash of frustration passing through me as I think of the last time I did this, an hour ago. Whatever Fisk thinks he’s doing, he’s betraying the uniform. But alongside the frustration is the thrill that comes with combat, and knowing you’re really alive—for the moment at least.
Once we reach the office, I take up a position at the door, Gleidel in hand, keeping watch. She hurries across to the console, her uninjured fingers flying over the keys. From the way the other hand’s starting to bruise and swell, I think the door might have broken some fingers. She brings up the projection display and settles in to work in silence, direct-ing files and issudirect-ing commands with flicks of her eyes and swipes of her good hand, rather than hitting the keys.
before I return my attention to the hallway. It’s well after dinner now. When was the guard scheduled to report back in?
“They knew what they were doing,” Sanjana mutters, pausing in her work to study the streams of data in front of her. “Only Michaela and I had access to this, I didn’t even know she could shut me out.”
“Just Michaela and you?” I risk a glance across at her for a moment. “You’re in charge?”
“Past tense, Captain, I was in charge.”
“Do you have any idea what VeriCorp’s doing here that would deserve a raid of this scale? These guys didn’t come cheap. If we know what their motivation is, what they’re after, perhaps that could help us.”
She’s silent, staring at the lines of code. She lifts one hand to swipe down, and a red error message flashes up. With a grimace, she starts again. “It’s not VeriCorp running this facility.”
“What? It’s called VC-Delta. This is VeriCorp territory. The VC stands for—”
“I know what it stands for, Tarver. This place belongs to another cor-poration, one with no stake here.”
“Which one?”
She hesitates; no doubt she’s had to sign half a dozen nondisclosure agreements to work here. But a glance back at the lines of code for the thumbprint scanners makes her sigh. “It’s owned by LaRoux Industries.”
“Why keep that undercover? What are they doing here they don’t want people to know about?”
“They’re a prime target for this sort of thing. Masquerading as belonging to a less cutting-edge corporation would discourage—well, what’s happening. They have to be here to steal LaRoux Industries’ intel-lectual property. Which means...they want me. As soon as they figure out I’m the one with the information.”
“Michaela doesn’t know?”
“She’s the facility manager. She handles the logistics, not the science. It’s my head that has the information they need.”
“Well, they’ll have to come through me to get to it,” I say.
“That shouldn’t reassure me as much as it does,” she replies dryly, turning her attention back to the screen. “Considering we’ve got one gun and three working hands between us.”
“None of that defeatist language,” I reply, easing my head out the door to check the hallway. “In a few hours this’ll be done, and you and I will be drinking and ensuring the story grows with every retelling.”
She snorts. “Are you even old enough to drink?”
“Who, me?” I’m grinning too—of all the times to be having fun. “No, ma’am. I lied my way into the military at thirteen years old, they think I’m thirty-nine by now.”
“And I thought running this place at twenty-seven was impressive,” she replies, wry.
“I’m old enough,” I reply—because beneath the jokes, I know what she really wants to hear is I know what I’m doing. “Old enough to command a platoon, but I’ll take your doubt as a compliment to my beauty regimen. You getting anywhere at all?”
“Maybe,” she mutters, squinting at the screen. “I’m rebooting it, it’ll take another couple of minutes.” Already the tension’s creeping back into her tone.
“So, twenty-seven, and already this smart?” I ask, reaching for a tease again. “Too much for this soldier. I don’t understand a thing about what your team does here.”
“It’s complicated,” she replies absently. “No kidding.”
She huffs a soft laugh, looking up. “No kidding indeed. We’re work-ing on a new, safer hyperspace drive.”
“That makes no sense...who would hire mercenaries this good just to steal a glorified seat belt?”
“You’re calling my life’s work a glorified seat belt?” She rolls her eyes, causing the display to scroll backward as it registers the movement as a command. “It’s not that simple.” Her shoulders are tense, her eyes fixed on the display, avoiding mine.
“Somehow I don’t think you’re telling me everything.”
She sighs, glancing back at me in the doorway. “Look, it’s...classified, to say the least. It’s all theoretical right now, but if it works, it’ll be revolu-tionary. Still...well, I guess being fired is the least of my worries right now. Imagine a big electromagnet, whose field envelops the hyperspace drive and prevents destructive forces from escaping. There’s a huge energy discharge when you use a hyperspace drive, and this stops it damaging
the ship. Like a ground wire. It’s a brand-new way of doing it, much more efficient.”
“Okay,” I say dubiously, still waiting to hear something worth stealing. “Now imagine a ship with that new magnet in place passes too near another ship with the same device. The fields would interfere with each other.”
“And...?”
“And...anything. Without proper safety precautions, hyperspace travel is unpredictable. Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe the entire ship would be ripped apart.”
I exhale slowly. “So a rival corporation with this technology could use it to sabotage or even destroy LaRoux Industries spaceliners, leaving absolutely no trace of tampering. That’s tech worth stealing.”
Sanjana nods, glancing at me again, her expression sober. “I’ve been trying to tell them about this flaw for months. It’s not just ships. If a ship outfitted with the new drive came too near this facility, for example, when we’ve got the Ring up and running—”
“The Ring?”
“That’s our name for the electromagnet. Big metal ring, keeps the energies contained. LaRoux’s had the technology for at least a genera-tion, but this is the first time we’ve tried applying it to a hyperspace drive.” She sighs. “It’s too fragile a balance, too delicate. It gets disrupted by anything, and the results could be catastrophic.”
“Well, nobody at LaRoux Industries will know about it if we don’t get out of here,” I say, then wish I hadn’t.
But she’s staring at her screen. “I can’t get around their security blocks,” she murmurs, turning that gaze on me. There’s already a bruise spreading slowly across her jaw, thanks to the blow she took earlier. “I can’t open the doors from here at all. We need another way.”
“The facility...was my father’s?”
“It meant nothing to me at the time. I assumed Sanjana was right, that some other corporation was trying to steal their technology in order to weaponize it. But now...”
“Now you think he sent the mercenaries in to level his own base. Oh, God.”
“I think that technology came from what they used to contain the rift back on our planet. That’s what your father was trying to hide when Sanjana started asking questions.”
“What she was talking about—that potential catastrophe, that’s what happened to the Icarus. My father knew it could...God, Tarver, I can’t—”
“Lilac, he couldn’t have known. He wouldn’t have let you on board if he’d thought there was any danger.”
“No. He would just murder a half a dozen innocent researchers to avoid having to answer questions.”
FIVE
I’M ABOUT TO REPLY WHEN I HEAR A SOUND up the hall-way. I hold up a hand and Sanjana freezes. I don’t dare stick my head out the door to look, but closing my eyes, I slow my breathing and focus on my hearing. There it is again. Soft footsteps making their way up the hall.
I point under the desk, and Sanjana slips off her chair, crawling beneath it as I crouch low, crossing the office to cram in beside her. We wait shoulder to shoulder, and I force myself to relax my grip on the Gleidel, ready to move if I have to. Beside me her breath is shallow, shaky. The footsteps approach at an even pace, then stop outside the office, and Sanjana closes her eyes. I take the advice I gave her earlier— just think about the actions, not the reasons or the feelings.
Then the light above us flicks off, and the footsteps recede. We both hold still until they’re no longer audible, then together we slump, exchanging glances in the dim light. Time to stop talking, start moving. For all we know, that patrol’s next stop could be the guard we left dead in the office.
“Think,” I whisper, easing the safety back on once more. “Is there any other way to open the doors besides having a recognized thumb-print, hacking it, or physically breaking it down? Can you think of any other time when the door has ever opened?”
She closes her eyes, and I wait, nerves jangling. Eventually she shakes her head. “I don’t—no, wait. There’s an emergency shutdown measure. I’ve never seen it happen, but I’ve been briefed on it. If the station loses
power, like in the event of a fire or an earthquake, all the office doors will unlock so nobody’s trapped inside.”
Hope surges, and it feels like coming back to life. We’re not done yet. “But,” she says, holding up one finger, “those soldiers—or mercenar-ies, I guess—are in the corridors leading to the exits.”
“So we can get them out of their cells, but not out of the facility?” But she’s smiling, and though it’s only faint, there’s a hint of some-thing there that I find I like. “I didn’t say that, Captain. We can go out through the tunnel housing the accelerator tubes. It’s over twenty klicks long, but there’s a maintenance hatch every few klicks or so. I can show you the way, if you can get us there. I know those tunnels like Michaela never will.”
“I like the way you think, my friend.”
“I get that a lot.” Her smile widens, and I want to smile back, despite the desperation of our situation.
“Let’s go get the others freed. Do you know where we go to cut the power?”
“I do.” She pauses, eyeing me as her smile fades again. “But you’re not going to like it. The fuse box is in the dining hall, on the opposite side of the courtyard. We’ll have to get out without being seen, and there aren’t many places to hide out there. And I’ll have to get a good look at it once we’re there—it won’t just be a matter of flipping a switch. There are too many backups for that.”
She’s right. I don’t like it. Night is falling now, so we’ll have darkness on our side, but I saw floodlights on my way in, and from what I’ve seen of these mercs, they’re smart enough to have guards outside watching for any incoming forces.
For the first time, I’m glad it’s just Sanjana and me as we slip through the corridors, ducking into labs full of computer banks and unrecogniz-able equipment every time a merc rounds the corner. By the time we make it to the doors, it’s several hours past sundown, but as I feared, the mercs have put the facility’s floodlights to good use. Their coverage isn’t as thorough as they’d be on a military installation, and shadows still gather along the edges of the courtyard. It’s not quite dark enough for me to pull up my goggles from where they hang around my neck and switch to night vision—the floodlights would flare too bright, though it would
be useful in the shadows. It’s from the dark of the shadows that we’re making our move.
There’s a guard patrolling, flashlight in hand, making a long, slow loop around and through the tables and chairs, the satellite dish, the vari-ous debris strewn around the yard. Sanjana and I keep to the shadows, inching along with agonizing slowness, only able to move when he’s fac-ing away from us. On the far side of the courtyard, brightly lit, lies Nico’s body, still facedown, arms reaching.
As the guard continues the remainder of each loop, we crouch together against the wall, faces turned away from the light. Sanjana’s left her white lab coat behind, and we stick to the shadows. I can tell her hand is hurting her badly now, cradled against her chest, but she keeps moving without complaint. The guard reaches the point in his loop where we’re out of his sight, and together we creep forward as silently and quickly as we can.
We’re just one more run from the dining hall and the fuses when the loudspeakers crackle to life. We freeze in place as they hiss and spit, then broadcast a voice. It belongs to the blond, tattooed leader of the mercs. “Captain Merendsen, Dr. Rao, I see you’ve declined our hospitality. Not to worry—we have Dr. Stewart here to explain your mistake.”
“Sanjana!” It’s a man’s voice, ragged and high with fear—he can barely speak, gulping for air in quick, short gasps. “Sanjana, he’s going to—”
The world slows and I know, an instant before it happens, what’s coming next. As Sanjana starts to leap to her feet in horror, I lunge for her, clapping a hand over her mouth and pressing her back against the wall as a gunshot shrieks through the speakers, sending them crackling and whining with feedback in the aftermath. I pin her to the wall so she screams against my hand, the loudspeakers drowning her out, and I crowd in after her to press my forehead to hers, one hand over her mouth, the other wrapping around her. I’m praying my dark uniform and dark hair will hide us in the shadows, praying she falls silent before the speakers do, fighting the way my pulse wants to leap up my throat, the pounding in my temples. There’s no what’s next, there’s only now, and this moment lasts forever.
She buries her face against my shoulder and muffles the sound of her breathing, though I feel her whole frame jerking as she hyperventilates. I’m holding on to her just as tightly, trying not to let my own shock show.
This isn’t how it’s done. He’s supposed to give us the chance to turn our-selves in before he starts killing hostages.
But the man with the tattoo is a professional, and he knows that what-ever it cost me, I wouldn’t have surrendered. Not when it meant giving up the lives of all ten hostages. So he went for Sanjana. To take such a piece out of her that she’d give away her location, or just hand herself in. And I’m afraid she will, as she grabs a handful of my shirt, still hiding her face against my shoulder.
The speakers crackle again, and I hold her tighter. “Now, Dr. Rao,” he says. “We understand each other. Whatever Captain Merendsen is telling you, he is wrong. He is a soldier, and is not permitted to surrender in such a situation. But you are a civilian, and no such rules apply. All you need to do is assist us with the information we require, and we will leave. We’ve been instructed to allow you to live if possible, and we have no wish to harm you. Nobody else needs to die, unless you insist, Dr. Rao.”
She lifts her head, and my heart sinks as I look down to make out her features in the dim light. It takes me a moment to realize she’s not trem-bling with fear, or even distress.
She’s shaking with fury.
“Dr. Rao, if you will not cooperate, I will go fetch another hostage, and we will have another conversation,” he says, sounding a little weary, as though he’s a disappointed parent.
I drop my head so I can whisper in her ear, barely a breath. “He said ‘fetch.’ He doesn’t have anybody there. We have a minute.”
She nods, and I duck my head further to hear her reply. “We need to cut the power. I know my way in the dark.”
My heart’s racing as I squeeze her shoulder, easing away from her to look across the stretch of half-lit courtyard between us and the dining hall.
“The newsvids didn’t say anything about hostages getting shot.”
“They never broadcast the defeats. Only the triumphs.” “All those medals, your promotion to major, the publicity trip on the Icarus...”
“For show. Meant nothing.”
“Stop that. You survived, and you got at least half a dozen hostages out. Did they make that up too? Just because you couldn’t save everyone doesn’t mean you’re any less of a—”
“A what?” “A hero.”
SIX
WE CAN’T AFFORD TO WAIT FOR THE GUARD to start moving again, not with his boss walking toward the row of offices this very moment, heading for Sanjana’s team. We stay low, heads down, and run as quietly as we can for the dining hall door—and we’re just a couple of feet short when the guard’s flashlight swings across our bodies.
“Stop,” he shouts, and I yank the door open, every nerve in my body on fire. Sanjana throws herself through it, and I stumble after her, pull-ing it closed but for a crack so I can see what’s happenpull-ing in the yard.
“Go, find the fuses,” I shout, and she runs across the room, pull-ing open a closet that looks like it should hold coats. Instead I see row upon row of switches and levers, a tiny automatic light illuminating her. She gets to work, and I position myself by the door, scanning the yard for the mercenary. He’s smart, he’s turned his flashlight off, but I catch a glimpse of him as he runs under one of the spotlights, and I loose a warning shot over his head. No point hiding where we are now, and per-haps I can slow him down.
He dives behind a table, pulling it onto its side to act as a shield with the combat reflexes of a seasoned soldier, and I hold my fire, watching him, willing my hands to stay steady. Behind me, I can hear Sanjana frantically pulling at wires, swearing in a tone that’s half frustration, half entreaty. “There’s backup upon backup here—just switching these off isn’t going to trigger the release protocol.”
“We’ve got thirty seconds,” I call as the guard starts to climb to his feet, and the door on the other end of the courtyard flies open, half a dozen mercs pouring out of it. I suck in a long, slow breath, lifting my gun, bracing it with both hands. No other choice left. If I want any chance of getting the rest of the research team out of here alive, I have to make a statement that will slow down the raiding party. I breathe out, and once I’m totally still, I sight down the barrel and squeeze the trigger.
The figure at the front of the group running down the courtyard staggers, crashing to the ground a heartbeat later. Chest shot, straight through the joint of his armor at the shoulder. Game over. The rest of the group drop, but it doesn’t stop them—they scramble for cover behind the tables and chairs, darting out unpredictably, that much harder to hit. Come on, Sanjana.
I fire again, and this time they return fire, shots screaming across the courtyard. They’re blowing holes in the shutters along the length of the dining hall, pinpricks of light illuminating one after another, like they’re painting constellations on the wall.
“Now, Sanjana!” I shout as I duck down low, returning fire through the door—no longer aiming over their heads, no longer sure what I’m hitting. There are too many shots incoming, and I haven’t got time to aim. I’d trade anything for one of their rifles, or just to get my flak jacket back. It’s not as good as full body armor, but it’d give me some protec-tion. Right now I’m a sitting duck.
“I’m trying,” she screams, hoarse, ripping at wires—but the lights are still on. I risk turning my head for a moment, in time to see her wrench the covering plate off the whole setup, using both hands. At least one of the gunshots has hit the circuits—not enough to cut power, but enough to set the mass of wires sparking and fizzing, flames starting to lick at the control box. She tries to reach for the wires feeding power to the facility, then jerks her hand back with a cry of pain.
There’s a deafening roar from the other end of the dining hall, and a mercenary comes leaping through one of the closed shutters, splintering the shredded plastene, landing with a crash in a pile of chairs. I stand, lift my gun, and fire at his face, the only part of him I’m sure isn’t covered
with armor that’ll stop my Gleidel.
Sanjana screams something at me, but I can’t hear her over the gun-fire. She stares at me, then looks back at the cabinet. With a wordless cry, she plunges her good hand into the tangle of wires and sparks and flame, grabbing a handful of wires and hauling with all her might.
“Was she...?”
SEVEN
EVERY SOUND IS AMPLIFIED now that we’re blinded so com-pletely. I hear Sanjana cry out again, this time in pain, her breathing quick and sharp. I pull up my goggles and switch them to night vision, and suddenly the world springs to life before me, lit a dim green. At the other end of the room, the mercenary is groping around in the dark, and near me, Sanjana’s lying still. She moans as I drop to a crouch beside her. She just thrust her hand into an electrical fire—my mind shies away from her injuries. I slide my arm around her and haul her up to her feet, praying she can still move, and together we make our run for it, out into the courtyard.
It’s pitch black out there now, thanks to Sanjana—two of the mercs have flashlights, beams swinging around wildly. A shot rings out, and there’s a cry, and a roar from the blond man that sounds less collected now. “The next man who shoots blindly in the dark, I’ll damn well shoot him. Find them!”
An instant later the emergency alarms start up, and beside me San-jana staggers forward with renewed haste. If we don’t get back inside the main building before they get organized, we’ll be playing a game we’re guaranteed to lose. We abandon stealth completely, and I make the most of the fact that I’m the only one who can see the layout of the court-yard—we run for the far end together, praying the flashlight doesn’t find us. A mercenary rises to his feet from behind an overturned table with
no warning, and instinct takes over as I knee him in the jaw and send him sprawling. I pause only long enough to grab his rifle, stowing my Gleidel in its holster as I start running again. Beside me Sanjana’s moan-ing now, but she’s still movmoan-ing.
We tumble through together, and she leans against the wall as I slide the doors shut behind us with a loud clang. Perhaps they’ll give us a few seconds of protection against a bullet in our backs. The emergency sirens, mounted out in the courtyard, are muffled now. There are win-dows along one side of the hallway, and enough light from Patron’s rings makes it in that I can pull my goggles down around my neck once more—they mess with my depth perception, and I can discern shapes along the walls without them. I automatically check the charge on my new weapon; nearly full, plenty of power to make it through this. If we can make it through.
We’re a few steps down the hall when I spot a figure sitting inside one of the offices, and my rifle swings up before I even think. It’s a woman in a white coat, slumped back with a bullet between her eyes, her stare unblinking, blood trickling down her face.
“Michaela,” Sanjana says, and there’s not an ounce of sorrow in her voice.
I guess they were finished with her.
Sanjana stumbles as we turn the corner to make for the offices. “I don’t think I can—” She gasps, muffled, as she stops by the first door, leaning in against the wall. In the dim silvery light of Patron’s rings, her whole left sleeve is soaked with what looks like ink.
The office door nearest us opens, and a silhouette emerges—it’s a man, holding something with a faintly illuminated screen. An e-filer, maybe. It outlines his features as he steps forward, hesitant. “Sanjana?”
“Jacob,” she whispers, hoarse.
He hurries forward, lifting the e-filer so he can get a look at us in its glow. The light gives me my first good look at Sanjana’s hand. Bile pushes up my throat, like I’ve been punched in the gut. The burns on her hand are a mass of raw, glistening blisters, and blood’s pouring from a cut on her wrist.
pull him in.
“Hold it where I can see it,” I snap, as Sanjana sways. I can’t imagine how she managed to run even this far. She won’t last another minute. I can’t lose her now. He shines the light on her hand, and I yank my T-shirt off over my head, wrapping it around her wrist. She screams, and the other office doors fly open, scientists emerging armed with desk lamps and other implements I can’t make out in the dark. The man with the light calls out to them to stand down as I pull off my belt, wrapping it around her wrist and hauling the tourniquet tight.
Another woman hurries up to take up position behind Sanjana, brac-ing her as I fasten the belt in place, and together we catch her as her knees give.
“What’s happening?” she asks, wrapping an arm around Sanjana’s shoulders. “Why are you helping us?”
“Because I’m not them,” I reply, taking a quick head count. Nine researchers, plus Sanjana—everyone we were expecting, with Dr. Stew-art dead. “We’re getting out of here.”
The researchers just stare blankly at me, like animals lined up for the slaughterhouse. I bite back a curse. This was always going to be the hard-est part—which is saying something, the day I’ve had. Sanjana’s ability to keep moving made me think that maybe I could get them moving too, but she’s one in a million. The terrified civilians in front of me just heard their colleague shot over the loudspeakers, Sanjana’s covered in blood, and they’ve clearly been promised they won’t be hurt if they cooperate. Their offices must seem like the safest place to hide right now. But the one we thing we don’t have is time to argue.
I start with Jacob, who was at least game to come out of his office when we arrived, and the woman with her arm around Sanjana, meeting each of their gazes in turn in the dim light. Spending precious seconds locking eyes with them, letting them take my measure. “We’ve got to go,” I say quietly, and slowly, each of them nods.
I move along the row of researchers, who stand along the wall as though they’re lined up for inspection, clutching their makeshift weap-ons with white-knuckled hands. I read their names off their coats, I cajole, I harden my voice and issue orders, and over the longest minute
of my life, one by one they step forward, ready to go, until there’s just one man standing in his doorway, clutching a jagged piece of plastene ripped from a printer. He refuses to budge even when I shout at him to follow us. I can’t leave him behind. I have to leave him behind, or everyone else will die, too.
Then Sanjana is beside me, supporting her own weight and straight-ening her back, white with blood loss—even swaying, she’s in command, and I know by the way his eyes lock on to her that he feels it. “Malcolm, if you don’t get your ass out here and with the group right now, you can die under your desk,” she snaps. “Move it.”
And miraculously, he does. Apparently sometimes threats do work on civilians.
Two of Sanjana’s colleagues take her by the arms once more, and though she cries out in pain at the contact, she clings grimly to con-sciousness. We’re turning to head down the hallway when abruptly the sirens cut out—our footsteps are suddenly amplified, and voices raised just to be heard ring through the halls for a moment too long.
And in return I hear shouts as the mercs pick up our scent.
“The tunnel,” I snap, and several arms lift and point the way we need to go. And so we run. I push the herd ahead of me, bringing up the rear with my gun at the ready, every nerve in my body screaming at them to hurry up, run faster, outpace the attack I know is coming. We round the first corner in the near darkness, then the second, running along a stretch of corridor and beneath a sign that reads Maintenance Tunnel Entrance. Every second I’m expecting a merc to catch up to us and open fire, and I keep my gun pointing the direction we’ve come.
We round the next corner, pouring into an abandoned staff room, tables overturned, a plate smashed in the middle of the floor. The people ahead of me stop short, and in the dim light through the window, it takes me several frantically drumming heartbeats to work out why. Then I see it.
There’s an armor-clad figure leaning against the far wall, gun pointed straight at my chest.
It’s Fisk.
The researchers stop, a couple ducking behind tables, most simply standing, waiting for what has to come next.
His throat is covered in blood, and it glints darkly down his chest plate, his skin white, hair matted against his forehead with sweat. Either he was one of the mercs I shot in the yard, or else he was hit by one of them while they fired blindly in the dark. But his gun doesn’t waver, the sights fixed on me, despite the blood gluing his hand to the grip.
Too much blood. He’s done, and we both know it—our gazes acknowl-edge it as they meet. But my gun’s still pointing back the way we came, and he could drop me in the time it’d take to swing it back toward him. He could shoot me now, and their mission—whatever it is—would suc-ceed with no survivors. Our eyes lock, and all I can see is the kid who kept losing at cards and fretting about his girlfriend; all I can see is the kid I trained to stay alive.
And then he drops his arm to his side. He can’t speak—the wound in his throat is too severe—but he jerks his head toward the door beyond him, and I take his meaning nonetheless.
“Go,” I snap over my shoulder, and the surviving researchers startle forward, pouring past the dying mercenary and through the door. Gil lets his knees buckle, armor scraping as he slides down to sit against the wall. The only sound is the rasping, bubbling sound of his breath in his throat. My own throat feels tight. He doesn’t look like the hard-edged, competent mercenary anymore. He just looks like Gil Fisk, the farm boy from Babel. And now there’s nothing I can do for him.
His hand moves, fingers clumsy with pain; he’s gesturing toward the tunnels. Go.
So I do the only thing I can, breaking into a run until I catch up to the others at the tunnel entrance, blocked by a massive metal hatch. Sanjana is gasping instructions in a voice gone hoarse with pain and shock, shaking violently now. Malcolm follows her instructions, pulling at the arm-length levers and straining to muscle the hatch open with-out any power supply to its hinges. I can hear an argument breaking out behind her, a blond woman whose name I can’t remember gesturing back the way we’ve come, on the verge of panic.
“We’ve got to call the base, or try to reason with them—one soldier versus a dozen mercenaries? It’s suicide to stay with him!” The blond woman doesn’t even look at me, too frightened to care that I’m well within earshot. And I don’t blame her.
“There’s no going back,” Sanjana snaps. “There’s no negotiating with them, trust me.”
“And you think running down here with guns on our tails is safer?” The woman’s voice is shrill. “He’s a teenager, why are you listening to him?”
I can hear shouts growing nearer, and the scientists crowd in against the wall for shelter as I take up position by the corner of the corridor the mercs will come down, weapon at the ready. A few of the researchers are listening to the blond woman, torn by indecision—two of them join Malcolm, and inch by agonizing inch they pull the tunnel hatch toward them.
We’re not going to get the hatch open in time. I’ll buy them as much time as I can, but without armor and without cover, it’s not going to be enough. Before I can think of a distraction, a white-clad figure bolts past me. It’s the blond woman. I grab for her coat, but she rips away from my grip, voice raised as she runs back around the corner.
“Wait, don’t shoot, I can—” Her voice cuts off in a hail of gunfire. From behind me, I feel a tickle of breeze. The hatch is open. I swal-low hard, trying to suppress the thought bubbling up: the woman’s death bought us the few seconds we needed.
“Go,” Malcolm’s hissing, and one by one the team crams through, pulling Sanjana with them. A hand grabs my elbow to guide me backward so I don’t have to lower my gun, my eyes streaming with the effort of focusing in the dark corridor. The first of the armor-clad figures comes barreling around the corner, and I lift the rifle to return fire, squeezing the trigger—and nothing happens. The gun’s jammed. I try again, my brain too numb to understand; but even at full charge, the fancy new weapon’s locked up. A bullet clangs off the hatch cover an instant after I duck behind it, and I throw the rifle down and reach instead for my Gleidel. It might not pierce body armor, but it’s never once locked up on me. It just needs a good arm and a good eye. I wait half a breath for my hand to steady, then lean out around the hatch to aim for the joint in his armor at his shoulder. The merc drops with a scream as two others round the corner and lift their weapons.
Half a dozen pairs of hands grab at the hatch to haul it closed behind us, and I fire once more before staggering back. Then the last little sliver
