SABIRA COULDN’T SEE the chosen, but she heard their screams. Heard the frenzied slaps of their running feet ahead of Abomination Zika’s heavy thuds. Sabira charged after the monstrosity, and Orion kept pace behind her.
The tightly curving passage opened into another spacious vault. Like in the stomach, a crystal bridge extended over open air, connecting one end of the vault to the next. Inside, colors morphed and swam in the corners of her eyes, and screams echoed in her ears.
The frantic chosen bunched up at the far end of the bridge, struggling to get through the narrow door irising shut. Not all of them made it. The three trapped inside turned to them as one, pale gray eyes bulging with terror. Abomination Zika laughed, a sound like rotted meat slapping together, and bounded toward their prey.
Sabira stopped halfway across the bridge. Orion had already pulled up short behind her and started heading back.
“We can’t let that other door seal,” Sabira said.
“My thoughts exactly,” he replied.
Sabira kept her back to Abomination Zika. Even though she didn’t watch, she heard. Wet, gargling sounds disrupted the cries of the chosen, until a final crunch echoed through the vault, silencing the last of their screams. Clumsy thuds of falling bodies sounded from below.
“We’re glitched,” Orion called out, striding back across the bridge. “Couldn’t keep the door open.”
“Always another trap,” Sabira muttered, looking for a different way out.
Complex, glowing geometries ran up and down the walls. The multidimensional cyphers had an almost organic quality to them. Always in motion, always transitioning from one intricate form to the next.
“Do you know what this is?” Sabira pointed to the flowing images.
“Higher dimensional gravity equations of some sort,” he answered.
“That is correct,” Abomination Zika said from the far end of the bridge. The flat calm of their voice oddly juxtaposed their gore-smeared body. They placed their dripping hand on the wall of crystal where the door had shut.
“We’re in one of three processing hubs for the weapons systems. But not for long. I’m isolating the local controls. The door will open soon.”
“But Godsfall knows we’re here,” Sabira said. “The High Godseer knows.”
“Yes.”
“How did we get trapped here in the first place?” Orion asked. “When you were checking on the warseers’ location, it didn’t occur to you to check on the human crew?”
“In my queries of the internal subsystems, I filtered out the location data of the maintenance drones. Godsfall apparently placed those poor people in the same category. Not worth mentioning.”
Looking over the edge of the walkway, Sabira spied the bodies of the chosen, necks and limbs turned and bent at the wrong angles. Couldn’t Godsfall’s sensors distinguish between Human life and a swarm of machines? Back at the Hara of Loshan, the other Subaru Hanada had somehow seen that the Orion-mech didn’t have an organic brain and that the rest of them did, even when Daggeira was hidden by a stealth field. Now that the Old Nahg had the organic brain they needed to complete Godsfall, was the rest of Humanity rendered insignificant? Or was this iteration of Subaru Hanada, embodied within that abomination with Daggeira, the one to overlook the chosen too easily?
Or was he lying?
If the oversight came from their copy of Subaru, then her mistrust was unfortunately justified. If, on the other hand, the oversight came from Godsfall, she could use that to their advantage.
“Something’s happening.” Orion indicated where they had come in. He pulled his rifle free. “The door is dilating. Get ready.”
Sabira lowered to one knee and aimed her palukai. A circle dilated open in the crystal bulkhead. Flying drones swarmed in, their mechanical buzzing echoed off the walls. They looked like the twelve-sided satellite she had ridden, only much smaller. These were the same kind of drones that had trapped Orion in the great dome of the Hara and then her in the heart cavity of Godsfall.
“Snares,” she shouted and opened fire. She and Orion each slagged a few as they poured through the hole, but there were too many. Once through, the snare drones spun and veered in jagged, unpredictable movements. She tracked and fired, but missed more than she hit. Plasma bolts scorched black into the high vaulted walls. The machines returned fire, blasting flashes of yellow energy that blazed against her armor. All the weapons fire quickly heated the air inside the vault. Swirls of smoke and vapor drifted up, making the drones even harder to track.
“They’re too fast,” she shouted.
A loud, brittle snap, like cracking ice, resounded through the vault.
“Move back! The bridge is—” Orion’s words cut off mid-sentence. A cone of blue-green light enveloped him, freezing him motionless.
The center of the bridge had snapped in two. Each half squealed high-pitched crinkling sounds as they retracted to the far ends of the vault. The widening gap crept steadily closer to Orion’s snared body. Sabira spotted the drone emitting the field and fired. It swerved away while keeping him trapped. More drones pelted her with energy blasts. Her armor was holding up, but indicators in her visor informed her it couldn’t withstand these attacks indefinitely.
Orion’s nodes swooped over and twirled around the snare drone, neutralizing it. The field dissipated. Orion stepped nimbly back as the edge of the bridge retracted to where he’d just stood. Ignoring the attacks against her, Sabira took aim and blasted the snare drone to ash and vapor.
She took a few steps back to give Orion room and to get a bead on the drones assaulting her. Before she could fire again, harsh blue-green light encased her. She resisted with all her strength, but couldn’t move a muscle. Blue faded gradually to black as her vision tunneled smaller. Consciousness slipped away into blank nothingness.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the snare field vanished. Sabira sucked in a quick breath and aimed overhead. There it was. She exhaled, pulled the trigger, and watched the drone fall, trailing black ashes.
The node Orion had given her flew down and hovered at Sabira’s shoulder. “Thanks,” she said.
The node responded with a chime transmitted to her helmet. “Another snare field detected.” Then it zipped toward Abomination Zika, now frozen in a cone of light.
“Wait!”
The node stopped and hovered in place.
Two minds animated that monstrosity, and Sabira trusted neither. Now, she had her chance to slag its ugly head.
Her finger tensed on the trigger. It was a clean shot.
Behind her, Orion pressed backwards, away from the creeping ledge. His lasers tore blue streaks through rising smoke, burning more drones out of the air. She needed to act now while he was occupied. But then what? She relied on Abomination Zika to open the doors and lead the way. Maybe Orion could do that for her if she eliminated them. Maybe not. It was a risk, but if Subaru and Daggeira had treachery planned involving that monstrous body, a preemptive bolt to the head might be her best chance to thwart it.
Would that do it? Would both Subaru and Daggeira perish with Zika’s vaporized brain?
If it did . . . If I end up killing Orion’s father, he’d never forgive me. I’d never forgive myself. We each have our own messes to clean. It’s not my place to deal with his.
She lowered her palukai. “Go ahead, set them free.”
Her node darted forward and neutralized the snare drone.
I’ve got enough betrayal hanging on my back as it is.
Sabira fired, destroying the drone. Released from the snare field, Abomination Zika turned three dull eyes on Sabira.
“Did that need to take so long?”
“You’re free, aren’t you? Just get that door open so we can finish this.”
The vault quieted. The crackle of the retreating bridge ceased. No more drones buzzed overhead or swarmed in through the hole. Trails of steam obscured the strange holographic cyphers crawling the walls. Orion kept his rifle trained on the far opening, ready for the next wave, if it came.
“Gold shooting.” She patted him appreciatively on the back. “Will you give me a hand with something? I have an idea.”