CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

 

Something shrieked to Nova's left. She whirled around and scooted backwards, her shoulder scraping along the sandstone wall.

Fingernails scraped over a blackboard and rusted metal knives scratched together. A hundred noises pummeled Nova's head and raised the flesh along her spine. Her skin tingled, threatening to fall straight off. She shivered, teeth chattered.

Noise came from all directions and yet the cavern was empty except for her and Tobius' corpse.

Someone laughed. It was a deep, throaty voice that echoed around the room. It circled Nova's head, taunting her. She swatted at the noise with her hands, but it didn't go away.

She blinked.

A green forest replaced the sandstone room. Vines dangled down from the branches overhead and reached out for her.

She ducked out of their way. Where was Tobius' body?

Birds screeched overhead and other creatures scurried through the undergrowth. A fresh, green smell filled the air, like freshly cut grass.

Nova got to her feet, her legs shook. She had no idea how she got here, but at least she could get away. She staggered through the trees, swatting branches and vines aside. Her only thoughts were of getting away, finding Crusader, and flying free.

She went five steps and slammed into a solid wall.

Her lip split open and she toppled backward. She landed hard on her back and pain surged up her spine.

Sandstone walls surrounded her on all sides. Something warm and sticky coated her hand.

She looked down; her hand lay in a pool of Tobius' blood. She wrenched it out and blood spattered across the floor, dripped from her fingers. She scraped her hand back and forth on a patch of dirt but dried blood clung to her skin.

Bile rose in the back of her throat and joined the tang of blood from her lips.

She held her bloodied hand away from her body and tried not to look at it.

Nova blinked.

Bright city lights surrounded her. She lay on hard pavement beside a busy road. People shuffled past but didn't seem to notice her.

The taste of blood grew stronger.

A man stood in a side street. It was dark, but Nova could make out his black clothing by the dim glow of a street light. He had slanted eyes and pale skin. He watched the street and sniffed the air. He looked familiar and yet Nova was sure she'd never seen him before in her life.

The man's gaze flicked to his left, to a young girl whose heels clicked against the sidewalk. The man smiled and leapt out of his ally. He snatched the girl back into the darkness and leaned over her neck. Something black protruded from his mouth, like a black snake. No! A leach. The man was a lecheon.

The girl went pale and stopped struggling, then the man stood and disappeared into the darkness.

Nova pushed herself upright and stumbled toward the girl. Perhaps she'd be in time to save her.

Nova held her hands out in front of her face but she couldn't remember why. Blood trickled down her lip.

Her hands slammed into something solid and rough. She frowned and stared hard at the air in front of her; something shimmered. She looked harder and the world disappeared around her.

Sandstone walls spattered with blood.

She lifted a finger to her bloated lip, then drew it away, covered in blood.

She whirled in a circle. The room was just as she remembered. There was no sign of the forest or the city.

Nova stormed to the stone door and smashed her fist against it.

No response.

"Cal! Cal! Can you hear me?"

No reply.

The ground tilted beneath Nova's feet and threw her off balance. She staggered against the nearest wall, which vibrated. Rocks fell from the roof and crashed to the ground around her.

She wrapped her arms over her head and pressed her body as close to the wall as she could.

The quaking continued for what felt like eternity, and even once it stopped, Nova stayed crouched against the wall.

Nova opened her eyes, something was different. She studied the sandy floor and piles of fallen rocks.

The body and blood were gone, and the stone door was gone, replaced by a dark tunnel that led up and out.

Nova pushed herself upright and peered into the tunnel beyond. Blue lights broke the darkness. It seemed cleaner than before; less dust and loose dirt.

She reached for her gun but it wasn't in her holster. She turned and scanned the room but it wasn't there, it must have been buried beneath the pile of rocks.

She felt naked without her weapon, but she didn't have a choice. She had to get back to Crusader.

Her boots scraped on the smooth floor but otherwise silence surrounded her.

She didn't know the way out so settled for always turning right. She had to get to the exit eventually.

Pain throbbed behind her eyes in time with her heartbeat and she had to walk bent over because her ribs felt as though they'd snap in half if she tried to stretch.

No matter what Cal said, there was no way she was going to stay on this planet. Let the universe be damned. She'd fly away. There had to be somewhere that the Ancients couldn't get to.

Voices shook Nova out of her reverie. She slowed down and crept toward the sound. She peaked around a doorway and found two Ancients, both in black armor with eye-slits that glowed yellow. They stood close with heads bent together.

"You understand your orders?"

"We are to stay here until the tomb is disturbed. From there we will carry out our sacred duty to guide the galaxies forward."

"Correct. I don't know how long this plague will last or how bad it will be. Perhaps we'll survive it, in which case I'll see you in a few weeks. If we don't—"

"You will."

"If we don't, then it's your job to finish what we started."

"I understand."

"Good, now get on with you."

The two Ancients held up their hands. Yellow light shone from their armored palms and grew brighter as they moved their hands closer. Their palms touched and the light flashed, then died.

They turned away from each other. One strode into a dark room and the other slid a massive, stone door in front of the entrance. The one left outside patted his hand against the stone and then trudged away with his head hung low.

Nova crept after the creature, even though her whole body hurt and threatened to fall apart beneath her.

Nova's mind raced. If the Ancients were worried about a plague then maybe they weren't as big a threat as they pretended to be. It sounded like all she had to do was wait until they died of natural causes. That would certainly help her guilty conscience when she left the known galaxies.

The Ancient led her straight up to the exit and she followed it out into the desert.

Nova stumbled to a stop; how long had she been gone?

Hundreds of alien ships stood lined up on the sand, like a fleet ready for invasion. Red and blue moonlight reflected off their smooth metal hulls and sleek weapons.

The Confederacy ships were gone, along with the bodies of all the workers and the Confederacy soldiers.

Nova frowned; something wasn't right. She couldn't tell how long she'd been gone, but surely it would have been easier for the Ancients to leave the Confederacy ships wherever they fell; they wouldn't bother moving them.

Nova's heart leapt into her throat.

The red moon had been destroyed by the Ancients. She'd watched it happen. The whole thing was reduced to a black-hole and then nothing.

She looked up and stared. The red moon glowed above her, as bright as when she'd first arrived on Archalon. But that wasn't possible, did the Ancients have the power of recreating moons as well?

A rumbling roar surged from the fleet and shook the ground. The ships glowed and then hurtled upward, blotting out the light from the moons and casting a broad shadow over Archalon.

Nova staggered forward. "No." But she was too late. Even if she found a way to defeat them, she'd never catch up to the ships.

The armada hurtled forward and gale-force blasted out behind them. It slammed into Nova and threw her backward. She landed with a hard bump.

Back inside her sandstone prison.

"What!"

Tobius' body lay beside her, surrounded by spatters of blood. The stone door blocked the way into the tunnel beyond.

Nova had followed the yellow-eyed Ancient back up into the world. Why was she back here? How!?

She scrambled over to her pistol and with shaking hands dropped it back into her holster.

Rage burned inside. She hated whoever kept laughing. She hated the voices, just at the edge of her hearing and the sights and smells she couldn't quite perceive. She hated feeling of a thousand eyes on the back of her head and that her mind was on the very edge of madness.

Most of all, she hated the damned room.

She stomped over to the door. It felt as if a vat of acid had been poured into her veins and coursed through her. Her chest tightened, burning with fury.

She reached the door, raised her fist above her head and swung it down with all her might. She would break through this door, chipping away individual specs of sand if she had to.

Her fist reached the door, and then disappeared.

She stared at the piece of empty space, her mouth gaping.

The anger drained from her body and a cold spear of icy dread went through her heart and dropped to her stomach. Her wrist ended in shimmering nothing where her hand should have been.

Her throat closed over. What the hell was happening?

She flicked her fingers back and forth, even though she couldn't see them, she could still feel them, and feel air brush past them.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to think rationally. Perhaps she had slipped into the abyss of madness; it was the only way to explain what she was seeing. Tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

She imagined throwing a grappling hook and catching the very last shreds of her sanity.

She did the only logical thing; she stepped backwards.

Her hand reappeared as if she'd withdrawn it from behind a curtain. Her palm, followed by her fingers, came into view. Only it didn't look like her hand, it was dark, covered in a fine powder.

She brought her hand to her face and stared at it. Soot. She frowned and rubbed her hand on her torn jeans. The soot left streaks across her pants but her hand looked normal enough underneath.

She stared at the appendage as if it could disappear at any moment. For all she knew, it could.

She shook her head. Despite everything she'd seen, there had to be a logical explanation.

She strode to the door and swiped her left hand through the air. Nothing happened. She tried with her right hand, nothing happened.

She sighed and stomped to the far corner where she slumped down and looked between the door and her hand.

She had only one explanation; she'd been subjected to the time vortex and in response she'd gone mad. It made sense. What sort of person could see all of time and space flying by them and not go mad? It was the only natural response. So here she was, trapped in a tiny room of her memory.

"But if I were mad," Nova said to herself. "Wouldn't I know it?"

"No. That's the whole point," she replied.

She shivered. Usually she prided herself on being a rock, completely unshakable.

The Ancients had shaken her.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. If she was going to survive her madness, she would need sleep, and a lot of it. She let her mind drift, floating from one daydream to another but found it difficult to relax when she was sure that her mind was lost.

She thought about everything she'd seen while in the time vortex. Entire galaxies had flown past. She could have been there forever, watching every bit of reality happening at once. But if she'd done that, she would have gone mad.

"You're already mad," she said to herself and giggled.

A noise thumped through the stone prison.

There was someone at the door.