Vick is nervous.
WE PAUSE at the edge of the wooden platform, me crowding Vick to keep her moving. She doesn’t want to reach the end, and considering our path seems to drop into the great beyond, I can’t blame her, but our guards show no concern for our, or their, safety.
At least her claustrophobia has abated.
If anything, I’ve developed a touch of agoraphobia. I don’t like dark corners I can’t see into—a paranoia that’s increased since my exposure to Vick—and the emptiness on all sides except behind gives me the creeps. I put a little more space between myself and Vick’s body. While I need her to walk forward, I don’t need our physical contact to transfer my fears to her. She has enough going on in her head as it is.
The platform is wide enough for four of us to walk abreast, and instead of Lyle and Alex being first and last, we find ourselves side by side. We’re a team. No matter what the Storm assigns us, we’re a team. And it’s nice.
As we reach the end, Lyle points across the emptiness. There’s a light—a tiny circle of wavering light, though it’s growing in size as it comes closer. Soon enough the light reveals a large raft-like structure attached to it, empty except for one male figure guiding it with a lever at the front. A soft whirring echoes off the distant walls and ceiling, a motor of some kind.
Vick slips between two of Jacks’s security to the edge of the platform, then peers down.
“It’s a lake. A gigantic fucking lake. In the middle of a moon,” she says, voice breathy with awe.
I move beside her. Now that there’s more light from the oncoming raft, I can make out hundreds of tiny darting forms beneath the formerly smooth, now slightly rippling surface of the water. The light reflects off the iridescent scales of the fish, turning the entire body of water into a midnight sea of shooting stars. It’s fascinating, hypnotic, and—
“Beautiful,” Vick whispers.
The emotion in her voice stuns me, and I’m reminded of how very far she’s come in her emotional regrowth. The back of her hand brushes mine as we stand beside each other, my skin tingling with the urge to take hers and hold it, but that would be out of character at this moment. Realizing she’s slipped a bit herself, she steps away from me, straightens her posture, and places her hands on her hips, more like a businesswoman surveying a possible purchase than a gawking tourist.
Or a hopeless romantic.
My heart surges. I stifle the need to grin like a fool and school my expression into one of professionalism—the perfect assistant.
“How did they get here?” she asks.
“The miners who originally worked here had the lake stocked so fishing could be a recreational activity. Not a lot to do between shifts down here,” Felix says, playing tour guide. “The current staff takes advantage of it sometimes as well. And they’re quite tasty, though chemicals in the water mean you have to cook them in a detox boil.”
“Yum,” Vick mutters under her breath.
The raft bumps gently against the dock platform. The operator opens a swinging portion of the railing that runs around the entire craft, and we all step aboard, taking places along the rail and wrapping both hands around it. Even the local security grabs hold.
“Does it get rough?” I ask, a slight tremor in my voice. I’ve been on rocky boats. Neither I nor my stomach enjoy them. As I speak, the operator backs us up, turns us around, and sets us off toward a distant, invisible shore.
Petala glances at me over her shoulder from where she stands on the opposite rail. “Um, no. But we do have some, shall we say, overeager wildlife. Nothing carnivorous,” she hastens to reassure me.
Oh good. I’m having flashbacks of octosharks. A shiver passes through Vick’s frame beside me. She still has nightmares about that encounter, when two of the eight-mouthed creatures nearly tore her limb from limb in the ocean on Infinity Bay. I guess that incident was too recent for VC1 to eliminate when she transferred some of Vick’s worst memories elsewhere.
I continue to wonder where that “elsewhere” is, and so does Vick.
Regardless of Petala’s assessment of the danger, all four of our team members stare into the dark waters of the cavern’s lake, trying to spot anything aggressive before it spots us. Or eats us, for that matter. But it’s peaceful, the tiny albino fish circling around the raft in large clusters of shimmering brilliance. My shoulders relax. Vick shifts her stance away from the one I recognize as “ready to fight” and into her “at ease” pose, still prepared to snap back to attention at a moment’s notice, but more observant than wary.
I’m guessing we’re about halfway across the body of water. If I narrow my eyes, I can just make out the outline of something flat jutting into the lake from an opposite shore—the landing dock, and beyond that another tunnel mouth leading farther into the installation. There’s movement too, a number of indiscernible figures milling about, waiting for the raft to take them to where we came from. Some of them stop and wave, an odd gesture for people I assume to be guards or servants, but I give a faint wave back. There’s also sound, like… shouts of welcome? I can’t make out specific words in this echo chamber, especially with the raft’s sail flapping so loudly in the… wind?
Lakes surrounded by shields in the center of moons don’t have wind.
And the raft has a motor, not a sail. So what—?
A chorus of shrieks like a cross between the gemstone drill and otherworldly banshees reverberates off the unseen cavern walls, and I realize those on the opposite shore aren’t waving. They’re gesticulating wildly and pointing.
“Watch out!” Felix and Petala shout in unison, lowering their heads. We follow suit, but not before something catches in my hair, yanking out my businesslike bun so that my blond locks tumble around my face, blinding me. Then we’re all swarmed by a mass of flying things, dozens and dozens of scaly bodies brushing over my skin, snagging the fabric of my professional attire. I shove my hair aside, focusing on leathery wings attached to foot-long lizard-like creatures in metallic colors of red, green, gold, and silver, shiny in the raft’s light.
They would be lovely if they weren’t attacking us.
There’s a yell of surprise from behind me, and I whirl. Several of the creatures are working in tandem, talons gripping the shoulders of Vick’s suit jacket and her skin beneath. Small trails of blood show through the material—nothing life-threatening but certainly painful, reinforced by the hint of red in her emotional aura, and I raise my shields to avoid the empathic echo. The creatures must be stronger than their size would suggest, their wings powerful enough to have her over a foot off the floor of the raft. She’s got a hold on the handrail, but one of her hands slips as I watch so that she’s tugged upward at a sideways angle.
I grab the person beside me, Petala, shaking her. “Do something! I thought you said they aren’t carnivorous.”
“They aren’t,” the guard says, pulling her pistol from its holster, a strange plastic-coated model I’m not familiar with. Not that I’m a gun expert. That’s Vick’s area. But this one is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. “This behavior isn’t normal. If they bother passengers at all, they buzz the group, maybe pull a little hair or some clothing, and fly off. They’re just territorial.”
“How territorial?” I growl, getting in her face.
Her mouth sets in a grim line while she adjusts her weapon, searching for a clear shot. “If they truly feel threatened? Deadly so. But they live on the cavern ceiling and in narrow tunnels along the lake walls. We shouldn’t be considered a threat….” Petala trails off and shakes her head.
I turn back to Vick. Alex and Lyle each have one of her legs, and they’re pulling her downward, but it’s a tug-of-war with the lizards actually gaining height and more joining them every moment.
What I don’t understand is why Vick doesn’t do something. She’s dangerous as hell, and I’m betting she has more weapons secreted on her than the one they confiscated in the landing bay. Why isn’t she fighting back instead of depending on—
Oh. Right. A businesswoman isn’t supposed to be a trained warrior. And her weapons would be concealed in the lining of her clothing for later use once we drop our covers. She doesn’t want to reveal them now, doesn’t want to give us all away before we’ve even begun to accomplish our goal, and I wonder how much is her own desire and how much is her brainwashing to finish the mission at all costs.
I stare at her face, frustration warring with determination in her features, the gray hue of her emotional turmoil almost black in its complexity. She hates helplessness. She hates relying on others.
Especially when those others aren’t succeeding in saving her.