Spring Changes, page 26
“We needed to do this.” I grasped his hands in mine. “You have a civilisation to gather, trust to rebuild. I will contact you as soon as we have news.”
Yun glanced at Lenko. “Will you go with them?”
“You want me to leave your side?” he asked.
“I will be safe with my cousins now,” Yun said. “You have the experience and the knowledge of all of us with you. I cannot leave. Will you do this for me?”
“I have never been in space.” Lenko visibly paled and he shifted out of our dimension. “I do now know how to survive out there.”
I coughed. “I know what you need. You do not ever have to worry about your kenosi levels while you are with me. I will make sure you have enough to keep you going.”
I thought about the only other way he could live.
There’s another way, Hiroto piped up inside my mind. A bond.
I wouldn’t ask that of him, yet if it comes down to that, I am sure he wouldn’t hesitate now, knowing what he does of Yun and us.
At least it’s an option, Xe added.
Yes, it is.
Lenko moved from Yun’s side to mine. “Look after me, won’t you?”
I smiled my best reassurances at him. “Any family of Yun’s is mine. Come, let’s get back out there and see what they heck is going on now.”
When we were safely inside a shuttle and then that shuttle was loaded back out into space, we crossed to see Captain Millis waiting for us. He paced the hangar.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “Cassie has been in quite the state of panic. As soon as we’re in deep space and make a couple of jumps, we’ll try to contact her again. She wouldn’t speak to me about it, said she had to talk to you.”
My breathing quickened, and I ran my hand through my hair. “Let’s go. The sooner the better,” I said.
Once on the bridge, Tyto and I strapped ourselves in and waited while we were manoeuvred back out into space. Lenko strapped in as well with one of the other crew members’ aid. Though he was paler than I ever thought a Sitha could be.
“You will be fine,” I tried to reassure him. “Trust me.”
“You’re sure? This is such a small ship. I’ve never even seen one this small from our species.”
“We’ll be fine. I promise.”
My stomach twinged a slight bit of guilt, as when Captain Millis ordered the jump, Lenko flinched. His hands gripped the armrests tight. The realms of space folded before us; stars zipped past. Then we whoomped out of it.
Lenko smiled at me, relaxing his grip. “That wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought.”
“I’m glad,” Millis replied. “At present, I still think we’re another jump away from reaching the queen, if you’d like to retire . . .”
It was the way he looked at both Tyto and I that made me raise an eyebrow. “Drinks in the mess hall will be fine. We’ll wait for your comm.”
“Of course.” He dipped his head towards me. “As soon as I think we’re ready.”
I stood and indicated for the others to follow me.
“Waiting is not my strong point,” I said, settling in the mess hall with a few drinks before us.
“Especially since you only just woke up,” Tyto said. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, but like this week has been one railroad after another.” I turned the drink in my hands, the liquid warming them through but not doing anything for the nerves running through my veins.
“Never a dull life around you,” Tyto said.
I smiled at him. “Yeah, think we sometimes do need a break though.”
He nodded and drank from his own mug. “Millis always knew to keep the good stuff on tap.” He sighed.
Lenko made himself right at home, rooting around the fridge. He sat with us a moment later. “All I can think about is what I’m going to do for energy.”
He pushed his food around his plate a moment later, then tried a bit to eat.
“I said you won’t go without and I meant it. You need anything, you come to either of us, got it?”
Tyto raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t question my call.
“It’s strange,” he said. “I mean, I knew space sapped our energy fast, but it already is.”
I glanced over at him, and Hiroto pulled up his health. It really is. I don’t think I ever recall anything like this from Yun.
Yun was already taking my kenosi on a daily basis. Lenko has no one to draw from. You can see why once in space they are so dangerous. Without a bonded partner, they will have to take a life. Be it someone who is bad or not. Keep an extra eye on him. Anything goes south fast, I want you to let me know as well.
Will do. He’s not safe around anyone on this ship.
How long does he have before his loss becomes an issue?
A day. You’d need to supply him kenosi then. I’ll set an alarm.
I tapped the table, and his focus turned on me. “We can do this.”
He nodded, sucked in a breath. “I know others went into space and often. I was just never interested.”
Distracting him was easier than I thought, though we just got him to talk more about his early years and then into his training.
Tyto sat back, and I heard him on my comms with Xe and Hiroto. If things went wrong, they were formulating a plan.
I thought briefly about using Future Insight and as the world around me faded, I instantly regretted it.
The front line appeared before me. I glanced around, from inside a ship.
Ships spread out before me in their thousands. I stepped forwards, noted the Razor’s and the Cristanna’s weapons firing with everything they had into the armada emerging from the rift.
My eyes drew to it. The rift. Holy crap.
The ships exiting it were twice the size of the Razor. The rift itself was shifting and changing, opening so wide I couldn’t fathom its size.
To my left there were other ships, friendly. The Sitha. The engagement fire rocked the fabric of everything around me, and I lost my footing, my knees hitting the deck.
I tried to watch. Enemy fire blew ship after ship apart. We were falling. Nothing we threw at them made a dent.
The Cristanna took the worst of the incoming hits, their shields falling.
I watched in horror as they failed completely, incoming fire starting to hit her hull.
No! I cried.
The hull broke apart in several places.
The Cristanna crumpled and exploded. Debris shot everywhere, taking out others on the way.
I tried to understand what future in hell this was, what was coming, but I couldn’t. It was too unrelated. Too abstract.
A hand on my shoulder brought me around, the incoming fire stopped. I looked up into Cassie’s eyes. There were blood red tears running down her face.
“You have to stop this,” she said. “Please.”
I couldn’t answer her. I shivered, and the ship lurched, our ship.
The ship I was on vanished, and Tyto frowned at me. “You okay?”
I nodded, sucked in a breath, and drank from my coffee. It was cold. Ugh. I pushed it aside.
“Report to my office,” came over the comms. “We are close enough to reach the queen.”
I looked at Lenko. “Come, you’re now privy to some inside information, may as well keep you close.”
“I’m honoured. Your information will not go further than Yun, I promise you.”
“I know.” I returned my cup to the waste trays, and we made our way through the ship.
Captain Millis waited on us and let us both in as soon as we entered the bridge. He had this strange tick with his hands that told me his nerves were shot.
“Captain,” I said. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”
He nodded at me and motioned for us to sit, but things took another turn, and the room began to fade from my view again. I almost fell into my chair, and I heard Hiroto over the main comms. “Keep an eye on him—something has control over his mind.”
“What?” Tyto’s voice almost faded out with the view of what was before me. In fact, what the hell was before me. I tried to focus. Nothing.
“Give me a little time,” the voice said.
“Cassie?” I asked.
“It is I. This is difficult to reach you both at the same time, but this is needed.”
“Okay, I thought you needed to just talk but . . .”
The view spread out to her gardens, the lake, and her bench. My core twinged with the connection. Yun?
The queen wanted me here too, Yun said. It really is a drain on her. Can you assist?
I focussed over the connection; the strands snaking through space were as thin and wispy as some of Yun’s strands. I imagined them thickening, and before me, they grew in size. The image of the lake grew clearer.
“I’m confused,” I said.
“Come sit with us, Kyle.” Cassie held out her hands for me, and I moved to her.
She took hold of me and sat me down with Yun to my side. She held my eyes with hers, and I couldn’t help but feel I was drowning in them.
“We have a lot to discuss,” Yun said, and I turned to look at him. “There’s been some developments.”
“Well, I’m not sad that you’re here, but I’m worried. Please tell me. Everything I need to know.”
“I have a message from those on your planet, Earth,” Cassie said. “Their message is not a good one.”
With a touch of her fingers to the side of the bench, she brought up a 3D image of someone. I knew the face. The face most of us associated with Arndale.
“Wallace?”
“He is the face of everything you see, but you know he is not human,” Cassie said.
Another click of a button, and his image faded to that which clearly wasn’t human. “What’s the message?”
She motioned the screen and the creature started to speak. “To those in the Gridon System retaliating and causing numerous problems. To the human-denti known to all as Kyle Ranz, this is your first warning.” He waved a hand behind his head. There appeared what looked like tiny squares. Boxes. I froze.
“No,” I said. “They can’t be, right?”
We zoomed in closer to see the numbers on them and a soft green light.
It was clear to see what lay inside.
“They’re bodies.” My fists balled. “Human bodies. I thought we were just brains in a box?”
“This is a switch.” Wallace’s voice brought me back to him. He indicated a button to his left which clearly said Terminate. “This is your warning.”
He hit the button, and the green lights on the square boxes turned red.
“What did he do?” Bile rose to the back of my throat. “What the fuck did he just do?”
“Your minds are still connected to your bodies.” Cassie’s frown graced her pale lips. “He pulled the plug on a hundred minds living out here.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I pushed myself up, rushed to the side of the lake and looked into the waters below me. Parted with everything my stomach had in it.
Someone kneeled beside me, and I couldn’t look up. A soft hand settled on my back and the soothing effects of kenosi trickled into me. I didn’t know if this was real, or if I was still inside Millis’s office.
I sucked in a breath, spat, and then reached down to scoop up some water to rinse again. I eventually pushed myself up enough to look at her.
“Those people?” I asked, my legs trembling. “What happened on this side?”
“We received reports a few hours ago. Several higher-up commanders on the front line dropped dead.”
I hoped for just a few seconds it wasn’t true. That they couldn’t do that. That the people here, their minds, were safe.
“I am sorry,” Yun said from behind me. “He has threatened to terminate more every day until you answer him.”
“What does he want?”
“To speak to you. I fear if they just wanted the rift to open, they would just cull all the human minds here. They know we don’t have many of you out on the front line though. Not to the extent your planet first thought.”
“We were only ever a way to gain more wealth, resources. That much was obvious,” I said.
Yun stood and stepped towards me, his hand outstretched palm forwards. I never hesitated in reaching for him, my eyes locked with the swirling red orbs of his. “They want their resource train back. They want you to agree to work with them instead.”
“I’d never agree to do that,” I said. “To have our side of the universe enslaved again.”
“No, but there’s some hope,” Cassie said. “As much as it hurts, the minds they took were our older commanders, those who were powerful in their own rights. There was one that didn’t go down. There were only ninety-nine lives lost.”
“What was the difference?” I asked her, hope growing within.
“They were in a denti meld. Like you have been. That is our protection.”
“That’s some good news!” I said. “But there’s literally billions of minds out here, right?”
“Yes, sadly. It is taking us quite some time to get our seeds across space, even as many as we are.”
“He must know where my body is?” My thoughts drifted to Jai, Naylar, Denn. Fuck. Most of my team were in single denti bodies.
Don’t panic, Kyle.
How can I not panic! We’re all at risk. Every single one of us! This was bad, so bad.
“There’s no reason for this. It doesn’t make sense in my head.” I slapped my face, hoping this all wasn’t real. “Why send us out to fight their own?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. Distractions,” Cassie said. “Time and resources.”
Hiroto, I said.
Xe and I are on it. I’ll track everything the galaxy wide, I will find why, where, how they are shipping in resources.
“I believe he wants what he always did, more power.” Yun moved before me and raised his hand, bringing up an image I recognised. “You recall the centre of Drudel?”
“How could I forget?” I said. That core had been so pure; I ached to be there once more.
“Wallace is after the core,” Cassie said. “With that comes much more power.”
“Then why are they on Earth?”
Cassie brought up another ball of a floating world before me. The wonderful blues and greens twirled in her hand—it fell into place.
“Earth is like Drudel?”
Something moved out the corner of my eye, and there in the mist became something else. Lavinia stepped through into the grass. She glided closer, and both Cassie and Yun lowered their heads with respect to her. I, however, was tired of all the pretence, the mystery. This pain.
“Correct,” Lavinia said to Yun. “Marshall was not able to take Drudel many years ago, so he turned to another world with similar energies.”
“Earth has kenosi?”
This changes everything, Hiroto said. Literally everything we ever thought.
Yun brought up his other hand and there, settled above it, floated another globe. This one full of dark swirls and I could even see lightning on its surface.
“You know this is the planet Marshall’s from,” Cassie said. “This is where the Vrolsh come from.”
“It’s dead. I’ve seen it.”
“It is more than dead,” Lavinia said. “They’re coming here to take everything they can. They’re running out of time. Anyone on that side of the rift will die, and soon.”
I mean, I was happy with that. They needed to die. Like right now. But the hold they had on us here, the billions of lives. That I couldn’t just ignore.
“What’s his end goal?” I asked her, looking directly into her eyes.
She held mine with hers.
“Tell me the truth. Now,” I demanded.
Cassie took my arm in hers. “Kyle, please, she’s—”
“She’s nothing.” I shook her off me. “Tell me the truth. Now.”
“Marshall plans to take Drudel using anything he can as leverage.”
“Why?” Cassie asked.
Lavinia looked to her, the image of the four planets now rotated. The three from our universe I knew of. Mais Daw, Drudel, and Earth. I stepped towards them, traced a finger from Earth to Drudel, then to Mais Daw, then to the Vrolsh homeward.
“He’s got Earth already, once he has Kyle,” Lavinia said. “He will use him and Yun to take Mais Daw. Then he will go for Drudel. He will connect their energy together, draining everything out of our universe forever. To power theirs once more.”
I swallowed. “What would that mean?”
Lavinia’s eyes closed. “Death to everything, everywhere. With no kenosi, this universe will be as desolate as theirs is now.”
27
The grasses beneath my feet started to fade. I turned away from Lavinia, not able to form the words I wanted to spit at her. “We’ll be with you as soon as we can,” I said, and they were both gone.
When my eyes adjusted to being back on the Zotera, I was staring at the inside of a bin, and the pungent smell made me want to throw up again.
I turned away. The hand on my back was Tyto. I looked up at him, and he frowned.
“You were gone quite some time,” he said and offered a hand. I took it, and he helped me to a chair.
“What happened?” Lenko asked.
Tyto passed me a wet cloth and waited, not questioning. But the concern on all their faces was as evident as the blood red that came off on the cloth.
“Tears?” I asked.
Tyto rubbed his chin. “I’ve never seen it from a meld before, but yes.”
I closed my eyes. Thought about how I could word what I needed to. This involved everyone. I breathed in, slow, steady. Then met his eyes with mine.
“Arndale worked out how to pull the plug on us.” I took a glass of juice and Tyto’s, the taste in my mouth not abated by anything. “It was a demonstration of how. To show us we can’t fight them.”
“We worried about this.” Hiroto’s voice came to us. “No matter what we’ve tried, we couldn’t hide our people.”
“I know.” I looked at the ceiling even though he was in my head. Then I felt a little daft.
Instead, he brought up his image, so that we all could see him. “Better?” Hiroto asked.
Yun glanced at Lenko. “Will you go with them?”
“You want me to leave your side?” he asked.
“I will be safe with my cousins now,” Yun said. “You have the experience and the knowledge of all of us with you. I cannot leave. Will you do this for me?”
“I have never been in space.” Lenko visibly paled and he shifted out of our dimension. “I do now know how to survive out there.”
I coughed. “I know what you need. You do not ever have to worry about your kenosi levels while you are with me. I will make sure you have enough to keep you going.”
I thought about the only other way he could live.
There’s another way, Hiroto piped up inside my mind. A bond.
I wouldn’t ask that of him, yet if it comes down to that, I am sure he wouldn’t hesitate now, knowing what he does of Yun and us.
At least it’s an option, Xe added.
Yes, it is.
Lenko moved from Yun’s side to mine. “Look after me, won’t you?”
I smiled my best reassurances at him. “Any family of Yun’s is mine. Come, let’s get back out there and see what they heck is going on now.”
When we were safely inside a shuttle and then that shuttle was loaded back out into space, we crossed to see Captain Millis waiting for us. He paced the hangar.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “Cassie has been in quite the state of panic. As soon as we’re in deep space and make a couple of jumps, we’ll try to contact her again. She wouldn’t speak to me about it, said she had to talk to you.”
My breathing quickened, and I ran my hand through my hair. “Let’s go. The sooner the better,” I said.
Once on the bridge, Tyto and I strapped ourselves in and waited while we were manoeuvred back out into space. Lenko strapped in as well with one of the other crew members’ aid. Though he was paler than I ever thought a Sitha could be.
“You will be fine,” I tried to reassure him. “Trust me.”
“You’re sure? This is such a small ship. I’ve never even seen one this small from our species.”
“We’ll be fine. I promise.”
My stomach twinged a slight bit of guilt, as when Captain Millis ordered the jump, Lenko flinched. His hands gripped the armrests tight. The realms of space folded before us; stars zipped past. Then we whoomped out of it.
Lenko smiled at me, relaxing his grip. “That wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought.”
“I’m glad,” Millis replied. “At present, I still think we’re another jump away from reaching the queen, if you’d like to retire . . .”
It was the way he looked at both Tyto and I that made me raise an eyebrow. “Drinks in the mess hall will be fine. We’ll wait for your comm.”
“Of course.” He dipped his head towards me. “As soon as I think we’re ready.”
I stood and indicated for the others to follow me.
“Waiting is not my strong point,” I said, settling in the mess hall with a few drinks before us.
“Especially since you only just woke up,” Tyto said. “How are you feeling?”
“Better, but like this week has been one railroad after another.” I turned the drink in my hands, the liquid warming them through but not doing anything for the nerves running through my veins.
“Never a dull life around you,” Tyto said.
I smiled at him. “Yeah, think we sometimes do need a break though.”
He nodded and drank from his own mug. “Millis always knew to keep the good stuff on tap.” He sighed.
Lenko made himself right at home, rooting around the fridge. He sat with us a moment later. “All I can think about is what I’m going to do for energy.”
He pushed his food around his plate a moment later, then tried a bit to eat.
“I said you won’t go without and I meant it. You need anything, you come to either of us, got it?”
Tyto raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t question my call.
“It’s strange,” he said. “I mean, I knew space sapped our energy fast, but it already is.”
I glanced over at him, and Hiroto pulled up his health. It really is. I don’t think I ever recall anything like this from Yun.
Yun was already taking my kenosi on a daily basis. Lenko has no one to draw from. You can see why once in space they are so dangerous. Without a bonded partner, they will have to take a life. Be it someone who is bad or not. Keep an extra eye on him. Anything goes south fast, I want you to let me know as well.
Will do. He’s not safe around anyone on this ship.
How long does he have before his loss becomes an issue?
A day. You’d need to supply him kenosi then. I’ll set an alarm.
I tapped the table, and his focus turned on me. “We can do this.”
He nodded, sucked in a breath. “I know others went into space and often. I was just never interested.”
Distracting him was easier than I thought, though we just got him to talk more about his early years and then into his training.
Tyto sat back, and I heard him on my comms with Xe and Hiroto. If things went wrong, they were formulating a plan.
I thought briefly about using Future Insight and as the world around me faded, I instantly regretted it.
The front line appeared before me. I glanced around, from inside a ship.
Ships spread out before me in their thousands. I stepped forwards, noted the Razor’s and the Cristanna’s weapons firing with everything they had into the armada emerging from the rift.
My eyes drew to it. The rift. Holy crap.
The ships exiting it were twice the size of the Razor. The rift itself was shifting and changing, opening so wide I couldn’t fathom its size.
To my left there were other ships, friendly. The Sitha. The engagement fire rocked the fabric of everything around me, and I lost my footing, my knees hitting the deck.
I tried to watch. Enemy fire blew ship after ship apart. We were falling. Nothing we threw at them made a dent.
The Cristanna took the worst of the incoming hits, their shields falling.
I watched in horror as they failed completely, incoming fire starting to hit her hull.
No! I cried.
The hull broke apart in several places.
The Cristanna crumpled and exploded. Debris shot everywhere, taking out others on the way.
I tried to understand what future in hell this was, what was coming, but I couldn’t. It was too unrelated. Too abstract.
A hand on my shoulder brought me around, the incoming fire stopped. I looked up into Cassie’s eyes. There were blood red tears running down her face.
“You have to stop this,” she said. “Please.”
I couldn’t answer her. I shivered, and the ship lurched, our ship.
The ship I was on vanished, and Tyto frowned at me. “You okay?”
I nodded, sucked in a breath, and drank from my coffee. It was cold. Ugh. I pushed it aside.
“Report to my office,” came over the comms. “We are close enough to reach the queen.”
I looked at Lenko. “Come, you’re now privy to some inside information, may as well keep you close.”
“I’m honoured. Your information will not go further than Yun, I promise you.”
“I know.” I returned my cup to the waste trays, and we made our way through the ship.
Captain Millis waited on us and let us both in as soon as we entered the bridge. He had this strange tick with his hands that told me his nerves were shot.
“Captain,” I said. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”
He nodded at me and motioned for us to sit, but things took another turn, and the room began to fade from my view again. I almost fell into my chair, and I heard Hiroto over the main comms. “Keep an eye on him—something has control over his mind.”
“What?” Tyto’s voice almost faded out with the view of what was before me. In fact, what the hell was before me. I tried to focus. Nothing.
“Give me a little time,” the voice said.
“Cassie?” I asked.
“It is I. This is difficult to reach you both at the same time, but this is needed.”
“Okay, I thought you needed to just talk but . . .”
The view spread out to her gardens, the lake, and her bench. My core twinged with the connection. Yun?
The queen wanted me here too, Yun said. It really is a drain on her. Can you assist?
I focussed over the connection; the strands snaking through space were as thin and wispy as some of Yun’s strands. I imagined them thickening, and before me, they grew in size. The image of the lake grew clearer.
“I’m confused,” I said.
“Come sit with us, Kyle.” Cassie held out her hands for me, and I moved to her.
She took hold of me and sat me down with Yun to my side. She held my eyes with hers, and I couldn’t help but feel I was drowning in them.
“We have a lot to discuss,” Yun said, and I turned to look at him. “There’s been some developments.”
“Well, I’m not sad that you’re here, but I’m worried. Please tell me. Everything I need to know.”
“I have a message from those on your planet, Earth,” Cassie said. “Their message is not a good one.”
With a touch of her fingers to the side of the bench, she brought up a 3D image of someone. I knew the face. The face most of us associated with Arndale.
“Wallace?”
“He is the face of everything you see, but you know he is not human,” Cassie said.
Another click of a button, and his image faded to that which clearly wasn’t human. “What’s the message?”
She motioned the screen and the creature started to speak. “To those in the Gridon System retaliating and causing numerous problems. To the human-denti known to all as Kyle Ranz, this is your first warning.” He waved a hand behind his head. There appeared what looked like tiny squares. Boxes. I froze.
“No,” I said. “They can’t be, right?”
We zoomed in closer to see the numbers on them and a soft green light.
It was clear to see what lay inside.
“They’re bodies.” My fists balled. “Human bodies. I thought we were just brains in a box?”
“This is a switch.” Wallace’s voice brought me back to him. He indicated a button to his left which clearly said Terminate. “This is your warning.”
He hit the button, and the green lights on the square boxes turned red.
“What did he do?” Bile rose to the back of my throat. “What the fuck did he just do?”
“Your minds are still connected to your bodies.” Cassie’s frown graced her pale lips. “He pulled the plug on a hundred minds living out here.”
I couldn’t stop myself. I pushed myself up, rushed to the side of the lake and looked into the waters below me. Parted with everything my stomach had in it.
Someone kneeled beside me, and I couldn’t look up. A soft hand settled on my back and the soothing effects of kenosi trickled into me. I didn’t know if this was real, or if I was still inside Millis’s office.
I sucked in a breath, spat, and then reached down to scoop up some water to rinse again. I eventually pushed myself up enough to look at her.
“Those people?” I asked, my legs trembling. “What happened on this side?”
“We received reports a few hours ago. Several higher-up commanders on the front line dropped dead.”
I hoped for just a few seconds it wasn’t true. That they couldn’t do that. That the people here, their minds, were safe.
“I am sorry,” Yun said from behind me. “He has threatened to terminate more every day until you answer him.”
“What does he want?”
“To speak to you. I fear if they just wanted the rift to open, they would just cull all the human minds here. They know we don’t have many of you out on the front line though. Not to the extent your planet first thought.”
“We were only ever a way to gain more wealth, resources. That much was obvious,” I said.
Yun stood and stepped towards me, his hand outstretched palm forwards. I never hesitated in reaching for him, my eyes locked with the swirling red orbs of his. “They want their resource train back. They want you to agree to work with them instead.”
“I’d never agree to do that,” I said. “To have our side of the universe enslaved again.”
“No, but there’s some hope,” Cassie said. “As much as it hurts, the minds they took were our older commanders, those who were powerful in their own rights. There was one that didn’t go down. There were only ninety-nine lives lost.”
“What was the difference?” I asked her, hope growing within.
“They were in a denti meld. Like you have been. That is our protection.”
“That’s some good news!” I said. “But there’s literally billions of minds out here, right?”
“Yes, sadly. It is taking us quite some time to get our seeds across space, even as many as we are.”
“He must know where my body is?” My thoughts drifted to Jai, Naylar, Denn. Fuck. Most of my team were in single denti bodies.
Don’t panic, Kyle.
How can I not panic! We’re all at risk. Every single one of us! This was bad, so bad.
“There’s no reason for this. It doesn’t make sense in my head.” I slapped my face, hoping this all wasn’t real. “Why send us out to fight their own?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure. Distractions,” Cassie said. “Time and resources.”
Hiroto, I said.
Xe and I are on it. I’ll track everything the galaxy wide, I will find why, where, how they are shipping in resources.
“I believe he wants what he always did, more power.” Yun moved before me and raised his hand, bringing up an image I recognised. “You recall the centre of Drudel?”
“How could I forget?” I said. That core had been so pure; I ached to be there once more.
“Wallace is after the core,” Cassie said. “With that comes much more power.”
“Then why are they on Earth?”
Cassie brought up another ball of a floating world before me. The wonderful blues and greens twirled in her hand—it fell into place.
“Earth is like Drudel?”
Something moved out the corner of my eye, and there in the mist became something else. Lavinia stepped through into the grass. She glided closer, and both Cassie and Yun lowered their heads with respect to her. I, however, was tired of all the pretence, the mystery. This pain.
“Correct,” Lavinia said to Yun. “Marshall was not able to take Drudel many years ago, so he turned to another world with similar energies.”
“Earth has kenosi?”
This changes everything, Hiroto said. Literally everything we ever thought.
Yun brought up his other hand and there, settled above it, floated another globe. This one full of dark swirls and I could even see lightning on its surface.
“You know this is the planet Marshall’s from,” Cassie said. “This is where the Vrolsh come from.”
“It’s dead. I’ve seen it.”
“It is more than dead,” Lavinia said. “They’re coming here to take everything they can. They’re running out of time. Anyone on that side of the rift will die, and soon.”
I mean, I was happy with that. They needed to die. Like right now. But the hold they had on us here, the billions of lives. That I couldn’t just ignore.
“What’s his end goal?” I asked her, looking directly into her eyes.
She held mine with hers.
“Tell me the truth. Now,” I demanded.
Cassie took my arm in hers. “Kyle, please, she’s—”
“She’s nothing.” I shook her off me. “Tell me the truth. Now.”
“Marshall plans to take Drudel using anything he can as leverage.”
“Why?” Cassie asked.
Lavinia looked to her, the image of the four planets now rotated. The three from our universe I knew of. Mais Daw, Drudel, and Earth. I stepped towards them, traced a finger from Earth to Drudel, then to Mais Daw, then to the Vrolsh homeward.
“He’s got Earth already, once he has Kyle,” Lavinia said. “He will use him and Yun to take Mais Daw. Then he will go for Drudel. He will connect their energy together, draining everything out of our universe forever. To power theirs once more.”
I swallowed. “What would that mean?”
Lavinia’s eyes closed. “Death to everything, everywhere. With no kenosi, this universe will be as desolate as theirs is now.”
27
The grasses beneath my feet started to fade. I turned away from Lavinia, not able to form the words I wanted to spit at her. “We’ll be with you as soon as we can,” I said, and they were both gone.
When my eyes adjusted to being back on the Zotera, I was staring at the inside of a bin, and the pungent smell made me want to throw up again.
I turned away. The hand on my back was Tyto. I looked up at him, and he frowned.
“You were gone quite some time,” he said and offered a hand. I took it, and he helped me to a chair.
“What happened?” Lenko asked.
Tyto passed me a wet cloth and waited, not questioning. But the concern on all their faces was as evident as the blood red that came off on the cloth.
“Tears?” I asked.
Tyto rubbed his chin. “I’ve never seen it from a meld before, but yes.”
I closed my eyes. Thought about how I could word what I needed to. This involved everyone. I breathed in, slow, steady. Then met his eyes with mine.
“Arndale worked out how to pull the plug on us.” I took a glass of juice and Tyto’s, the taste in my mouth not abated by anything. “It was a demonstration of how. To show us we can’t fight them.”
“We worried about this.” Hiroto’s voice came to us. “No matter what we’ve tried, we couldn’t hide our people.”
“I know.” I looked at the ceiling even though he was in my head. Then I felt a little daft.
Instead, he brought up his image, so that we all could see him. “Better?” Hiroto asked.
