It’s one thing to hear that the xith’cal keep human slaves, but it’s another altogether to actually see one. The cowering creature on the end of the xith’cal’s chain was a woman about my age. She was shorter than me with skin that might have been coppery if it wasn’t so dried out. Her cheeks were sunken, her dark eyes made darker by the deep circles below them, but the fear in her face wasn’t for the lizards behind her. It was directed at us. More specifically, the girl was looking at me like I was her death. For a second, I couldn’t figure out why, then I saw her eyes roving up and down my suit, and I realized that this woman had never seen powered armor before.
When her human was in position, the xith’cal spoke. Her voice was higher than any of the xith’cal I’d killed. Higher even than Hyrek’s, but it had that same tearing metal resonance that all xith’cal shared. When she was finished, the slave woman lifted her head and put on what she probably meant to be a haughty expression. “Highest Guide Krisek, chosen flesh of Reaper, welcomes John Brenton,” she announced in Universal. “She wishes to know if this is the specimen you promised her.”
The woman’s accent was the strangest I’d ever heard, thick and too sharp all at once. I was so busy trying to place it that I missed the Reaper part of her greeting entirely until Brenton answered. “Thank you, Highest Guide, and thanks be to Reaper, long may he guide the flesh of his flesh. This is the one I spoke of.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, and the three xith’cal backed away with a hiss. The human girl looked like she was about to try climbing up onto her lizard’s shoulders to get away, but she didn’t get a chance. The lead xith’cal—Highest Guide Krisek, I guessed—was speaking again.
“It must be tested,” the girl translated when the Guide was finished. “We must know the extent of its contagion. Will it be safe in its containment suit?”
“It should be,” Brenton said. “Are you ready now?”
All three xith’cal started speaking at this, and the sound of them talking to one another was like listening to a garbage compactor eat a wind chime. The translator girl cowered back against her lizard masters, staring at me like I was the one who might eat her, but I didn’t care about her anymore. I was glaring at Brenton. “What test?” I asked in King’s Tongue, since I was pretty sure the girl didn’t speak it but I knew damn well that Brenton did. “And what’s this about my suit? And why are they calling me an it?”
“Xith’cal have a hard time telling human genders apart,” Brenton answered with a shrug. “And I messaged them on our way in that your suit was a containment unit so they wouldn’t try to make you take it off. It’s not like you’re contagious, right?”
“I could be!” I hissed, eying the arguing females. Apart from the three who’d come to greet us, there had to be at least fifty other lizards in the hangar. If I set off an outbreak, things could get very bad very fast.
“Relax,” Brenton said. “I don’t like working with lizards any more than you do, but they’re the only ones who can work on the virus. Just play along, and if they try anything that jeopardizes our goals, we’ll deal with it.”
“Deal with it how?” I snapped. “We’re kind of outnumbered.”
“Not so much as you would think.”
His eyes slid past me as he said this, and I followed them to the two other human ships. What I saw lifted my spirits a bit. There were ten people standing a little too casually between the hauler and the larger version of the ship we’d flown in on. They were evenly mixed between men and women, and though none of them wore armor and only one had a gun, all of them were in the fantastic shape I’d learned to associate with symbionts. That cheered me up enormously until I caught sight of a small figure at the very back.
In the door of the freighter, a girl was slumped in a woman’s lap. She was skeletally thin, her face hidden behind the fall of her limp, brittle hair. That didn’t matter, though; I already knew what she looked like.
“That’s your daughter, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Enna.”
“She’s actually Mettou’s daughter,” Brenton said. “I shot my last daughter years ago when she’d degenerated to the point where she was killing people in her sleep. But it makes no difference, they’re all Enna to me.”
“Aren’t you worried the Eyes will use her to find you?” I asked. “I mean, the daughters are all connected, right?”
“They are,” Brenton said. “But you forget, Maat is the one who connects them, and she’s on our side.”
Trusting a crazy woman to keep our secret didn’t sit well with me, but then, if there was anyone who hated the Eyes more than Brenton, it was Maat. That made me feel a little more secure, but something Brenton had said was still bugging me. “Who was Enna?” I asked. “The real one, I mean.”
“A little girl who loved me very much,” Brenton replied. “If you ever get the chance, you should ask Caldswell about her. He loves that story.”
I winced at the naked hate in Brenton’s words. I was debating whether or not it was worth trying to get more information when the human slave spoke again.
“Highest Guide has agreed that we are ready to test the human carrier,” she said, standing as far away from me as possible. “You will follow us.”
The female xith’cal nodded and patted her clawed hand on the human’s head like a master praising a dog. The woman leaned into the caress, her eyes closing in happiness, and I had to turn away before I gagged. The other xith’cal were already walking toward the far end of the hangar. Brenton sent Nic over to the rest of the humans before falling into step behind them.
At the back of the giant cavern was a surprisingly small tunnel with a low ceiling and a rail set into the floor. Perched on the rail was what looked like a converted mining train with seats instead of ore carts. I sat gingerly on the metal bar that served as a bench, and Brenton sat down next to me. As soon as we were settled, the lizard called Highest Guide said something that sounded like a gunshot, and the train shuddered to life, rolling down the rail into the tunnel.
Once we left the hangar, the lights were few and far between. There was a light on the front of the train, but it was pathetically dim, probably because xith’cal didn’t need much light to see. I did, though, so I turned on my suit’s floodlight. It might have been overkill, but this was the path to my test. I wasn’t about to miss anything, especially since I might have to leave in a hurry.
We traveled for what felt like miles at a slight downward curve, or at least down according to the artificial gravity. I knew it couldn’t actually be miles since the asteroid wasn’t that big, but by the time we finally rolled to a stop, I was more than ready to get off.
I hopped down and looked around to see where the train had brought us, but all I saw was more tunnel. The xith’cal were getting off, though, and the one in front was saying something.
“Highest Guide commands you to follow her,” the slave translated, pointing down the tunnel. “This way.”
We didn’t have to walk long. A few dozen feet from where the tracks ended, the tunnel curved sharply and opened into a cave the size of a small house. The xith’cal stopped at the place where the ceiling began to rise and turned to look at me. Brenton was looking at me too, and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Was this the test? Was I failing it? I was trying to think of some way to ask what they wanted without giving myself away when I saw a white line drop down through my cameras.
My hand shot up, popping my visor. Cold, thin air rushed in as my suit’s seal broke, letting in the bitter smell of the xith’cal’s atmosphere and the dusty metal reek of the asteroid itself. My front camera feeds vanished as soon as my visor was up, and as my eyes took over, the empty cave filled with the most beautiful light I’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 10
Phantoms crawled over everything. There were even more here than there’d been in the cargo bay back on Io5. They came in all shapes and sizes, from tiny pinpricks to glowing worms almost as long as my hand. Some looked like little more than bundles of legs crawling across the ground, others were rolling blobs with no legs at all, and still others floated in the air like jellyfish, their glowing tendrils filling the room with light. Their combined brilliance was so bright it was actually hard to look at. But crowded as the cave was, I had a buffer.
Not a single phantom was within three feet of my body. This clear zone stayed with me when I took a step forward so the xith’cal could enter, sending the creatures scrambling over one another to get out of my way. They ignored everyone else, floating through the lizards, the human slave, and Brenton like they weren’t even there. But when I moved, the whole room moved with me, all the tiny glow bugs running as one to stay clear of my path.
If I hadn’t known what their aversion meant, their desperate scrabbling would have been funny. Part of me wanted to run forward and scatter them anyway like a kid with a flock of pigeons, but I kept pace with the xith’cal and Brenton as we walked toward the center of the cave.
There were so many tiny phantoms, I didn’t actually see what we were walking toward until we were almost there. In the middle of the cave was a phantom that was much bigger than the others. Its body was about the size of a large dog, though it was closer to a horse once you added in all the legs. This phantom alone stayed put as I approached, though not because it wanted to. It was trying to run, its spindly legs kicking frantically, but it was held fast by a long, glowing spike that had been driven through its middle.
That description didn’t make a lot of sense even to me, and I was looking at it. But that’s what I saw: a big, glowing bar stabbed right through the phantom’s center like a spear, pinning it to the stone floor. As I got closer, I realized I could actually see the phantom’s blood around where the bar bit in, running down its side like a soft, wet shadow against its frosted-glass body. The sight sent a shiver through me. The blood would be slippery to the touch, I bet. Slippery and icy cold.
When I was close enough that the circle of empty space around me brushed the pinned phantom, its struggles went from terrified to frantic, sending a snow of white lines across my remaining cameras. I stopped immediately, but it was too late. The phantom’s screech dug into my head like a claw hammer. It wasn’t anywhere near as loud as the emperor phantom’s had been, or the one on Mycant, or Ren’s for that matter, but it still hurt like a bitch. My only consolation was that everyone else heard it, too.
Brenton and the xith’cal, even the slave girl, winced at the sound, and then one of the xith’cal threw out her hand. When her claws were fully extended, a barrier appeared around the phantom. It looked no thicker than a soap bubble—it even had the same rainbow sheen—but it cut off the thing’s screaming like a switch, and I sighed in relief. Of course the xith’cal dealing with this would be plasmex users, I realized. Nova had said the xith’cal were more sensitive to plasmex than humans. At the time, I hadn’t wanted to give them the credit. Now, I was glad of it.
“Nice bubble,” I said.
The Highest Guide made a soft sound, almost like a trill, and the human slave said, “You saw?”
“Of course.” I pointed to the other xith’cal, the one who’d thrown out her hand. “She put a bubble around the phantom to stop the scream, and…”
My voice trailed off. You’d think I’d be used to people staring at me like I was crazy by now, but getting the stink eye from xith’cal was a whole new level of uncomfortable. Brenton, on the other hand, looked like a kid who’s just spotted his birthday present.
“You can see it!” he cried, grabbing my shoulders and spinning my armored body around with his bare hands, something I would never get used to even if I lived the rest of my life with symbionts.