Caught up in the exhilaration, I let it, pushing out into the emptiness. It was the strangest feeling I’d ever experienced, like moving an arm I hadn’t known I’d had until that moment. Encouraged, I pushed further, reaching out until the strange new feeling began to ache. But even that was a good ache, like stretching after a workout. I was savoring the sensation when I realized I was not alone in the dark.
I don’t know how I knew. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything except emptiness, but I knew they were there just as I knew I still had all my toes. Something was waiting out in that vast emptiness, and as I became aware of them, they became aware of me. I could actually feel their attention sliding over my mind, a cold, dry brush, like a stranger’s hair brushing your shoulder on a crowded street. For a second, the touch was soothing, almost friendly, and then it snatched back in alarm as a new pain hit me hard.
If the first pain had felt like a joint snapping, this was like being hit head-on by a sonic train. It landed with a slug, whacking me out of the emptiness like a flyswatter. But even while it was happening, my momentum felt trivial. Unimportant. Because as I flew, I heard it.
“Heard” is the wrong word, actually. The thing I caught wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t even an image. It was an impression, almost like when Rupert’s memories popped up, but with none of the familiarity. In it, I got the strangely distinct sense of a crowd turning in unison to look at me in alarm. The great threat had resurfaced, the death of us, only us didn’t include me, because I was the threat.
That was the last thing I got before I left the emptiness like a shot and slammed back into my body, my eyes popping open to see Brenton right in my face.
“Deviana!”
He had me by the shoulders, his face red and panicked. He’d clearly been shouting for a while, but I hadn’t heard a thing. Now that the emptiness was gone, though, the world came rushing back. Suddenly, I could hear alarms blaring everywhere. Behind me, the three xith’cal females were flat on the ground with the human slave curled up beside them. The woman was so still, it took me a second to realize her dull skin was now black as soot.
I jumped back with a curse, head whipping down to look at my feet. What I saw was not what I’d expected, though. I’d thought to find a carcass, some black, desecrated mass of dissolved phantom, but there was nothing. No body, no ooze, not even a lingering feeling of cold. The phantom was just gone. They all were, leaving the cavern dark and empty except for the flashing orange emergency lights.
But while the phantom was gone, the legacy of what I’d done was not. My hand was as black as the dead slave girl’s flesh. I couldn’t see how far up the black stain went because of my suit, but I could feel the pins and needles all the way up to my elbow on both sides. Trembling, I lifted my hand to my open visor, holding my black fingertips under my nose.
I was expecting it, but that didn’t make the smell of rotten meat any less horrifying. It was very faint, not nearly as strong as the stench I remembered from the ghost ship, but it was there, and now that I knew what it meant, I couldn’t stop shaking. I was still standing there quivering when Brenton grabbed my shoulder.
“Come on,” he said, turning me around and shoving my glove, which I didn’t realize I’d dropped, back onto my hand. “We have to go.”
Too numb to protest, I nodded, pulling on my glove as I followed him back to the train. We had to step over the three dead xith’cal to get out of the cave, and as I edged past them, I realized the blackened bodies were already twitching. I went for my gun with a yelp, plugging a shot into each of their heads before I could think better of it. That stopped the twitching all right, but I swore their glazed eyes still followed me as I scrambled onto the train. “What the hell just happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Brenton said, hitting the switch that started the train’s engine. “From what I could see, it looked like you stood around waving your hand back and forth through the air until your fingers turned black. The xith’cal died right after that. Just keeled over and started convulsing. The slave went down a few seconds later. That was when I grabbed you, but you didn’t wake up until just now.”
I looked down at my hands. With my glove back on, I couldn’t see whether or not my skin was still black, but I didn’t feel the pins and needles anymore. I ripped my glove off, hands shaking, but when my fingers appeared, they were clean.
“I saw the blackness spread up their plasmex spike,” I said, putting my glove back on again as the train began to move. “I tried to pull out, but then the phantom died, and everything went…” I trailed off. How could I explain that endless emptiness? Or the things inside it? “Black,” I said at last. “Everything went black.”
“I saw that much,” Brenton said as the train raced us backward down the tunnel. “Get ready, we’ve got a hot exit.”
His warning broke the emptiness’s spell. All at once, I remembered that I was on a xith’cal asteroid with alarms going off all around me. I slammed my visor back into place and sealed my suit, searching the com channels at the same time for something I could use. All I got was a lot of lizard squawking, but it didn’t take a genius to guess the alert might have something to do with the three xith’cal leaders I’d just killed.
“What do you think we’re in for?” I asked, grabbing Mia off my back. My plasma shotgun had only one shot left, but that would be enough to blow a hole if there were warriors waiting at the tunnel’s end.
“Actually, I don’t think that’s for us,” Brenton said, nodding at the blinking lights.
I scowled. “Then why—”
I was cut off by an enormous blast as something struck the asteroid. The impact knocked the train off the rails, throwing me into the stone wall. Brenton was thrown too, though he landed on his feet. I was up a second later, flipping on all the functions I’d turned off when I was dealing with the phantom so I wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. I’d just gotten everything back on line when the next blast hit.
This time I was ready. My suit rolled with the shock, adjusting between one step and the next as Brenton and I started running full tilt down the tunnel. For once, I thanked the king the man was a symbiont. I didn’t have to slow down for him at all. Instead, I was the one struggling to keep up as we raced toward the hangar.
“What’s the plan?” I yelled, keeping Mia close.
“Get you out,” Brenton yelled back as another, softer blast rocked the stone beneath our feet. We’d barely gotten steady again before Brenton turned to grin at me. “You did it, Deviana!” he cried. “You’ve got the virus!”
Considering what had just happened, I didn’t see how that was anything to be happy about. “And killed the lizards who were supposed to know how to control it!” I shouted.
“Doesn’t matter,” Brenton said. “We’ve won. Now all we have to do is get you to the ships and we’re going straight to the Dark Star.”
I slammed to a halt, my boots grinding on the stone. “What?”
Brenton stopped more gracefully. “Dark Star Station. It’s the Eyes’ secret headquarters and the place where they keep Maat prisoner.”
“Why the hell would you want to go there?” I said. “Did you not see what just happened?”
“I saw you killed a phantom,” Brenton said.
“Are you crazy?” I cried. “We can’t use something this unstable for leverage! I don’t even know what I did! If we go to the Eyes like this, I’ll probably kill Maat just trying to show them what the virus does.”
Brenton nodded excitedly. “Exactly!”
You know that moment when you go to take a step and the floor isn’t there? The terrifying second when it feels like the whole world is falling? That was what I felt now. The asteroid was still shaking, but I couldn’t even manage to feel worried over the fact that we were under attack. All I could do was stare at Brenton’s grinning face as the cold realization slowly condensed in my gut.
“You want to kill Maat,” I whispered.
“Of course,” Brenton said. “I told you before, I don’t care about killing phantoms. I just want to end her suffering.”
“End her suffering?” I repeated, my voice rising to a squeak. “We’re supposed to be in this to save Maat, save the daughters, and end this cycle of infinite bullshit. We’re supposed to be finding a new solution, not…” My voice trailed off as I took a deep breath, pulling myself in and straightening up until I was looking Brenton dead in the face. “The Eyes kill daughters, not us,” I said coldly. “You said you wanted to free them. That’s the whole reason I came with you.”
“Death is the only freedom left for Maat,” Brenton said, his face going hard. “She’s been their prisoner since she was a child, suffering for decades. Even when she went mad from it, they didn’t let her rest. Instead, they hooked her to machines. They even put a symbiont in her to help keep her alive.” He was speaking faster now, his voice shaking. “All she wants to do is get away, but they’ve filled her up with too many voices, too many dead girls’ lives. She can’t even escape in her own head.”
He stepped toward me, clenching his fists. “I swore, Deviana,” he whispered. “When I left the Eyes, I swore to her that I would not stop until she was free. And I won’t, not until I’ve found a way to kill her so they can never use her again.”
Fear and disgust had closed my throat so tightly by this point I could barely breathe, but I got the words out somehow. “And you found me.”
“Yes,” Brenton said with a relieved smile. “You’re the salvation she’s been waiting for, and with the virus this unstable, we might not even have to get you inside the Dark Star for it to work. Maat is stronger than the Eyes realize, and she’s been waiting for this for so long. If you can do whatever you just did near her, even in space, I’m sure she’ll reach you. Even the Eyes’ security can’t stop a plasmex virus. With your help, she’ll be free at last, just like you promised her.”
I shut my eyes tight. Part of me agreed with Brenton. Being trapped and used like that without even the ability to kill yourself sounded like a special kind of hell. If I was in Maat’s place, I’d probably welcome the virus with open arms, too. But this wasn’t just about Maat.
“What about the daughters?” I asked, looking at Brenton once more. “If Maat dies, what happens to them?”
Brenton’s face fell. “Haven’t you been listening? The daughters are Maat. She eats them, taking their lives, their memories, everything and replacing it with herself. She even changes their bodies to look like hers. The daughters are dead already, we can’t save them, but we can stop them from making any more. If we kill Maat, it all ends. The Eyes will have no choice but to find another way to kill phantoms. Maybe they’ll use your virus, maybe they’ll find something better. But Maat will be free, and our job will be over.”
“Your job,” I snarled. “But the daughters aren’t dead, Brenton.” They couldn’t be. I’d seen Ren break. Seen her horror with my own eyes as she looked down at her father’s dead body. I could even still hear her thin, broken voice whisper, Papa? Whatever had been taken from her, she’d known her father and mourned his death, and that was enough for me. “I’m not going to the Dark Star.”
Brenton’s jaw tightened, but before he could start arguing with me, something hit the asteroid hard enough to send it spinning. Brenton and I were thrown off our feet, landing together in a heap against the wall as the asteroid rocked like a toy boat on the ocean. The xith’cal must have installed stabilizing thrusters, though, because the asteroid righted itself almost immediately, and Brenton and I jumped back up. We stared at each other for a long second, and then, by silent agreement, we both turned and started running for the hangar.