I was still trying to figure this out when the hand grabbed my spine.
I shot bolt upright. From the lack of horrible pain, I knew there was no way a hand could actually be grabbing my spine, but that was exactly what it felt like. Five fingers and a palm, wrapped around the vertebrae just below my neck. I could even feel the fingers moving inside me, readjusting to get a better grip.
My shock had been enough to flip my suit into combat mode, but when my vitals flashed up, I didn’t see anything wrong. My suit had no breaches, and though the panic had elevated my heart rate, I was otherwise fine. I didn’t see anything behind me through my rear cameras either. I was about to flip my visor back down and do a full scan when a soft, feminine voice whispered in my mind.
Come.
As the word finished, the hand on my spine jerked, and I popped out of my body like a shucked pea.
CHAPTER 3
When the hand on my spine let go, I was no longer on the ship.
I wasn’t even in my armor, just the thin shirt and pants I’d been wearing under it, which was pretty sad coverage against the blizzard I was standing in. Snow was blowing so thickly I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of my nose. My legs were buried to the knees in it, and I could feel even more beneath my bare feet. For all of this, though, I wasn’t cold. I was pretty comfortable, actually, except for my right hand, which hurt like someone was squeezing my fingers in a vise. I looked down in alarm, jerking my hand back at the same time only to find I couldn’t. Ren was standing beside me, and my hand was crushed in hers.
I’ve seen a lot of weird shit in nine years of armored combat, but I was now officially out of my depth. The captain’s daughter wasn’t wearing the heavy coat I’d seen her leave the ship in twenty minutes ago. Instead, she was dressed in a white cotton hospital gown that tied at her sides. Her feet were bare like mine, but she was standing on top of the drift rather than in it, perched on the crested snow like a bird. Other than that, though, she looked normal: same blank expression, her dark hair hanging still just above her shoulders despite the howling wind. Even her eyes were focused with the same insane attention they had when she was playing her game, only now, instead of staring at a chessboard, Ren was staring at me.
I stepped back instinctively, and then yelped when her hand tightened on mine so hard my joints popped. The pain sent a clear message, and I stopped trying to get away, shuffling back to her side. The grip eased up with every inch I neared. By the time I was standing next to her, our locked hands were almost friendly.
I glanced down at thin clothes and then up again at the howling blizzard that wasn’t wet or cold. And then, because it was obvious that this was a dream, I asked, “What’s going on?”
Instead of answering, Ren just tilted her head, her dark eyes sliding past me. When I turned to follow her gaze, I realized we were no longer alone. Three figures were trudging out of the storm behind me, climbing a steep slope I hadn’t seen under all the snow. They were little more than shadows in the blizzard, but I could see enough to make out the shapes of two men and a child.
After that, it was pretty obvious. Caldswell, Ren, and the cook reached the top of the slope and walked past us without a glance. I watched them until they vanished into the snow again, and then I took a deep breath of the snowy air I couldn’t taste or feel and closed my eyes, trying to will myself to wake up. If I was dreaming, then I must have nodded off in my suit, which meant I needed to wake myself back up as soon as possible. If Basil caught me snoozing on the job, I would never hear the—
Watch.
I almost jumped out of my skin. The word wasn’t a sound. It was a thought, a sharp command that slid through my mind like freezing water, and my eyes popped open to see Ren staring at me.
Standing on top of the snowdrift, she was actually a little taller than I was. She used the height to her advantage, staring down at me until I couldn’t look away. When she had my utter and undivided attention, the captain’s daughter turned and started walking over the snow toward the trampled path Caldswell’s group had left, dragging me behind her.
It was awkward as hell trying to walk through drifts when the person you’re trying to keep up with could walk on top of them. I floundered in the deep snow, tripping over hidden rocks and holes every few steps. By the time we reached the path the captain and the others had trodden down, my legs were burning and I was out of breath. I was pretty damn sick of this dream, too, but I couldn’t wake up. I’d even tried stumbling deliberately in the hopes that the fall would do it, but all I’d gotten for my trouble was a mouthful of snow I couldn’t even taste.
By the time I gave in and let Ren lead me, we’d caught up with the captain. I hadn’t noticed before, thanks to the blizzard, but the flat spot we were standing on was actually a plateau nestled in the lee of a taller mountain. Caldswell was at the edge of the cliff where the mountain began to climb again, stomping down the snow in front of what looked like a metal door set into the rock itself.
I rolled my eyes. Leave it to me to dream about bunkers, but at least I’d dreamed up a solid one. The door was heavy enough to take a cannon blast, and now that I was looking for them, I could see little slits set high in the stone beside it, perfect for ventilation and shooting down at an enemy from cover. Not that there would ever be anyone to shoot at out in this wilderness.
When he was done clearing a space to stand, Caldswell walked up to the heavy door and knocked politely, like he was a neighbor come over to pay his respects. I didn’t think whoever was inside would be able to hear such a soft sound over the gale, but I was wrong, because the door opened immediately, the heavy metal slab swinging inward to reveal a large, dark room.
From where we were standing, I could see that the bunker stretched back into the mountain for quite a ways, but I didn’t want to see any more. The moment the lock on the door clicked open, a painful knot of dread formed in my stomach. Dream or not, I did not want to go into that dark room.
But my opinion didn’t matter. Caldswell was going in, and Ren, both the bundled up one I’d seen leaving the ship and the barefoot one with the death grip on my hand, was following him. I tried digging in my heels, but while I could easily have lifted the real Ren over my head even without my suit, dream Ren was strong as a cargo loader. I kept fighting anyway, straining with all my strength until Ren looked over her shoulder.
Don’t fight. Watch.
Her face was blank as always, her mouth still, but I felt each word like a slap across my mind. I was still smarting from it when she yanked me forward, dragging me the last few inches through the bunker door, which had already closed. We passed through the heavy steel like ghosts, and I found myself standing right beside the cook.
He was so close, the fog of his breath mixed with mine. I gritted my teeth in preparation for the revulsion, but it didn’t come. Confused, I blinked hard and looked again, but the result was the same. The inexplicable nausea was gone.
For a moment, I felt elated, and then I remembered that this was a dream. Still, I wasn’t one to waste opportunities, real or not, and I took the chance to actually look at the cook properly for the first time.
To my surprise, he was worth looking at. Even buried under the coats, his body looked tall and graceful. His pale skin was reddened from the cold, but the blush only accented his sleek black hair and blue eyes. If I hadn’t caught him trying to kick me off the ship yesterday, I would have called him handsome.
I was so busy studying the cook, I didn’t realize the bunker was already occupied until I heard the scrape of boots on the cement floor. A man and a woman were standing on the other side of the bunker from the door where we had come in. They were bundled in the same heavy coats as the captain and the cook, and they held themselves like soldiers. Between them was a smaller figure so wrapped up in winter gear I couldn’t see anything until she raised her head. When she did, though, I wished to the king she’d left it down, because the girl standing between the strangers like a shy child between her parents was Ren.
Even covered in coats, there was no doubting it was her, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised. None of this made sense, anyway. Why not throw in another Ren? This made three of them now: Caldswell’s Ren, the barefoot Ren who’d been dragging me around, and the new girl.
No one else in the room seemed to notice my Ren. Or me, for that matter. They could clearly see one another, though, and none of them looked weirded out in the slightest by the two identical girls. In fact, the pair who’d been waiting in the bunker seemed more intimidated by Caldswell than his daughter. They snapped to attention the moment the captain looked up, and the woman, a tall, wiry lady with straight dark hair, gave him a sharp salute.
“Commander Caldswell,” she said crisply. “Well met, sir.”
“I’d hardly call such business well met, Eye Natalia,” Caldswell said. “Do you have what we discussed?”
I winced. The captain’s voice was calm, but I could tell from his posture that he was pissed. The lady, Eye Natalia, must have picked that up too, because she cleared her throat and glanced nervously at her partner, a huge brick of a man in a black suit very similar to the ones the cook always wore. “We do,” she said. “We can begin at any time.”
Caldswell hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his coat and turned his glare to the cook, who’d stayed perfectly still through the whole exchange. “Do it.”
Eye Natalia saluted again, but it was her partner who acted. The huge man let go of his Ren’s hand and turned away, walking through the shadows to a little door at the bunker’s far end. He returned a minute later, dragging something behind him.
The light from the bunker’s single lamp was so bad, I couldn’t actually make out what it was at first. The cook recognized it, though. His whole body had gone stiff the moment the thing came through the door. But as the big man dragged it closer, I stopped worrying about the cook. As they entered the light, I could see that the limp weight Eye Natalia’s partner was dragging across the icy cement was a woman. A petite, young-looking woman with wavy, flyaway brown hair, most of which was drenched in blood from a head wound.
My stomach began to ice over, but I forced myself to keep watching as the man stopped in front of Caldswell and yanked the bloody woman to her knees. This close, I could now see that the bloody rags she was wearing were actually the shredded remains of a suit of Paradoxian underarmor. The woman had clearly put up a fight before being brought here, because her knuckles were bloody, too. That was to be expected, though, because when the big man yanked the woman’s head up, it was my face that appeared, teeth bared in fury and vengeance despite the blood that trickled from my split temple.
By this point, my brain was moving at a snail’s pace. I could see the whole scene frozen like a picture in front of me, Natalia standing hand in hand with her Ren across the room, watching dispassionately while the huge man held the bloody Devi, me, on her knees in front of the cook with Caldswell standing slightly to the side, the captain’s hand resting on his own daughter’s shoulder. I could see every detail in sharp relief, the blood running down her, my legs to pool on the icy ground, the frantic, terrified jerk of my chest as it rose and fell beneath the shredded suit of underarmor, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make sense of it. All I knew was that this was a very bad dream indeed, and I needed to get out, now, before it got any worse.
But when I turned to go, Ren’s fingers tightened on my hand. I looked down to see her staring at me, her eyes dark and deep as space itself. Watch, her voice whispered in my mind.
The word was a command, and I had no choice. I watched.
When the bloody Devi was more or less steady, Caldswell reached under his coat and drew out a huge pearl-handled pistol. I’d never seen this particular gun before, but I recognized the type immediately. It was the old-fashioned gun Rashid carried to kill xith’cal, a disrupter pistol. Caldswell’s was clearly a trusted old gun, personal favorite, I’d bet, which was why I was surprised when he turned the weapon around and held it out to the cook.