allies and enemies 02 - rogues (31 page)

Asher could find little sympathy for him. Each moment he wasted was time stolen from Erelah. Ten minutes inside the doorway and they still waited in a steel-lined vestibule, pleading with his image on a vid screen. Even then, they did not seem to keep his attention. He’d shuffle off, mid-sentence, as if he had forgotten something, then come back. For all accounts, he might have been cooking his dinner.

“Open the door and I’ll make it your concern,” Asher growled.

Kelta placed a staying hand on his shoulder then stepped up to the watching lens of the vid crawler. “Lecco, please. This is an emergency. This poor girl—”

“Take her to the Red Sisters. I’m a very busy man.”

“She needs a
splicer
, Picus. One with your skills. Not one of those nursemaids.” Asher hoped the desperation did not show in his voice.

Picus sniffed. He was clever enough to know when his ego was being stroked. Perhaps he was still willing to take the bait.

“They’re only good at whelping babes and making salves. Lack my…sophistication.”
He righted the goggles perched atop a splotchy forehead.

Kelta flashed Asher a curious look and adopted his change in tack. “In fact, it was they who recommended you…or someone like you. Her condition is challenging. Maybe too much so.”

This earned another scoffing sound from Picus at the mention of “someone like you.” There were no other splicers left in Harbor, or on all of Narasmina that they knew of. Picus might not realize that.

“This may be too difficult for even him.” Asher made his voice low, but he wanted Picus to hear him. He shifted Erelah’s unconscious form in his arms, and imparted to Kelta. “There’s always Nelion City—”

“I’d had such hopes.” She nodded, biting her lip. “But perhaps you are right.”

“What’s so challenging about this female?
” The eye of the vid crawler focused on Erelah. The vestibule was filled with blue light identical to the one from the glowsphere that had greeted them outside. Kelta and Asher shared a look over Erelah’s head. The speakers went silent for what seemed an eternity.

Erelah was so still he had to watch for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Her body burned like a furnace against him. How could anyone be that feverish and live? Movement behind her swollen eyelids suggested that she dreamed. Her body twitched occasionally. The bruise at her throat was an agonizing purplish green. Fury like no other pushed at his chest. If Ott were not already dead, he would rip him apart.

The vid went dark. The blue light vanished. Fear seeped over him. Their gamble had failed. He would rend the metal shutters open with his fingers, force his way into the man’s lab. Make him help her.

“Enter.”
The simple command rang against the close metal walls.

A perfect vertical crack formed in the otherwise featureless metal. Baleful white light spilled out into the space. Asher stepped forward as soon as the opening was wide enough. As he crossed the threshold, a buzz rang out. Kelta gave a startled gasp.

“Leave your weapons, Guildsman.”

“Asher?” Kelta moved to his side, a look of consternation on her face. She may have banned weapons from the house, but that did not mean everywhere else. He might have laughed at her damning tone under different circumstances.

He jerked his chin, his arms filled with Erelah. “Left inside pocket.”

Kelta fished the pulse pistol out of his duster, holding it like a dead slugrat by its tail. Gingerly she placed it on the ground. With an arched eyebrow, she turned back at him.

He exhaled. “Right thigh pocket.”

Her eyebrow lofted higher. She always knew when he lied.

“Left boot.”

Two knives and a stunner joined the pulse gun on the floor.

After one more reproving scowl, Kelta stepped ahead into the space, Asher and Erelah in her wake. The shutters closed behind them. For one claustrophobic moment, they pressed into this bright white room. A very subtle shift to the floor told him that they were in a level riser, moving downward.

The doors opened into a low-ceilinged room, the blast-proof wall coated with smooth plas-crete. The space ran deeper than he’d imagined. Panels of light from overhead fixtures did little to push back the inky shadows. The air felt dry, but there was a musky animal smell here, like a warren or a den. Shelves lined the walls, piled high with crates and storage bins. Workbenches overflowed with nameless bits of junk, empty food wrappers and tools. He glimpsed movement in the corner. It was a line of vid panels. All showed various views of their party, filmed by hidden sense-eyes and vid crawlers.

“Poor man.” Kelta took in the shambled state of the room. “Fates help him.”

Asher caught the sadness in her tone. She had been close with Picus in her youth, but what that relationship entailed, she had never explained. Her voice suggested such sorrow and loss.

“Fates help me
what
, dear Kelta?” Picus called from the darkness. A mechanical hum grew louder.

Asher stiffened, holding Erelah closer to him. Another device. A trap?

The misshapen form disengaged from the fold of shadow. Picus’s withered body seemed more encased in the mechanized chair than riding atop it. A head of long silver hair. Sunken features covered in sallow skin. Dark eyes that glinted with painful intelligence. Electrodes dotted the crinkled skin of his arms. Asher got the distinct impression that the equipment was an extension of him.

The treads of the chair ceased their roll.

Kelta was too good to show her true reaction. She stretched a warm smile at the strange man, arms out at her sides. “It has been too long, friend.”

“You like my new toy?” Picus gestured with a withered, twisted arm to the chair. His voice was brittle and poisoned. “Hard fevers were especially kind to me. Keeping me alive to see my body fail. But I see you are as lovely as ever.”

Kelta faltered. A rarity for Asher to see this steel-spined woman left speechless. Something else passed between them. A knowing look. A familiarity.

Asher stepped closer, once more shifting Erelah’s weight in his arms. “Help her.”

Picus seemed to realize there were others present. “Ah. Show me this Human you have brought me, Guildsman. I’ve never seen one living.”

75

“She is Palari?” Kelta whispered in a mix of dread and awe. “Why did you not tell me?”

“Promised not to. Besides, she doesn’t have leathery wings or fangs. I checked. Thoroughly.” Asher felt her reproving stare but did not look up from Erelah’s form resting on the table in the middle of the room. This one seemed clean, antiseptically so, compared to the jumble of the splicer’s warren. Metal cabinets glinted from the walls. The lighting was brighter. The air tingled with ozone and antiseptic.

Picus moved with surprising skill and precision. After some convincing, Asher had allowed him to hook up a pharm pack to her arm. Once the medicine seemed to take hold, her breathing evened out, deepening. Her body no longer twitched. No amount of noise or jostling seemed to rouse her. All perfectly reversible, Picus explained.

“But she is Kindred,” she argued. “A Last Daughter…”

“A long story—”

“A mysterious one at that.” Picus turned away from the glow of the screen. “There is old damage. Some new. Very elaborate. Very interesting.”

Asher frowned at the excitement in the strange man’s voice. Erelah was more than an interesting diversion. “You can help her.”

Picus gave him a blank look. Seemed to remember the primary reason for his exam. “Of course. But there are…obstacles.”

“If you need payment…” Kelta stepped up.

He snorted. “Always scrip with you lot, isn’t it? I want for nothing.”

A wounded expression flitted across Kelta’s face. The comment meant something more to her. She drew her chin up. “Then what is it?”

“An invading genetic system seeks to overwrite hers, namely the neurosynaptics. I would not be surprised if she had certain…abilities.”

Asher stiffened. He ignored Kelta’s inquisitive stare. It was Erelah’s secret to keep.

Picus blathered on, oblivious. His tone excited. “I see remnants of nano-tech. Perhaps the primary catalyst. There are growth and death cycles, like any other organism, but for whatever reason, these invader cells stopped, all at once. It smacks of Ravstar.”

Asher felt a hollow shudder at the mention of Ravstar. The name meant nothing to him, but he sensed the stir of Erelah’s memories. A bleak dread clung to its edges.
The sudden stop of the invaders must have been what happened at Tasemar with Brother Liri, the Sceeloid
.

“If they were stopped. That is good, right?” Kelta challenged.

“Ah. But that was not to be the end.” Awe in his voice, Picus tapped at the reads on a new screen. To Asher, it was a meaningless pattern of images and numbers. “Another trigger event happened. Restarted the invaders. They now attack the host as a whole. They’re no longer targeting only one system. Like a dead man’s switch.”

“Erelah.” Asher ground his molars.

“What.” Picus frowned.

“Her name is Erelah. Not
host
.”

Picus gave him another blank stare, as if the man had been alone too long and had forgotten how to interact with others.

“What do you mean by trigger event?” Kelta prodded.

The splicer waved a hand. “Radiation? A biochemical response to something environmental? Contact with another bio-energy?”

Contact with another bio-energy.
Asher looked down. His hand drifted to the spot on his chest where the girl had touched him in her attempt to use the Sight. It felt like centuries ago now. A needling guilt seeped into him. “There’s a way to turn them off?”

“Already done.”

He froze, waiting for the rest. “Then what—”

The twisted little man rolled the chair closer. His tone seemed to be one reserved for the insufferably dense: “The damage to her helix is done. It continues to degrade. She’s dying.”

Asher’s hand shot out. His thick fingers wrapped around Picus’s scrawny throat. “Save her.”

Picus clawed at his wrist. He gaped like a fish.

“Asher. Stop. Please.” Kelta pulled at his arm.

“There’s a way. Possibly,” Picus wheezed.

He released him to slump against his mechanical chair.

“You were saying.” He loomed closer. Picus lurched back with his chair, smacking into the examination table.

The man glared at him, rubbing at his injured throat. “Reactivate the nano-tech, but give it a template to repair the damage. One that’s her baseline helix.”

“How do you get this template?”

“You need a specimen from before anything was ever done to her.”

Something inside Asher flattened. Impossible.

“Or from a blood relative of her species. Mother. Father.”

“A brother?” Asher added.

Picus nodded, eager. “I can stave off the attacks until a donor is found. There are treatments that can slow down the degradation. But without a new helix template, ultimately…she dies. And there’s nothing
anyone
can do about that.”

76

“You don’t have to do this.” Erelah winced at the coarse rumble to her voice. The tender flesh of her throat was still swollen. The anti-inflammatory medicines Picus had given her had reduced the worst. It no longer hurt to swallow. Her voice would return to normal eventually. Until then, she sounded like a broken thing.

The corner of Asher’s mouth pulled up. He’d promised to stop teasing her about the “sexy” quality of her voice. He used the jokes to cover things.

“This is the only way.” He nodded at the dig-cam in his hand. Jonvenlish would be suspicious of a stranger appearing with news of a magically resurrected sister on the other end of the Reaches. Tyron, doubly so. A personal message from Erelah might persuade them to return to Narasmina with Asher.

“I can come with you.” She knew it for the falsehood it was. Her entire body was drained of energy. A simple walk to the waste rec and back left her exhausted.

He captured her hand. “Picus says that’s dangerous. You’ll need to stay nearby for treatment.”

At the mention of the splicer, she scowled. Although, he’d saved her life, she held little in the way of trust for him. The curiosity he felt toward her fell off him in waves. To him, she was more an intriguing specimen than a being with feelings. It was too much like her time under the scrutiny of Tristic’s dutiful minions.

Asher’s presence made Picus scarce. Kelta possessed the ability to tolerate him and kept him from being a nuisance.

Erelah did not relish staying here in this sunless warren of labs and sinister-looking tech.

“The velo compression pattern will be altered with the jdrive insertion ratios. I believe I’ve isolated the chrono-slip element and wrote new code for the navsys. But to be safe, it’s vital you avoid the velo distortions created by other vessels. There can be catastrophic consequences—”

“I know.” He tapped his temple. “Your memories. In there. Fates help me.”

She knew it for what it was. So did he. She was stalling him.

“Asher…” Her throat clogged with dread.
I’ll never see him again.

It was not distrust or lack of confidence in him. It was the unknown. It pushed in around her from all sides. There was a bounty now, on both of them. Picus’s bunker was an excellent spot to hide, but Asher would be out
there
. Even if he journeyed to another region of Guild space, Miri knew how far the Human’s reach went. Just as she’d glimpsed in Ott’s memory, the wanted beacon uncovered by Mr. Thonn from one of the coastal markets named Erelah Veradin for her support of “criminal elements.” Although the beacon’s owner was unnamed, it was a fair guess that the UEC had distributed them. Even Ott had known it for the fabrication it was.

Asher was simply listed as an accessory. He’d actually seemed slightly insulted by this.

Her own kind sought her out like a criminal. How odd. Although she’d not had the opportunity to consider what type of reunion it might be, for all her recent discovery of her and Jonvenlish’s true heritage, there was no sense of communion there or longing to rejoin them. She had been raised as a Eugenes and thought in those terms. Uncle had sought to protect two of their own as vulnerable children, forgoing his status and earning the rejection of his peers. That sacrifice was wasted. Her own kind pursued her like any other predator. It was unlikely they knew she was one of them and doubtful that revealing herself as a Human would change matters.