Poisoned razor blades cut deep into Sorrel's mind. She tasted bitter venom and coppery blood, her nostrils filling with an ammonia reek. Her forehead was pressed against the black globe, the Light chain brutally tight around the back of her neck, tying her against it.
"Let me go!" she shrieked inside her mind.
But the Aphelion didn't speak, or perhaps had no use for language. It pierced through her, cold and indifferent, beginning the first division in her brain as it had divided the brains of its other thralls.
But Sorrel's brain was not like theirs. The Aphelion cut into her and hit the places changed by her Ghost's neural symbiosis.
Her Ghost came boiling to the surface, blazing with fire, crackling with lightning, sparkling with stars. "Get out of her!" Vox shrieked, and struck at the Aphelion.
The Aphelion withdrew like a monstrous snail retracting its eyes.
Vox healed Sorrel, rebuilding the damage in her brain, crooning comforting words to her mind. "It's all right, I'm here. It can't take you as long as I'm here."
Sorrel was able to open her eyes. She was doubled over on the floor, forced to bow to the perverse globe and its occupant. The lab doors had opened, and people moved around her. The dead and wounded orderlies were being lifted onto gurneys and wheeled out. The two older scientists stood at a safe distance, arguing with each other in an undertone, gesturing and glaring. But Erica stood only a few paces from Sorrel, gripping her tablet in one hand, watching Sorrel's torment with a wide grin. In her other hand, she held Vox. The Ghost's blue eye gazed hopelessly at Sorrel from between Erica's fingers.
"Help me," Sorrel gasped. "While it's retreated."
"Oh no," Erica replied. "This is too fascinating. I never meant to take the experiment all the way to this stage. If only you two had stayed in the power rig. As it is, we've never had a chance to observe the transformation process. But you're a Guardian, and you're able to resist. For how much longer? I have three different hypotheses right now."
The Aphelion touched Sorrel's mind again, tracing across her awareness like a single claw on glass. This time, instead of attacking her brain directly, it plunged into her core and ensnared her Light.
It happened in a flash, just as quickly as the spider's claws would seize her heart in her nightmares. Sorrel sucked in a breath to scream, but no sound came out. For an eternity's second she hung there, suspended, impaled on the Aphelion's grasp. Then it pulled the Light out of her, unspooling it like yarn, tearing it away in long, sparkling strands.
She felt the Aphelion's coldness, its distance from her own mind. It was utterly uncaring, utterly focused on its own designs. She was nothing to it, a useful resource, not even a threat. It pulled her Light into the globe and began shaping it into the keys necessary to unlock its prison.
Sorrel sensed that she could have followed her Light into the globe. She could have faced the Aphelion, darkest of Darkness, by herself. But Vox whispered in her head, "Please don't."
Sorrel oriented herself to that friendly voice, looking away from the abyss that invited her inward.
"You would never come back," Vox whispered. "It would consume your Light. In the end, it would escape and you would remain, a shadow of a spark, existing and unable to die."
"What do I do?" Sorrel cried. "It's taking my Light!"
"I'm with you," Vox replied. "If I can just -"
The Ghost exerted herself and flew out of Erica's hand in a sudden dash, like an escaping bird. Erica snatched at her, but Vox used the borrowed rings of Light around her to zip to Sorrel. She hovered beside the chain of Void Light and played a scan beam over it.
"Don't you dare!" Erica shrieked. She lunged forward and swatted at the Ghost with her tablet. Vox went flying across the lab, where she struck the wall, bounced to the floor, and didn't move, the rings around her flickering out.
The Ghost protection vanished. The Darkness welled through Sorrel like an evil spring expelling poisonous water. Her body began to glow ultraviolet.
"Good!" Erica crowed. She pulled back the sleeve on her right arm, exposing a metal gauntlet studded with glowing bulbs and rings. She touched several of them, making adjustments to the flickering lights. "Come, Aphelion. Come through her. I've removed the last barrier. Come!"
Rage burst through Sorrel - or was it the Aphelion feeding on the loss of her Ghost? The Aphelion's might surged through her, burning and sickening. Sorrel twisted her head against the globe to see Erica. Guided by Erica's summons, Sorrel grabbed Erica's leg in both burning hands.
Erica screamed and kicked, but Sorrel didn't care. All she cared about was the woman's meager Light flowing into her, drawn by the sucking void that her being had become. Her Ghost would die without Light - maybe had already died - Erica would suffer -
At this point, the lab doors burst open yet again. Sorrel was vaguely aware of running footsteps, shouts, gunshots. Something struck her two heavy blows in the side. She released Erica and fell sideways, a cold pain bleeding through her.
Someone bent over her - a tall Awoken woman with red hair and an eyepatch. She muttered several quick words and flicked the Void chain. The chain splintered into fragments of Light that vanished into nothing.
Sorrel wrenched away from the globe, but the cold, alien presence accompanied her. It was still pulling at her Light, unraveling her like a knitted sweater. Soon there would be nothing left of Sorrel Atkin.
The Awoken knelt over her, their glowing eyes sharp and focused. One of them lifted the globe into sight, spinning the gold rings with a ticking sound. The globe went dark, the blue glow shut off.
"Nothing for it," said the redhead. "It's too deep." She pulled a dagger from its sheath and held it above Sorrel's chest. "Together."
A dozen hands reached out and closed around the dagger's hilt.
"One, two three."
The dagger plunged into Sorrel's heart.
Max had rushed into the lab with the Corsairs. From the moment they had set foot inside the Owl Sector gate, he had been merely a hired gun on the fringes of a Corsair operation.
Petra Venj forced the security guards to let them into the building, showing her Vanguard credentials and Reef identification. The guards reluctantly let them pass. Once inside, flanked by her Corsairs, Petra strode to the front desk and said, "Tell me where you are keeping the Aphelion's sphere."
The secretary spluttered and stood up. "Who are you? You have no right to be here! Who let you inside?" He reached for a button to call security.
Petra drew her Vestian Dynasty sidearm and aimed it at his forehead. "I will ask only once more. Tell me where you are keeping the Aphelion's sphere."
The secretary blanched and stood very still. "It's ... it's in lab eight. In the Light Testing wing. Downstairs."
Petra lowered her sidearm. "You would be wise not to send guards after us. This is a Reef operation, and we have the Vanguard's full cooperation."
Petra and her Corsairs headed deeper into Owl Sector, following the signs.
"At least she's getting us to Sorrel quickly," Max thought wryly to Zero, fighting the urge to apologize to the ashen-faced security guards they had just bypassed.
"Maybe not quick enough," Zero replied. "I'm picking up a supercharged delta signal from that globe. And radiation. I wish you were wearing a rad suit."
When they entered the lab a few minutes later, Max first saw the wires and machinery of the spider. Sorrel's nightmare? That was the thing she was hallucinating in the hospital room?
Then his attention was drawn by a woman screaming. He saw Sorrel, on the floor and burning with deadly ultraviolet fire, clinging to Erica's leg. Her hands had burned through cloth and flesh, and there was a hideous stench of burned meat. Smoke hung in the air.
The Corsairs shot Sorrel.
"No!" Max cried.
Sorrel curled up like a freshly-wounded animal, without making a sound. Erica fell to the ground and crawled toward the Corsairs, sobbing and gasping. One of them stopped and grabbed her by the arm, hauling her to her feet. But the Corsair wasn't helping her. She held out Erica's wrist to Petra, displaying the strange gauntlet. "Techeun equipment. Human mods."
Petra looked at the gauntlet. Then she gave Erica a look that said she wanted her carved into small pieces, very slowly. All Petra said was, "Take it off her. Get her help."
The Corsair unbuckled the gauntlet and stripped it off Erica. Then she shoved Erica at Max. "Take her."
Max hadn't held Erica in a very long time. She sagged in his arms, reeking of burned cloth and flesh, her eyes wide. "Max!" she gasped.
Max gazed into her face and tried to care about her. He'd thought he'd loved her once, after all. He hauled her to a nearby gurney and helped her onto it. Then he called a couple of guards who were peeking in the lab door. "Get her to a hospital! She's got radiation burns."
He didn't even watch them wheel her out. His attention centered on the Corsairs and Petra, now huddled around Sorrel. He hurried up in time to see them tear open Sorrel's shirt. A spot of icy blue burned to the left of her sternum, directly in line with her heart.
That was where the Awoken drove in the dagger.
Max tried to stifle his cry of horror. Sorrel's back arched in agony, her mouth opening. She slumped to the floor, eyes open and fixed. But the dagger was now glowing ultraviolet, all the power of the Aphelion being drawn into it, out of Sorrel, like a poultice drawing poison from a wound.
"Her Ghost," Zero said suddenly in his head. "Max, she needs her Ghost. Over there!"
Zero materialized in a flash of light and zipped across the room. A little Ghost core lay quietly against the wall, easy to overlook. Max never would have spotted it on his own. He ran after Zero and scooped the Ghost from the floor.
The Ghost appeared dead. The eyelids were open, but the delicate eye beneath was dark.
Zero scanned it. "She's not gone yet, but she's fading." Zero spun her shell, thinking quickly. "She needs a Light transfusion. Max, hold me in your other hand."
Max held the dying core in one hand and Zero in the other, pointing their eyes at each other. Zero shone a concentrated beam into the other Ghost's empty eye. Max felt Zero drawing on his Light, siphoning it into this poor little core. He willed himself to relax and pass Zero as much Light as she needed.
The blue eye flickered on. "What - what's happening?" the Ghost slurred. "What are you doing to me?"
"Repairs," Zero said. Her gaze flicked to Max. "She's incredibly damaged inside, but I might be able to synth parts. Let me go. And summon your Light. Set her on fire with it."
"Won't that kill her?" Max said, releasing Zero.
"No, it will keep her alive," Zero said.
Max summoned a fraction of the Light necessary for his Golden Gun. He let the Solar Light lick over his arm and hand, wreathing the little Ghost core. The Ghost blinked and sighed. "That feels good."
Zero zipped away, flying upward toward the spider. She scanned this bundle of wires and that one, then broke down several of them into particles that she drew into herself with a beam.
Max walked toward the Awoken who were still grouped around Sorrel. Sorrel was covered in blood, both from bullets and being stabbed, but her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Max didn't understand how she could still be alive with a dagger through her heart.
One of the Corsairs was wearing the gauntlet recently lifted from Erica. She was muttering rapidly and rotating her wrist, drawing ultraviolet light up through the dagger and pouring it into the black globe. The other Corsairs and Petra kept their grip on the dagger's hilt, providing power of some kind. It looked like an exorcism - and perhaps it was.
Sorrel's Ghost whimpered a little. "My poor Guardian. I hope I can help her when the time comes."
"You will," Max said. "You're Voice, right?"
"Yes," the Ghost replied. "She named me Vox. And you're Max. She's showed you to me." The blue eye scrutinized his face. "You care about her very much."
Max nodded.
Vox emoted a smile. "I'm glad. Recovering from this won't be easy. She'll need to lean on you."
"I'll help her all I can," Max promised.
Zero returned, spinning her shell triumphantly. "I was able to find enough materials for the major parts. Hold me again, Max."
Max again pointed the two Ghosts at each other.
"Stare straight into my beam," Zero instructed Vox. "I'm going to rebuild you, and it won't be easy. Don't flinch."
"Laser surgery," Vox said dryly. "Just what I always wanted."
Zero shone her beam into Vox's eye. Particles of matter flickered down the beam, into Vox's core, reassembling into the delicate, tiny parts that composed a Ghost.
"Your Light processor is connected wrong," Zero said. "And your memory is eighty-nine percent corrupted. What's with your repulsors? They're crushed. And how are you alive with no stabilizer?"
"The scientists here kitbashed me with parts from other Ghosts," Vox murmured.
Zero made an angry beeping sound. "There is absolutely no reason for that. I hope the Vanguard cuts their funding." She kept working.
Max gazed past the Ghosts to Sorrel and the Awoken. Almost all the blue fire had been withdrawn from Sorrel, but the pool of blood on the floor beneath her was widening. Some of the Corsairs were standing in it.
Petra lifted her head and looked for Max. "Do you have her Ghost?"
"Repairing her right now," Max said.
"Will she be able to perform a resurrection?"
"Yes, yes," Zero answered for him. "Ten minutes."
"Right," Petra said, turning to her team. "Dagger out."
They slid the dagger out of Sorrel's heart. Her shallow, labored breaths stopped at once, her face relaxing.
One of the Corsairs closed Sorrel's eyes. "She may be a Guardian, but she is also our kin."
"Sorrel Atkin," Petra said, straightening up and cleaning her dagger with a cloth. "Child of Havila Drell, child of Judith Drell, one of our Techeuns."
The Corsairs murmured in shock.
Max didn't grasp the significance of this. He could only stare at Sorrel's motionless, mangled body, and then at the Ghost surgery happening in his hands. If this didn't work, Sorrel was dead for good. His heart seemed to contract in anguish. Seeing Sorrel hurt was bad enough, but watching her die was worse, somehow. He hadn't seen a lot of Guardian deaths - not enough to become used to them. To him, death was still a terrible end point to a life cut short.
Zero worked on Vox for what seemed like a long time. Finally she shut off her beam. "That's as much as I can do," she said. "You can stabilize your own Light, but you won't be able to fly longer than a few minutes. Whoever rebuilt you damaged as many parts as they added. You need clean parts from dead Ghosts who haven't been tampered with by the Fallen."
"Thank you," Vox said, turning toward her Guardian. "Excuse me." She floated off Max's palm, then shot toward Sorrel.
Max hurried after her. He dropped to his knees beside Sorrel and pulled her head and shoulders into his lap, fighting the hot lump in his throat. "Do it." He didn't care that the Corsairs and Petra were watching, or that Sorrel's blood was soaking his pants. He just didn't want her to wake up on that cold, hard floor, surrounded by strangers. She had been through enough horrors.
Vox's Light field expanded out of her core. She pulsed Light into Sorrel, healing the bullet wounds and the stab wound, healing things that the Aphelion had damaged. The scars on Sorrel's face faded a little. The wounds closed and sealed over. Then Vox called Sorrel back to life with a single, brighter flash.
Sorrel drew a deep breath and stiffened, arms flying out to brace against the floor. She blinked around at the Corsairs, and then up at Max. He felt her relax against his knees. "Oh. Hi, Max."
"It's okay," Max told her, stroking her curly indigo hair. "The Aphelion is gone."
"Thank the Light." Sorrel smiled at him for a moment. Then she sat up and caught her Ghost just as Vox fell out of the air. Clutching her to her chest, and trying to hold her torn shirt shut, she scrambled to her feet and looked around at the Corsairs. "Who are you?"
Petra stepped forward. "I am Petra Venj, Queen's Wrath and acting steward of the Reef. These are my handpicked Corsairs."
Sorrel shrank backwards until she bumped into Max. "Oh. It's ... nice to meet you. Did you kill the Aphelion?"
The Corsair with the gauntlet said, "It cannot be killed, only contained. We withdrew its essence from you, but you may experience side effects for some time. It stole a substantial amount of your Light. This is ... worrisome."
Petra said, "I will give you my communications numbers. My scientists are very interested in you. No one has ever survived an Aphelion attack before, even one so weak as this."
"That - that was weak?" Max spluttered.
The Awoken all nodded.
"As I said before," Petra said, "an attack at full power would have left the Last City entirely unpeopled." She looked at Sorrel. "When you experience side effects, such as nightmares, aberrations in your Light, or phantom limb movement, notify me. We want to track your progress. If they grow worse, we may have to remove you to the Reef for treatment."
Sorrel gulped and nodded.
Petra turned to Max. "You may report to the Vanguard that our operation was successful. We thank them for their cooperation in this matter."
The Corsairs and Petra filed out of the room. Sorrel and Max followed, Sorrel supporting herself with a hand on Max's shoulder. Her touch thrilled him, but at the same time, it only sharpened his guilt and grief. He wanted to hold her, shield her from the side effects of the Aphelion's possession, take it on himself, somehow.
"I feel so weak," she murmured. "The Aphelion was consuming me. I hope I'm back. All of me."
"I think the Awoken brought you back," Max said. "They have scary powers. Not like Guardians."
Sorrel nodded, biting her lip. "All I can think about is sleeping. But I might have nightmares. I'd better call work and explain why I disappeared in the middle of a shift. I hope I'm not fired."
"If you are," Max said lightly, "they have a place for you in the Tower." It filled him with painful hope, thinking of seeing her in the Tower every day.
Sorrel gave him a long look, perhaps reading this desire, then shook her head. "I don't want to be a Guardian."
"Well, I'm here whenever you need me," Max assured her. "If you want to talk or just hang out, have your Ghost send Zero a message."
"My Ghost." Sorrel clutched Vox a little tighter. "I have a Ghost."
"And I finally have you," said Vox, blinking up at her from her hand. "I haven't seen you in person since you were a year old."
Sorrel smiled down at the Ghost. "I'll have to get used to you. And you need a shell so you're presentable."
"I can pick up a nice one," Max said. "There's a sale on right now."
"That'd be wonderful," Sorrel said with a grateful smile.
They made their way through Owl Sector, Max guiding Sorrel up elevators and down hallways. At one point, an important-looking man in a lab coat strode up to them. "You can't leave with that Ghost core. That's Owl Sector property!"
"She's my Ghost," Sorrel said, her weariness falling away. She snarled, "And I was brought here as a test subject against my will. If you don't get out of my way, I will sue you, personally, when I sue Owl Sector."
"You have no authority!" the scientist snapped. "We'll see what the courts decide!" But he stepped aside and let them pass.
"Are you going to sue?" Max asked in a low voice.
"If I can get a lawyer," Sorrel replied. "Not sure how I'll afford to pay one."
They left the building at last, and found that the sun had set while they had been indoors. The City lights burned around them, the population unaware that their lives had nearly ended that evening. Max nearly offered Sorrel a ride on his sparrow, but the words died on the way to his lips as he looked at her scarred face. More guilt. He could do so little for her-she accepted so little help, demanded nothing of him. So different from Erica. The less Sorrel asked, the more Max wanted to give. He offered the only thing he knew she would accept.
"Would you mind a transmat home?"
Sorrel smiled. "That would be wonderful."