I grimaced as the pallet jack creaked into motion on squeaky wheels. The guards must have heard me long before I came into view. The one who leaned against the wall straightened up as soon as he saw me, while the one with the magazine just sent me a cursory glance over the top of the pages. When I came to a halt next to the station, the alert one called out to me.
"I don't recognize you. Name?"
It was time to put all those overheard conversations to use. I let go of the pallet jack and made a show of wiping my hands on the rag that concealed my weapon, then let them both fall to the side and walked over to the door with what I hoped was natural-looking ease.
"Foley," I said, amazed by how even my voice sounded. "Part of the Philly crew. I'm supposed to take this lot to, uh, Gateway storage two?"
I had to force myself to keep breathing while I waited for a reaction to my ruse. A detachment of Orca soldiers had arrived from their Philadelphia base last week. I could only hope these guys hadn't gotten too acquainted with the new faces yet. Or worse, were part of them.
"She looks familiar to me, Kingsley," the seated guard remarked before taking a swig from his water bottle, never looking up. "I've seen her around."
My heart nearly stopped. I expected him to make the connection right away, but the guard remained occupied by his reading material. Maybe some of my apprehension showed, because the other man narrowed his eyes.
"Shouldn't you be off duty, Foley? It's a bit late for hauling shit around."
I put on my best sheepish grin.
"Uh, yeah. Brodie and I didn't see eye to eye," I said, using the name of one of the less-liked team leaders.
Magazine Man, no doubt sensing the opportunity for gossip, finally looked up with half a grin and a raised eyebrow.
"Oh? Do tell."
Using that as an invitation, I took a few steps forward, placing myself within reach of the suspicious one.
"I may have asked if he'd caught a case of the dumb asses. He didn't take kindly to that."
The man returned to his magazine with a raucous laugh, shaking his head in amusement.
"Man, Brodie's a stuck-up dickhole," he sniggered. "Wouldn't know a sense of humor if it came up and kicked him in the nuts."
"Right," Kingsley said slowly. "I'm gonna have to clear this."
I raised my hand in a dismissive wave. The other held the jet injector in a death grip.
"Sure, whatever. The sooner I'm done with this bullshit, the better."
As he reached for his communicator, I turned away from the man and took another step into the room, as if to give him some space, and positioned myself between the two mercs. As the man was raising the radio to his ear, I dropped the rag and spun around.
The jet hit him square in the neck before he had a chance to realize what was going on. He stumbled backward, the unused communicator clattering to the floor. I heard a surprised shout from behind me and whirled around to face the other merc.
Unfortunately, after six weeks spent inside a suit with power-assisted movement, my coordination without it was off. My swing went wide and I had to take a couple of faltering steps to the side to keep my balance. That was all the second soldier needed. A hard blow to my wrist knocked the jet injector out of my hands and I was grabbed from behind. He launched us both toward the wall, but just before impact I got a foot wedged against it and instinctively kicked back.
The next second we were in the air, followed by a thump on my back that knocked the wind out of my lungs. My legs slipped out from under me and I dropped down onto my behind. Staring stupidly ahead, I tried to make sense of the view. The wall I had almost been slammed into face-first was now on the other side of the room. I was sitting on the floor, legs jutting out in a wide angle. The merc...
I scrambled onto my knees, clawing at the floor in my blind rush to put some distance between myself and the man behind me. Once I reached the middle of the room I twisted around to face my opponent.
The soldier was immobile, slumped back against the wall in much the same position I had just found myself in. His eyes were closed, and blood trickled out from his nose and mouth.
Oh my god, Tess, you killed him!
My ragged breaths threatened to turn into full-blown hyperventilation until I saw his chest rise. The motion was weak, but it was there. He was still alive. My shoulders sagged in relief and I let my head drop down, hanging limp between my arms as I remained still on shaky hands and knees in the middle of the security booth.
As I waited for the adrenaline rush to pass and my breathing to slow down, I realized what had happened. Sparky's legs. When I kicked back against the wall, it was with a full strength boost. The poor man had practically been crushed.
My stomach churned. Clambering over to the desk, I barely reached the trash can before the retching began.
When I was in a condition to move again, I rinsed the vile taste out of my mouth with a couple of mouthfuls from the bottle on the desk. Pulling on the missing pieces of my suit was a struggle. My wrist ached and a bruise had begun to form near the thumb, while my battered back complained with every step I took. With Sparky's support, however, I was able to use both.
I locked the drugged man inside the closest storage room. The injured one I placed on the pallet jack and moved into the corridor outside the barracks. He didn't make a sound; while that worried me, it was probably for the best under the current circumstances. Hopefully, the others would find him in time.
Back at the security station, I rushed to the computer terminal. The control system had changed, but it only took a few trials to find and activate the emergency blast doors. What I hadn't expected was the ear-shattering klaxon that sounded a warning as the shields came down. I jumped, then punched a dent into the wall and yelled a rattled stream of curses. At that point, I bloody well needed it. It wasn't as if anybody would hear me over that blasted alarm, anyway.
Meanwhile, the thick, heavy shields obediently slid down and soon covered the outer window and door to security. A few seconds later I heard the large blast door touch concrete with a dull thump, blocking all access through the main corridor.
Heart pounding, I ran to the panel between the door and window, which – fourteen years ago, at least – housed the control circuitry for the security station blast shields. Fortunately, that hadn't changed. With Sparky's strength and protection it was an easy task to knock the panel aside and tear out a handful of wires. Less than a minute later, I had repeated the process for the main blast door. Finally, just to be on the safe side, I smashed an elbow into the control terminal itself, which went dark with a satisfying crack and a shower of sparks.
Closing my eyes, I allowed myself a slow, deep breath of relief. Even if the others had heard the calamity, as they must have, they couldn't get to me now. The Gateway sector was locked down.
This was no time to dawdle, however. The final part of my plan remained.
I exited the security room and made my way down the corridor. Everything was quiet, as expected, and the stolen access key opened the control room door. I snuck in – only to freeze to the spot in surprise, which was almost instantly replaced by debilitating dread.
James and two Orca mercs were inside, waiting for me.
The mercenaries moved into position before I had processed what I was seeing, blocking my exit. I could only stare in stunned dismay as James closed the distance between us. The engineer wasn't wearing his helmet, giving me a clear view of the contemptuous smile on his face.
"Well, well," he sneered. "If it isn't my wayward little biologist. I had a feeling I might run into you here."
How did he know? How did he know?
Without warning, he swung his fist into my face.
The force of the blow crashed my temple into the inner side of the helmet and left my ears ringing. I couldn't even make out the words of the suit's tinny warning. I staggered back and raised a hand to steady my spinning head, tasting the coppery tang of blood on my tongue.
The pain was insignificant compared to the pure shock I felt. James had hit me. Helmet or no, James had fucking hit me.
"I got worried when you didn't show up for dinner. It's not like my girl to miss a meal."
"I'm not your girl," I growled through gritted teeth.
"Oh, but you are. You're all mine now."
Hot tears burned in my eyes as I moved them back to my former fiancé. His face was a stone mask, his lips twisted into a cruel smile; but it was the eyes that were the worst. The pupils were no longer shifting restlessly, but had fully transformed into vertical slits, like the eyes of a cat. My breath choked in my chest. I had been wrong. This wasn't James. I was at the mercy of something alien.
"I'm afraid we'll have to punish you for pulling this quaint little stunt. We can't allow anything to happen to the Gateway. We need it to reach Her. He says She can help us. He says She can make us whole again."
Before I could attempt to make any sense of the mad ramblings, the creature that wore James' face grabbed my shoulder and yanked me forward with shocking strength.
"Suit FitzEvan," it ordered in James' voice. "Power down."
So, it was over. What an ignoble end to a quest that never had much hope to begin with. I held my breath and tensed up, preparing for the dead weight that would pin me in place.
The inhuman eyes stared at the suit with a bewildered frown when nothing happened. In the same instant I realized my suit no longer obeyed the commands of its original creator, I recalled the origins of Sparky's new name. Reeve must have fully reset its verbal ID protocols when the name was changed, including master overrides. Once again, I was indebted to the red-haired Turk and his inane, absurd and absolutely wonderful suggestions.
Grinning madly as a fresh surge of adrenaline shot through my veins and sent my heart into a wild race, I called out my own order.
"Sparky, blast off!"
A short hum was followed by the sharp crack of an electrical surge and I found myself propelled through the air. I landed hard on one of the computer terminals and felt blinding pain shoot through my arm before everything went dark.
When I came to, the suit was still rattling off its warnings, so I must have only blacked out for a second or two.
"...fracture detected. Internal bleeding detected. Warning. Power level critical. System powering down in–"
With a sad little hum, the suit went dead. Reeve had never had the chance to fix that problem.
I couldn't remember when I had last felt such an overwhelming urge to cry.
Fighting it, I forced myself to concentrate on the present. Turning my head proved surprisingly difficult; without the aid of a powered suit, the helmet was heavier than I had realized. I glimpsed two bodies on the ground to my left and James' crumpled form near the wall opposite from where we had been standing. All of them were still. The only sound I could hear was the faint, alarmed beeping of the terminal that had broken my fall.
I had been too close to an immobile wall when Sparky's energy blast went off, I realized. I was lying on my back in an awkward position, the suit now dead weight holding me down. My left arm felt like it was on fire – likely the fracture the suit had mentioned. I didn't want to think about what the internal bleeding might be. There was something wrong with my vision, too. I could only see properly with my right eye.
By now, every panting breath was accompanied by a whimper. I was a hair's breadth from panicking. I squeezed my eyes shut and made myself breathe through my nose, trying my best to ignore the revolting smell of blood. I couldn't let myself fall apart now.
Focus! Use your head!
Reeve's medical system. If I could restore enough power, the suit would take care of the rest. Well, in theory, but it was my best shot. My only shot. I had to get to a recharging station.
With only one functional arm and covered in more than thirty kilos of armor, something as simple as shifting onto my side took several minutes. I was amazed no other guards had shown up. The lockdown was proving more effective than I expected.
I pushed myself up onto my knees, holding my injured arm as still as possible against my side. The action made me tear up with pain. I bent my head and tore the helmet off, letting it fall to the ground. When I opened my eyes again, my vision was okay. A little blurry, but I could see with both eyes. The incredible relief was the last straw and I began sobbing openly.
I had to move. The taste of blood was strong in my mouth and the pain was getting worse. The problem was, I couldn't get up. The suit was just too heavy for my injured body. I had no choice but to crawl along on one good hand and my knees. It was slow. So slow. I could see blood drip onto the floor at a steady pace. It must have been from my nose.
It wasn't long before my arm was shaking uncontrollably. James' workshop, and the recharge station it contained, was now less than ten meters away. I pushed on, keeping myself in motion with pure stubbornness. When my field of vision began to lose focus around the edges, I thought of Reno.
"The fuck you call that, Fitz?" I imagined him say. "I've seen legless ol' grannies crawl faster, yo."
My breath was coming in quick, shallow gasps that just weren't enough. When I tried to force a deeper lungful of air, my whole body was wracked by debilitating spasms and I coughed up blood. I lost my balance and landed on the shoulder of my broken arm. My vision exploded in pure, blinding white. I couldn't even scream; my lungs just wouldn't work anymore.
Imaginary Reno was throwing paperclips at my head.
"The hell are ya waitin' for, breakfast in bed or somethin'? C'mon, ya lazy crybaby, quit slackin' off and get off the fuckin' floor already. Haul some goddamn ass!"
I honestly don't know how, but I made it to my goal. Luckily, the recharge station was right inside the door. I don't think I could have made it much farther.
Biting back the whimpers, I pulled myself onto my feet with the support of a nearby shelf. Two shaky steps brought me within reach of the cable and I managed to grab it just as I collapsed against the wall. This time, I couldn't stop the shriek that tore from my throat.
I lay there in a panting heap for a whole minute before I could make myself move again. It took several tries, but I finally connected up the suit. With a relieved, nigh hysterical laugh, I allowed myself to go limp.
The steady hum of the station recharging the suit was the most beautiful sound I could imagine. When I looked up, the indicator screen was already at 24 percent. I thought I had only closed my eyes for a second, but I must have lost consciousness again. With gingerly movements, I flipped open the control panel on my injured arm and turned Sparky back on.
"Hazardous environment suit online. Warning. Vital signs critical. Administering hi-potion."
I felt a small sting on my neck before the suit had finished its line. A warm feeling spread down to my torso and out to my limbs in less than a second. Another second later, the tingling superseded all other sensation; so briefly that it was over before I had fully registered it.
I blinked a few times in surprise, cautiously moving the fingers on my left hand. The effect was much less intense than I remembered, although it seemed to have done the job. Maybe the ampoule held a smaller dose, or maybe the whole process was much quicker when injected straight into the bloodstream.
As fascinating a topic as the properties of Gaia's magical healing was, that was a question to ponder later. Right now I had other priorities.
"Charging in progress. Power at twenty-five percent."
I couldn't wait for too long, but I needed to make sure the suit had enough juice to get me through the final part of the plan. As my eyes wandered along the gruesome trail of blood I had left behind, I tried to shake off the lingering grogginess. Just like the first time, my brain had trouble switching mental gears after such miraculous, instant healing.
How long had it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? I had no idea. I never thought I could be so grateful for James' arrogant streak. If he had bothered to deal with the lockdown before he tried apprehending me, this little adventure would have been over before it even had a chance to properly begin.
As I glanced over the workspace, a glint of gold caught my eye. It was the helmet Reeve had made for me. A stupid grin spread over my face. That golden visage was like a damned ray of the sun, shining into my pit of heartache and misery. A much-needed physical reminder of why I had to succeed.
I checked the indicator on the charging station. Forty-seven percent. It would have to do. I pushed myself up to my feet with renewed vigor and disconnected myself, then fetched the helmet and let it click into place. It was time to finish this.
Disable circuit breakers. Disable fire alarm. Disconnect fire suppression system. Victor's instructions came back to me clear as day as I completed the necessary tasks, one by one. I had repeated them in my head every night for the past week, preparing for this moment.
Everything was as I had left it when I returned to the control room. James was still slumped on the floor. I couldn't see his face. I couldn't even tell if he was still breathing inside all the blue-black armor encasing him. Swallowing hard, I turned my head away. I didn't want to approach him. I didn't want to risk seeing his eyes, which I had once found so brilliant and captivating, stare back at me devoid of life.
The action brought my gaze onto a screen showing the feed of several security cameras. I saw the security booth, along with several concrete corridors, on both sides of the blast doors. They must have been watching me the whole time, just waiting even after I took down two of their comrades. They'd had the perfect opportunity to catch me while I was out of my suit and recovering from the shock, but no.
The muscles in my jaw grew tight. Knowing James and his tendency toward hubris, he had wanted to thwart me right when I thought I was going to get away with it, to prove himself smarter and really rub it in. Well, hopefully watching me puke my guts out had been amusing enough to be worth dying for.
I made my way over to the main computer, timidly stepping over one of the dead mercs on the way, and switched it on. The device hummed to life along with several other networked units, and soon the login box popped up on the screen. I wasn't planning to use it, however. The last time I had found myself in a situation like this, the system had been remotely locked by Orca. Victor had used an override, a backdoor he had placed into the system, and the commands he had used were burned into my memory.
James had often complained about Victor's incomprehensible spaghetti code. He had taken it as bad programming practice. Now I suspected it was another one of Vic's paranoid measures to hide his secrets. With any luck, James and his team had never found this particular one. Holding my breath, I brought up the command-line interface and entered the first instruction.
The cursor blinked several times, beeped twice, and then a litany of commands I didn't understand flooded the screen. I was fairly certain that wouldn't have happened if the attempt had failed, though. I was in.
Working quickly, I entered more commands, mentally ticking them off one by one. Override safety protocols. Disable failsafe systems. Boost power charge beyond nominal maximum. Set up memory purge.
The command console beeped softly as it accepted my instructions, blissfully ignorant of the fact that it was setting up its own annihilation. Once the Gateway was charged up and would attempt to execute the jump, the whole system would suffer a catastrophic overload. The resulting unchecked energy discharge would take out everything on this side of those blast doors. Myself included.
"The deal was for two tickets, Therèse."
The weak, hoarse voice whispered from the speakers with no warning. I froze. It was James. I could instantly tell this was the real James.
"Two hibernation pods on a starship. Both of us."
I knew for a fact that the man was lying to his new woman. Who knew how many lies he had fed me back when I was blithely unaware of his duplicity? Nevertheless, I had a terrible feeling that right at this moment, he was telling the truth.
I kept my eyes averted from the motionless body by the wall. Rationally, I should have been watching him for signs of treachery, but I just couldn't bear looking at him.
"And Victor? The rest of the team?"
No response. That in itself was enough to answer the question.
I resumed my typing.
"Don't do this."
The tone was pleading now. I grit my teeth and pushed onward, blinking away unwelcome tears.
"If you destroy the Gateway, we'll be stuck on a dead planet!"
He was right, of course. My actions would doom not only myself, but James, his new people, and all that remained of humanity on Earth's barren surface. Thousands of human beings. Hundreds of thousands.
But there were millions, maybe billions of humans on Gaia.
As soon as the noble thought had registered, Reno's face flickered before my eyes, followed by Reeve and Amanda, Victor, my sister, my parents; even James as my younger, naive self remembered him, before any of this had happened.
Who was I kidding? Now, at the end of the road, I could admit to myself what I had known deep down all along. I wasn't doing this for the sake of Gaia's general population. Looking back over the years of hard, desperate work; none of that had been for the greater good of Earth, either. And now, right or wrong, I was once again choosing a few cherished lives over thousands of strangers.
"I guess you were right, James. I'm no better than you, after all."
"You'll die. We'll all die!"
A melancholy smirk twisted my features as I recalled a conversation high above an enigmatic city, on a different world. If I have to choose, it won't be my friends who do the dying. Not if I can help it. This one's for you, Reno.
"C'est la vie, Jamie," I said out loud. "No one gets through it alive."
"Tess, please! Don't–"
My former lover's voice was cut off when I turned off communications. I could barely see what I was doing as I entered the final command for the jump sequence; tears blurred my view, cascading freely down my cheeks.
The lights above me flickered in response as I initialized the jump, triggering the charging process of the Gateway's greedy power reservoirs. Only seconds later, an explosion shook the complex, followed by shouts and the sound of heavy boots on concrete. Orca had broken through.
With a terrible sinking feeling I realized it was still possible to stop the jury-rigged self-destruct sequence. I scoured the room, trying to come up with some way to slow them down, until my eyes fell on the body of one of the dead mercs.
Grenades. Why the hell not. Go out with a bang, right?
I had never held grenades before, much less used them, but how hard could it be? I had seen plenty of action movies. Pull the pin, boom. Game over.
I had to suppress a giggle as I yanked a couple of the explosives off the dead soldier's belt. There was something disturbingly exhilarating about making your own demise as ostentatious as possible.
"Sparky, all shields to maximum."
"All shields, activated."
Flashes of electricity flickered over the Gateway's machinery as I entered the antechamber. Despite the hazard suit's shielding, I could feel the little hairs on my arms stand on end. I watched the barely contained lightning as it danced and flittered over the machinery, awed by the powerful display. I smelled something burning; I took it as a good sign.
Angry voices behind me, much louder now, made me snap out of it. With a little trial and error, I got the first pin out and threw the grenade somewhere beyond the mess of cables behind the Gateway chamber, closely followed by the second one.
As soon as the explosive had left my fingers, gunfire erupted behind me. Some kind of primitive survival instinct took control when bullets ricocheted off the metal casing of the chamber to my right. The events of the next few seconds seemed to play out in slow-motion, as I dove into the Gateway chamber and threw the heavy door shut behind me.
Inside, the energy levels were staggering; whirling around and tearing at my suit.
"Warning. Shield vi-vi-vitals critical. User power elevated. Major electromagnetic field fra-fra-fractured."
I laughed. Sparky's confused report of incomputable readings was a fitting soundtrack to the end of this misadventure.
That was my last coherent thought before the world erupted in searing white and crackling blue.