Zack, Makali, and Dale. No Valya.
“God, she was right behind me,” Makali said.
“Good, then she won’t be far.”
He didn’t wait or issue orders, but simply shot back the way he had come, taking the left of a pair of routes. Makali looked at Dale. “You and he were both ahead of me on that path. If he’s taking the left, we should take the right.” There were really only two pathways through the rubble of Crapville.
The last thing Dale Scott wanted to do was to lose sight of the Sentry and turn away from the possible exit. He could feel himself on the verge of passing out, knowing that if he did, it would be the end.
But, fine, one more try.
He followed Makali through the debris, unable to see much. The flare of the pursuing Sentries had died out, leaving the humans to stumble around in the darkness like children in an unlit basement.
He wondered briefly how close the pursuers were. And if they caught the humans, what would they do? And what difference would it make?
“Dale!” Makali was somewhere in front of him, huffing and puffing. “Two paths again…go right, hear me?”
“Right, got it!”
A shadow passed over him, something silent, swift. Looking up, he saw what appeared to be a red balloon—not a Sentry in some kind of aircraft, thank God. The object disappeared from sight quickly, which was fine for Dale. He needed to watch his footing.
The right path suddenly appeared as a slightly less dark area in front of Dale. It was so clogged with debris that he had to drop to hands and knees to crawl over it…he immediately knew that, in her present condition, Valya had never reached it.
Which didn’t mean, of course, that she wasn’t still in front of him.
He slid down the far side of the mound of debris and almost pitched forward onto his face. He was walking on something slippery…fresh fluid of some kind.
He smelled something new, fresh, and nasty, too.
Oh shit! Around the nearest turn was a body, human, literally cut in two from top to bottom. One half had been scattered—Dale had been walking on the remains—while the other lay in a crumpled, bloody heap.
Valya.
“Over here!” Dale said. It started as a shout but ended as a sob. Oh fuck. He took a breath, steadied himself against the nearest wall. “I…found…her!”
Yes, they had been poisoned, suffering from who knew what kind of oxygen deprivation and nasty trace element overload, all of it contributing to evil thoughts.
But Dale Scott had never wanted to see Valya truly dead. She was a friend—had been his lover—was part of the team!
Makali was first to arrive. She shrieked and turned away. Turning back, she shoved Dale. “What did you do?” she screamed. She actually began hitting him.
It was relatively easy to grab her fists and force them down. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Zack arrived then, clambering over the same pile of debris as Dale, and slipping, too. Then he stopped dead, as if punched. “God,” was all he said.
Makali was in Dale’s face. “You hated her!”
“Me?” he said. “You think I would or could do this?”
“Stop it,” Zack said. “We’re oxygen-starved and poisoned.” He rubbed his face. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for her.” He held his right hand over the remains, as if offering a blessing. Dale wished he had thought of that.
Meanwhile Makali knelt by the body. “Where’s her bag?”
“What difference does it make?” Dale said. Jesus, women.
“It had the Tik-Talk, for one thing,” Zack said. “But I don’t see it anywhere.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Dale said. “It hasn’t exactly been useful.”
“Guess we’ll never know now,” Zack said. He seemed quite angry about it.
“Zack,” Makali said, “who did this?”
“Dash’s connate, maybe?” He looked in the general direction of the habitat. “I have no idea how fast Sentries can move. Maybe they caught up to us.”
Dale thought that was silly. He had watched the pursuing Sentries long enough to see that they were at least half an hour behind the humans. “And maybe there’s something else around here,” Dale said. “These Reiver things, maybe?”
“Killers were Skyphoi,” an electronic voice said behind them.
Dash was there—for how long? Dale wondered. The Sentry looked slumped, as defeated as any of the bedraggled humans. “And who are the Skyphoi?” Zack said. “And why would they want to kill Valya?”
“Skyphoi inhabit the next habitat. They are a newer race, our enemies.”
“What are they doing here? Is this their habitat?”
“No. But they were the race that caused this,” Dash said.
“They’ve got nukes?” Makali said.
“They worked with Architects on the sanitization. They have unusual destructive devices.”
“What can we do?” Zack said. “What do they look like? How do we fight them?”
“They are air creatures,” Dash said, which told Dale very little that was useful. “Come now,” the Sentry said. “They will see the connate and my people—there will be war between them. We can escape.” Without waiting for further questions, or offering further information, the Sentry turned and began to walk away.
Zack, Makali, and Dale looked at each other.
“If we don’t reach that control center soon…” Makali said, and was unable to finish.
For once, Dale sympathized. “How many enemies does this guy have?” Dale said.
“I don’t know,” Zack said. “I just wish they all didn’t turn out to be our enemies, too.”
ZHAO
It was an article of faith among Zhao’s instructors in Guoanbu that no assignment was like any other, that no amount of training or imagination would be sufficient to prepare an agent for unexpected occurrences…for the weather that prevented a pickup, for the domestic problems that caused an agent to turn, for the sports team that unexpectedly made the playoffs, filling and then emptying a stadium and causing a drunk, violent traffic jam at just the wrong hour….
Colonel Dao, the most consistent proponent of this chaos theory, even had a name for such events, calling them “Zoo Animals,” a term Zhao had always found as inappropriate (what did confined creatures have to do with chaotic mishaps?) as he had unforgettable.
Zhao had been living through a gigantic series of Zoo Animals.
As he swayed and lurched in response to the actions of the giant railcar—which had stopped and started twice because of total blackouts—he pondered what appeared to be a literal representation: two children of space travelers, one a girl obsessively and selfishly using up the last dregs of power in their only Slate in order to stare at images of her mother and father, the other a callow, impulsive, surly, uncooperative teen male.
Then there was the alive-again American astronaut Yvonne Hall. In Zhao’s pre–Destiny and Brahma mission briefings, the African American woman had been described as equal parts intelligence and resentment, a potentially explosive combination that was, the material said, “likely to result in poor operational decision making.” Such as setting off a suitcase nuclear device during humanity’s first interplanetary mission? Talk about a Zoo Animal.
Her behavior since reappearing among the living had redeemed her somewhat. In Zhao’s judgment, Yvonne had served as an adequate link to the intelligences that controlled the Near-Earth Object Keanu. Not a perfect link—he still seethed with anger and frustration at Yvonne’s initial inability to relay any information of real or timely use. Had she been able to tune into the “voices in her head” earlier, for example, they might have been spared that terrifying encounter in that Museum of Lost Aliens, for example.
But that had improved. She had managed to contact—indeed, to summon forth, like an ancient wizard—an actual Architect, and to bring him on their latest, hopefully final journey. The giant Zoo Animal now sprawled across the railcar from Zhao, Pav, and Rachel, patiently answering questions from Yvonne—or so it seemed. The Revenant astronaut was making gestures and looking quizzically at the Architect. Zhao hoped the alien was responding.