I stopped as Nix’s tablet moved past me, and something on the scanner screen caught my eye.
“Nix, wait,” I said, grabbing his wrist. He let me take the tablet from his hand, and I angled it down the front of me, to my own belly.
My mouth dropped open. Perched on my belly was a huge ticklike construct, its abdomen sticking out like a giant egg. Its spindly legs gripped me, and I could see a tube had snaked through into my stomach where a squiggly ball had formed.
“Sam, what’s wrong?” Vamp asked.
“Take the kid over there,” I said, pointing.
“Why?”
“Do it!”
He looked peeved, but he guided Alexei away from us as I grabbed Nix’s sleeve.
“Nix,” I said, staring. “What the hell is that?”
I looked around the side of the tablet, down to my belly. There was nothing there, but when I looked back to the screen, there it was again. I began to feel woozy, and when I spoke again my voice cracked.
“Nix, what the hell is that thing? Is it real?”
He moved closer to look at the screen. “It’s real.”
“What is it?” I whispered. I glanced back at Vamp, who looked away.
“It’s… an umbilicus,” Nix said.
“A what?”
“An umbilicus,” he said, moving the screen for a better look. “It’s sending nutrients to the mass behind it.”
“Why can’t I see it?”
“It is in jump space,” he said, “except for the point of contact inside you. You can’t interact with it directly.”
I looked at the shadowy ball of tissue the tube fed into. “What is it doing? Why is it there?”
The shape moved, just a little. It reminded me of a haan brain.
“It’s Sillith’s weapon,” he said quietly.
“But—”
“Not the one she fashioned for your people, the one she has continued to develop in secret.” He leaned closer to my belly, until I could feel the heat of his face against it.
“Get it off me,” I said. I swept at the spot, like I was trying to flick away a spider. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. “I have to get it off me right now. I can’t…”
He put one hand on my shoulder, and I felt a calm come over me as he eased through the mite cluster. Part of me was still freaking out, but it helped, a little.
“I can’t,” he said.
Out of the jumble of my thoughts, the image from Fang’s security footage jumped out. Dragan had been there with Alexei, and the girl. There had been a small distortion near her belly….
I took the tablet and pointed it back toward her. There was nothing there.
“Sam, what are you doing?” Vamp called.
I moved the tablet across the room, sweeping past the sofa until something jumped out. There, lying on its side next to the TV stand, was one of the ticklike objects. It looked dead. When I moved the tablet away, it disappeared.
“Nix, what the hell is going on?”
“I’m not sure, but the genetic material is definitely haan, and it is consuming tissue around it to fuel growth. When Sillith realized this, she must have fitted you with the umbilicus to keep it from feeding on you.”
“But she wants me dead. Why would she—”
“So you can lead her to the boy.”
My ears pricked as a door outside down the hall banged open, and Alexei cringed back farther into the cubby.
“She knows we’re here,” he said.
Several people had just entered the hallway outside the apartment and were heading in our direction.
Chapter Sixteen
06:59:33 BC
“Sam…,” Vamp warned.
“I hear them.”
Heavy footsteps tromped toward us from down the hall outside. Not just two or three people, but a group.
“Down here!” a voice barked, followed by chatter over a radio.
“Sam, we have to leave now,” Vamp said.
“How the hell did they track us?”
The footsteps came to a stop outside the apartment’s front door, and I heard them take up positions there.
“Here,” a voice said. “She’s in there.”
I pressed my fists to my temples. “Shit!”
Alexei backed away and darted back through the closet door.
“Alexei, wait!” I took a step toward him and he slammed it shut.
“Cordon is secure,” a voice said. The sound of the airship outside was getting louder. “Move on my mark.”
We weren’t going to make it. They were coming in.
“Nix,” I called, snapping my fingers at him. “Your tablet. Hurry up.”
He hurried over and took it from inside his coat, swiping his finger across the screen to activate it.
I grabbed the tablet from his hands and waved my hand over the field. The honeycomb scrolled past, and I caught glimpses of his things as they went by, including the double-needled wand. I dropped the twistkey into the empty cell next to it.
“The pattern you trace with your finger,” I said. “Is that the pass code?”
“Yes.”
“Can you change it? So we can both get into it?”
He reached over my shoulder and tapped at the virtual keys until a prompt appeared.
“Ready!” a voice outside said.
“Trace a new pattern with your finger,” Nix said.
“Vamp, watch.”
I traced the hanzi for “apple” in the middle of the screen. With a crackle, the field solidified again into the shiny metal plate.
“Got it?” I asked.
“Yes,” Nix said. Vamp nodded.
I headed back to the living room and they followed. I stood next to the little girl and squeezed her shoulder.
“It’ll be okay,” I told her.
“Clear!” a voice outside barked. Nix took back the tablet and quickly stowed it in his coat as the door crashed open.
Two soldiers stormed in, but they weren’t in full combat gear. They were street-variety soldiers kitted out in basic patrol gear. When they entered, Vamp’s app started painting their faces and calling out transponder IDs. Names and ranks appeared as the app began recording their actions onto my wet drive.
“Freeze!” one of them yelled, his rifle pointed at my chest. The girl threw her hands up over her head as two more men crowded in after them, scanning the room through their scopes. One kicked open the bathroom door and pointed his weapon inside.
“Clear!” he said over his shoulder. One of them stood over the couch and pointed down at the blankets while another approached the bedroom door.
“Blood,” he said.
One of the men stepped forward with his eyes locked on to the screen of some sort of scanner he was holding. He moved it around the room and then settled on me. He moved in close, until it was almost touching me.
“This is her,” he said over his shoulder.
“Good,” a voice said back.
I looked, and my eyes widened as a woman in uniform stepped into the apartment. She was an older woman, pretty but severe looking, with jet-black hair in a short bob. I recognized her immediately from TV. It was Lieutenant Pei Ligong, Governor Hwong’s right hand.
“We’ve got one human male, one haan male with her,” she said into a wrist radio. “What do you want to do with them?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Hold them for now.”
“Understood.”
“Lieutenant Ligong,” I stammered. She glanced at me. “Lieutenant Ligong, I can explain all of this.”
“Shut your mouth and get down on the floor.”
“Please listen to me,” I said. “I can explain—”
She drew her pistol and pointed it at me. “Now! All of you, down!”
My hands shot up and I knelt down alongside the girl, who cowered with her hands in front of her face. Nix knelt down next to me, but Vamp stayed standing.
“Wait,” he said. “You don’t understand.”