She gave herself the inoculation, then called a small one-person ship to dock against her sterile central dome. Drawing a deep breath, digging deep to find long-buried reservoirs of courage, she exited through five layers of protective decontamination zones, boarded the one-person ship, and flew up to ORS 12.
Tom Rom was awake and aware when she cycled through the airlock and entered the spherical lab. The researchers gaped at Zoe in amazement. None of them had ever seen her in person before—very few people had.
The smells of the processed air were strange to her, the proximity of other human beings was intimidating. Zoe fought back her nervousness, though, and came forward.
Tom Rom stared at her, as if trying to convince himself this was not a hallucination. “You can’t take this risk.”
“I can, and I did. You’re too weak to leave the lab yet. I could see you needed strength. Let me give it to you.”
At his bedside, she touched his skin, felt the warm reassurance there that was so foreign to her. It had been at least fifteen years since she had touched another human being—even Tom Rom.
But now she slid her fingers down his forearm, took his hand in hers, and squeezed. “I’m here,” she said.
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN
NIRA
After the autopsy-chamber disaster, the remaining Ildiran bodies were spread out in the expansive arena normally used for the mirror ballet. Mage-Imperator Jora’h could not dispose of them quickly enough.
No audience was allowed to gather, but Nira remained with him. They had both seen the horrific eruption of darkness in the sealed chamber, but thanks to the protective systems every vestige of the contaminated corpses, the autopsy specialists, and the rising shadow had been incinerated in the tremendous discharge of intense solar light.
Jora’h would take no chances with the remaining cadavers. One hundred and two of them. The shadow stain must still be pooled inside the bodies, so they would all have to be disintegrated, flash-cremated. Lens kithmen insisted that the light of the seven suns was blessed. Maybe that light would be potent enough to erase the stain and achieve one small victory, to push the Shana Rei back.
Under general supervision, workers had laid out the dead participants of the massacre mob—a variety of Ildiran kiths and body types—stripped away their garments and incinerated the clothing in solar furnaces. Cremation workers moved from one cadaver to the next, carrying containers of a gray metallic paste—a photothermic cream used for funeral purposes—which they slathered over the skin, like a potter working clay. Jora’h had commanded the cremation workers to work as swiftly as possible.
Nira and Jora’h were alone in the primary observation box. This was no celebration, no spectacle of lights and colors. For a long time, neither spoke, although they shared their silent thoughts and feelings. Nira noted the troubled look in his eyes, how his long braid twitched with anxiety.
Finally, he turned to her. “I feel greater dread with each second. If the shadow should escape here and flood out into Mijistra…”
“But you know the shadow is already here.” She thought of how easily it could infiltrate the Ildirans through the thism—as it had before. She remembered feeling uneasiness among the crowds that had come out for her birthday procession, when perfectly normal Ildirans had suddenly turned into wild killers.
Now the stadium was utterly still except for the quiet movements of the cremation workers. Outside, a full contingent of guard kithmen kept the curious away from the entrances.
Word had spread through the city of the horrors committed in the human enclave, how Ildirans had slaughtered all those people. They knew about the assassination attempts on Nira’s birthday and the attacks in the Vault of Failures. Even though no one could understand the true cause of the violence, Ildirans whispered about the Shana Rei—and Jora’h could offer them no comfort.
“These people aren’t at fault. They are victims, too,” she said, looking down at all those bodies. “Will the families be allowed to have funerals for their loved ones?”
“We will give them wrapped effigies. They will have their ceremony and their time of grieving, but we won’t make a spectacle of what their people did…” He dropped his voice and said much more quietly, “It is my fault. I let them down. I allowed the weakness to seep inside.”
Nira turned to face him. “The Shana Rei did this, not you.”
“But they may have used me to do this.” He straightened. “What if I am the weak point that makes our race vulnerable? I am the heart of the thism, and I must be the first line of defense.”
She took his hand. “Then I’ll make you stronger.”
All the reflection plates, lasers, and prisms from the mirror ballet had been commandeered. Illumination physicists retooled them, intensified the parabolic lenses, used laser tracers to map out the full carpet of cremation. Every component had been tested. Jora’h insisted on incinerating all the bodies at once, fearing that if they did one at a time, the shadows might have time to retaliate.
The cremation workers finished covering the bodies with the thick gray paste, and they scurried away. Jora’h stared down at the corpses.
A messenger rushed into the box. “Liege, the illumination physicists are prepared. The dome can be opened.”
“Then bring down the light,” Jora’h said.
“We need to bring down a great deal of it,” Nira added quietly.
They both applied filmgoggles and adjusted them to the densest settings. The louvered awnings in the arena ceiling tilted downward to reveal polished rectangular mirrors. The mirrors gathered sunlight from every portion of the Ildiran sky, reflected it, and flashed it down into collector bowls. Lenses intensified the searing light, and it gained strength and brightness in a flash.
Solar light poured onto the covered bodies, activating the photothermal cream, which blazed for an instant with a brightness more powerful than the core of a star. The flame incinerated every vestige of the bodies, vaporizing them so swiftly that the black taint trapped inside them was also boiled into bright nothingness…
Nira was glad to know that the Shana Rei had been defeated at Theroc by the faeros as well as Ildiran sun bombs. Adar Zan’nh was on his way back, more than victorious, and confident that the Solar Navy weapons would have some effect against the creatures of darkness. The Confederation Defense Forces would also be building many of the weapons.
But even as these contaminated bodies were flash-cremated, and knowing the nightshade had been destroyed above Theroc, Nira could not feel relieved. “We may have hurt them, Jora’h, but the Shana Rei will be back.”
He continued to watch the light bombardment until it was finally over. The louvered mirrors tilted again, closing off the ceiling and reflecting the sunlight back into the sky. He removed his eye protection and stared at the still-smoking ground of the mirror ballet arena. Only a smear of soot remained, shaped in vaguely humanoid forms… like permanent shadows of the fallen.
“You’re right. You said they may already be here,” Jora’h said. “Your people can fight them if they are strong,” she said. Jora’h looked uncertain, but she wouldn’t back down; she pressed him again. “And they will be strong if you tell them to be strong. They’ll be hopeful if you tell them to be hopeful.”
“Yes, I can tell them that.” He squared his shoulders and stood tall and strong—the powerful Mage-Imperator she had fallen in love with so many years ago. “I can tell them that, and they may even believe it.” Then his voice dropped. “But the darkness is still closing in.”