“Looking for the bracelet?” Baila said, grinning. “It’s in a safe place, far from you. I don’t want to chase you like last time. Gill, Gill, you scared me good.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “I thought we lost you. I thought we lost the bracelet.”
An uneven diaphragm door opened in a wall, and a stocky Antyran dressed in ritual red garb entered the room, pushing a floating table of alien origin, on which Gill could see the Sigian bracelet!
Although the podgy character should have been on the front line, he was again in Baila’s favor because he was allowed to witness such an important event.
“I finished scanning it, Your Greatness. It’s—”
“Harut, I thought of something. You activate it.”
“A-activate it?” the Antyran babbled. Obviously, the prospect of touching Arghail’s tool filled him with panic.
So that’s how it ends, thought Gill. He had one more battle ahead, to give them a bad code and convince them it was the right one. They were all going to die in the blast, and the prospect of dying didn’t scare him at all. Sigia would die today, on his terms. He had failed, but he didn’t betray them.
“Yes, I want to see it working. I’m sure the rebels tortured the right codes off him, but I trust my own ways more,” Baila grinned with the smile of a predator. “If something unexpected happens, I’d rather have him in the scanner. You set it on five dhirmi?” he asked the gray god.
“Tak’k.”
“It’d be such a pity if the field burns his puny nerves and spares him from my punishment. I don’t want any mistakes—you have to move fast!”
“Tak’k,” the god said, nodding.
Harut watched the Sigian artifact, hypnotized, unable to touch it.
“Harut, finish the job before the junction with the transporter. You’ll take Gillabrian—if he’s still alive—and bring him to me. Lek will take the bracelet and go to Grammia to analyze it.”
“Tak’k.”
“Only Lek or Durta can touch it, remember! Don’t get too close if you want to live,” he told the gelatinous creature. “You know what the rebels told us! The bracelet self-destructs if the closest being is a ‘god,’” he said with a snort, loading the last word with all the tonalities of heavy ridicule.
The Grammian in the room made no sign that he noticed the irony.
“And hurry up! We don’t want to arouse the suspicion of our ‘guests’ at the system’s outskirts!”
Grammia! That was the terrible name behind the gray world-killers, Gill realized. Although he had barely a few minutes to live, and the information was completely useless now, at least he wouldn’t die without knowing the name of Sigia’s murderers.
Slowly, hesitating, Harut stretched his hand and took the bracelet off the table.
“Harut!” shouted Baila.
“Yes, Your Greatness?” he muttered.
“Come to your senses, will you?”
Harut took a deep breath and, seemingly more confident, pulled the bracelet on his arm. Nothing bad happened… He dared to raise his eyes.
Gill had no doubts anymore: Baila was giving orders to the gods, like he had seen in Alala’s holotheater. Again, the unknown implications confounded him.
Harut pressed the four symbols on the bracelet’s keypad. Gill was hoping to hear the liberating buzz, but it didn’t start.
“Ugo, you monster,” Gill murmured, defeated. “Why did you do that?”
“Ha-ha, they plucked your little secrets!” Baila exclaimed jovially, throwing away the mask of indifference he had worn until then, unable to hide the pleasure of having Gill tied up in the straps of a neural probe. “You should have accepted my offer,” he said in a fake sympathetic voice.
“Never! One of us will get you sooner or later!”
“Us? What ‘us’? You’re alone, Gill. And I’m sorry to say, but soon you’ll be gone, too.”
Considering the effort Baila had put into branding him as the bearer of all the sins of their species, Gill could only imagine what humiliations were in store for him.
“I’m not afraid of you! Do your worst!” Gill shouted defiantly.
“My dearest son, no matter how much I enjoy your company, I don’t have time for chatter. Maybe later,” Baila exclaimed mockingly. “Harut, you can take the bracelet off now.”
Suddenly, Harut fell on his knees, his hands pressing his temples, while large droplets of moisture oozed through his fingers.
“Aaaaargh!” he groaned in pain.
“Harut! What happened? Is it going to explode?” Baila asked, agitated, already regretting he had enjoyed his victory prematurely.
Harut didn’t answer, rolling on the floor in agony.
“Turn on the probe!” the prophet shouted to the alien. “Wait! Call the two Antyrans, and run from the room! If Harut dies and you get too close to the bracelet, it will explode!”
The Grammian muttered something to the Corbelian sphere in front of him before scrambling out.
Two Antyrans burst inside. One of them leaned over Harut and rolled him onto his back.
“Is he breathing?” asked Baila.
“Yes.”
“Pordena, turn on the probe. It has a switch on the right. I’ll ask the questions!”
The Antyran approached hurriedly toward Gill, but he didn’t make it to the switch. With jerky moves, Harut grabbed the laser lens from the belt of the Antyran leaned over him and fired a beam into his belly. Next, he turned on the initiate near the scanner and mowed him down from behind. The room filled with smoke and the acrid smell of burned flesh. Harut dropped the lens on the floor, staring wildly at his hands, unable to grasp what he just did.
“Harut!” shouted Baila. “What are you doing, you fool?”
Without a word, Harut got slowly to his feet and walked, wobbling, to Gill like a broken machine. He gazed at his straps with the look of a mad Antyran and pressed his finger on the black plate nearby.
Immediately, Gill felt the device releasing him. The head net eased its grip, and the straps holding his arms retracted inside the machine. Free at last! Freed by… the bracelet? He had noticed that the artifact augmented his senses and that he could move faster when it was activated, but he had no idea it could do such a thing—that the artifact had an intelligence able to make decisions of such complexity, to take over the kyis of the ones wearing it.
Harut collapsed on his belly like a wonkc thrown ashore by a storm. He jerked his hand to grab the fallen weapon.
“No, no, no, no, no!”
A terrible battle was taking place inside his head. He slowly turned the lens on his own mug, hesitating.
“Oh, no, Zhan, help!” he cried, and fired a beam at his head spikes, which started to smoke.
The pain apparently galvanized his muscles; he threw the lens on the floor, leaped to his feet, and rushed to the diaphragm door like a fugitive fleeing from prison. With a loud bang, he hit the wall near the opening and fell on his tail. He got slowly to his disobeying feet, which promptly carried him back to the middle of the room, despite his desperate screams of protest.
“Harut, Harut!” Baila yelled madly, although failing to get his attention. “Gill, what is happening?” the prophet turned toward him. “You must help him! I’m willing to forget everything between us and give you my forgiveness!”
“I’m sorry, Your Greatness, but no matter how much I enjoy your company, I don’t have time for chatter. Maybe later,” replied Gill, grinning broadly.
Harut raised the lens from the floor—his face decomposed by madness—and fired at the Corbelian sphere floating near the ceiling. Baila’s hologram disappeared in a sea of colorful sparks.
“No, no, no, no, no!” A second salvo grazed Harut’s spikes. “Save me, Your Greatness,” he whined, failing to notice that his master had no way of hearing him.