Spaceborn, p.29
Spaceborn, page 29
He breached the distance between them and grabbed her hands, their fingers intertwining as he met her eyes again. The warmth of her breath caressed his skin, shaky and heavy, its cadence irregular. She didn’t look away this time, her eyes locked with his as they danced from left to right uncontrollably. His gaze fell to her lips as he stroked her hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ear.
“I love you too Rach,” he whispered, a huge load relieved from his chest as he leant in.
Their lips touched and he was no longer aware of his surroundings, no longer concerned with what lay ahead. Strands of her hair grazed his face and tickled him while he felt her fingers slowly sliding up his chest and interlocking behind his neck.
“I can’t believe I’m kissing you,” she said softly and pulled him harder towards her.
“Why haven’t we been doing this all this time?”
“Shhh… no thinking, just kiss me.” She let out a soft moan while her fingers slid down to the zipper at his collarbone.
She exposed his shoulders and pulled his uniform down, leaving his upper body naked against her. Was he supposed to do the same? Where was this going? Her fingernails pierced his back and her warm lips pressed against his neck as a tingle coursed through his whole body. She was right, this wasn’t the time to think, he couldn’t think, only go along with wherever the moment would take him. He located her zipper and pulled it down, revealing the black, strapless bra that deprived their bodies from fully uniting. He was expecting her to pull back but she dragged the rest of his uniform down, leaving him with nothing but his underwear.
Is this really happening?
His head snapped to the airlock when the alarm blared and his whole body shivered at the thought of his dad catching him half naked with Rachel. He shouldn’t have been able to arrive so quickly though so who was it? He hastily put his uniform back on with a glance at Rachel who was doing the same.
“That can’t be Scott. Who the fuck knows we’re here? She huffed and swiftly tied her hair in a loose bun on top of her head.
He scanned the interior of the shuttle for anything that could be used as a weapon, although he wasn’t really sure what he was even looking for.
He approached the airlock and stared at the flashing letters on the long panel above the blast door.
“Boarding platform raised”
“Uhmmm...Rach? I never thought I’d use these words in real life but… we’ve got company.”
He felt naked and exposed, only this time he was wearing all his clothes.
“Fuck… fuck! Do you have a gun?”
“No. It wasn’t that easy to print anything back in Six. I barely managed to get one for Nyx. Even if I had one, I’m not sure I could use one again.”
“Again?” She snapped with widened eyes. “When did you…”
“Now is not the time for that. Maybe we can turn on the systems, see if we can lock the hatch from here?”
“Do you know how to do that?”
“No but how hard could it be?” he said and turned on the main panel at the front.
The interior of the shuttle lit up with monitors and panels as a deep male voice informed him systems were online.
“Why doesn’t this ship have any fucking furniture? We need to block this door somehow,” Rachel cried and kicked one of the cupboards.
The wide touchscreen in the middle displayed numbers and graphs next to an outline of the ship. There were some buttons but he didn’t know what their function was even though they were written in plain English. He tapped on the only one he was familiar with—cameras—and turned around at the beeping sound. The walls of the shuttle had opened windows to the space outside, although the grey material was still there.
He held his breath and shivered as the bridge clanged on the outer wall of the shuttle and sent a series of faint vibrations through the floor. Rachel peeked through the small window of the internal hatch and immediately crouched against it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Her voice strained as she looked at him in shock. She was clutching her small pistol, hands shaking close to her chest.
“Behind the chairs!” He motioned her to come over to his position.
She hopped and sprinted to him with her back hunched and her head lowered. “Exosuits… four of them,” she said as Julian wrapped his arm around her.
“Give me the gun.” He extended his open palm in front of her.
“Fuck no!” She protested and kept it away from his reach.
“Rach, you don’t know what it feels like…” he tried to keep his voice calm as the unmoving, lifeless eyes of the man he’d killed flashed in his mind, “I can’t let you find out. Give me the gun… please?” He peered into her eyes, uncaring if it sounded like begging.
He had to protect her any way he could, from herself as well as the people who were about to breach the shuttle door.
“I hope you can aim as good as me,” she handed him the pistol and nodded.
“I can aim just fine. Now go hide inside that cupboard.” He pointed at the other end of the shuttle. “And don’t let them see you.”
“Fuck no! There’s no way I’m leaving you alone here.”
“There’s no…”
“NO! Forget it, whatever happens to you, happens to me.”
“Aaargh, you’re so stubborn,” he growled and with a long inhale he softly caressed her face. “Listen, you already saved my life, and I don’t just mean back at the airlock. Let me do the same for you, I will never forgive myself if I don’t.”
“I’d rather die than live the rest of my life without you. Now give me back my gun.”
“I can’t do that. I’m not going to let you carry the death of a person on your shoulders. Trust me, it will haunt you forever.”
“What would you know about…” she trailed off as her expression froze at his nod.
Had he scared her? Her eyes had widened even more than usual but she didn’t move a single muscle on her face, only stayed there scanning him.
“Trust me, I know what I’m doing Rach.” He pulled her inside his chest and kissed her hair.
“I hope you’re right.” She threw her hands around his neck and kissed him.
“Now go! GO!”
She hugged the wall and slid to the end of the shuttle without any further protest. She grunted as she tried to squeeze herself inside one of the cupboards but finally the door closed.
His finger hugged the trigger as the clock ticked silently above the door. His heart was thundering inside his chest like an ARK thruster, three drummings for every tick. Could he really take another life? If it was four of them, he and Rachel could only come out alive if he could kill all of them. He really didn’t want to pull the trigger. What a horrible thing to strip someone of his existence.
In and out… in and out.
The door hissed and his pistol recoiled. A blue disk was thrown in the middle of the shuttle, spinning and swirling its light around its core as fast as an electron around its nucleus. It beeped faster and faster while Julian aimed his gun at it. Was it a grenade? No, they wouldn’t risk detonating explosives in such a small space, that was crazy. Its beeping reached its climax and a bright flash blinded him.
Chapter 26
Rachel
Every breath was shorter and sharper than the previous one while she tried to remain still, curled like a ball. Hugging her knees, she pressed them against her chest. There had only been one shot, followed by silence. Had they killed him and left? She felt cold streams run along her cheeks and tickle her ears as they pooled inside her lobes. She shivered and her chest spasmed, pushing her knees away.
“Clear!” The loud male voice came from inside the shuttle.
“Help me grab him. We need to take him back to TC,” another man said.
“Why not just put a bullet in his head?” The third voice belonged to a woman, abrasive and oddly familiar. It had been a few months since she’d last heard her in the theatre but it must’ve been her. “We detached, who cares now?”
“No, he will want to question him.”
He was alive! That was good news at least.
“I don’t think he would’ve done the same with us,” the woman replied.
“Just do as you’re told, Katey!”
So it was her.
The boarding party kept talking but their voices were distorted now. Rachel rolled out of the cabinet and ran to the airlock where the two men in the rear had balanced Julian between their shoulders, leaving his feet to drag freely along the bridge that connected the shuttle to the Ring. She scanned the room behind her for her gun but they must’ve taken it. The exosuit was the only alternative—she wasn’t taking any chances this time, no more hiding, no more subtlety.
Running inside the ship was a lot easier. Seeing where her next step would land was invaluable apparently as the power armour almost carried her legs with a slight hop at every stride. The helmet was not necessary for breathing but the infrared vision was quite helpful in keeping up with the enemy team even though it was Julian’s yellow silhouette she was really following. They had come out on the ground floor of the recreation quadrant and stopped at the intersection concourse.
“You didn’t get the other guy?” The guard stepped aside for them to pass.
“No, I heard they escorted him to Ring Five. Apparently there was an extraction team in place.”
“Dr Richter is furious. He’ll be out for blood for whoever is responsible. I’d wager communication teams.” The guard walked alongside them.
“You think someone from the silent teams over there betrayed us?”
Scott had suggested on many occasions there were evolutionists left behind to keep tabs on things but they had never been able to flush anyone out.
The door shut in front of her but she could still see the faint colours surrounding their bodies. She tapped on the screen on her right wrist and swiped her finger until a lightning icon appeared. The electric current arced and linked to the panel and she winced away from the crackling sound and the smoke that vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The holocircle disappeared and the frames hissed apart but the door was still almost shut. It barely required any effort for her mechanically assisted arms to pry it open but her position was made now, the intersection guard was coming to investigate.
The guard didn’t get a chance to utter a word. She punched him right in the face the moment he got in and sent him flying to the other end of the frame.
Dragging his body inside the recreation quadrant, she stripped him of his gun. Now, she had to hurry to the other side of the concourse before they could hide Julian away in the residential blocks.
Bypassing the next door, she hopped inside, her eyes searching for other threats. The enemy team was past her tangent horizon but their heat signatures faintly flickered where the lifts would be.
The only evidence that someone had been at the plaza was the number on the lift that indicated the last floor it had stopped. Where was everyone? Wasn’t this their glorious moment after detaching from the rest of the ship? She was expecting celebrations, not the dead silence of a gloomy quadrant.
She didn’t give it a second thought, it worked in her favour for now. The lower levels weren’t that different from the upper ones, two residential blocks on opposite sides of the quadrant’s length and connected with sky bridges at multiple levels. Yet a weird feeling came over her when she climbed down the stairs to find herself at the top floor of the lower residential. The plaza and food kiosks were above her grey ceiling while below her, a twenty storey drop.
She saw the evolutionists coming out of a flat on the opposite blocks, two floors below and she dashed back to the stair core. By the time she made it down there, the lift was going up again, a lonely yellow silhouette left behind. Her infrared switched to visible light and the HUD on her visor zoomed to the person on the other side of the sky bridge.
Ares, Lucas’ wingman in mischief. A few years ago they were running laps together and now he was guarding the love of her life in a prison. There was no time to reflect on how times had changed, if she was to free Julian somehow it had to be now. She swiped her finger on the side of her pistol until a music note appeared with a diagonal line crossing over it. Was she going to shoot him? Was there even an alternative?
Jumping out of the balustrade, she was almost relieved to see Ares entering the flat next to the one he was guarding. That was her window.
“What is the little dragon doing so far away from her lair?” The male voice startled her and she turned around, gun in her hands.
“Wow, steady…ok, ok.” Lucas raised his arms in the air.
“Tell me, why every fucking time some shit happens, you are always around?”
“Hey, I was only coming to see Ares. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“They captured Julian. Your buddy is standing guard.”
“And let me guess, you’re here to free him. The girl who saved everyone.” His cocky sneer was intolerable to look at.
“How about the girl holding a gun?” she flicked the pistol and squeezed it tighter.
“You don’t have what it takes to pull the trigger.”
“I’m behind enemy lines, alone and running out of options. You really want to take me up on that bet?”
His smug, scornful expression faded. Maybe he did have some brain cells still capable of producing actual thoughts.
“So… where do we go from here? You shoot me, you let me go, what’s happening?”
“First, you tell me what really happened to Alex. Then take your pal and leave so I can take Julian out of here.” She opened her thin, rectangular visor. It was better to keep her voice quiet than relying on the helmet’s speakers.
“Pfft, again with Alex. Your stupid brother wouldn’t be where he is if he had listened to me.”
“What does that mean?”
“Our recruitment branch flagged him as a possible candidate so I started talking to him, yeah? He was miserable, thinking of venting himself so I sat down with him one day after therapy and showed him Icarus. He was excited at first but then he wanted to tell Priya, who wasn’t cleared.” He paused as he sat at the edge of the balustrade, his eyes darting away from her. His enormous chest heaved and he ran his hands through the shaved sides of his hair, interlocking them behind his neck. “Anyway…” he continued, a strain in his voice she had never heard before. “We’re in a clearing and the head of operations tells me some higher up gave the order to take him out.”
“Who gave that order?”
“I don’t know, but high enough in the chain to scare the guy. So he did what he always does with these kinds of orders, he put Alex to sleep.”
“So, you admit it? You knew what was going to happen to him?” Her weapon kept slipping inside her trembling hands but the target was big enough.
“Alex was actually lucky there was a machine ready at Nightfall. Priya on the other hand…” he trailed off, his gaze dropping to the floor.
“Lucky?” She enunciated the word so loudly it barely sounded as it should. “That operations lead, what’s his name?”
“Oh, no way I’m telling you that. You’ll have to shoot me.”
“What’s his name, Lucas?” The pistol hummed as it powered up, her heart racing from what she was about to do.
“Look, if I tell you they’ll kill me anyway so you might as well pull that trigger.”
Her chest tightened and her throat closed as she unwillingly applied pressure on the trigger. “Lucas…” She warned him, squeezing her eyes to let go of the tears pooling inside.
The boy shook his head and with a sudden movement reached out to disarm her. The pistol beeped to a climax and the recoil pushed her back.
“Are you crazy?” Lucas cried as he jumped in place, his eyes finally filled with the fear she craved to see in them.
“Next one will be between your eyes,” she threatened. Her hand must have moved last second, otherwise there was no way she would’ve missed.
“These people are my family, alright? I won’t turn on them.”
“Fuck sake Lucas. These people have been using you since you were born, only keeping you around to monitor their experiment.”
His grimace of disbelief had a hint of sarcasm but she eventually sighed and lowered her weapon.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re merely a product of eugenics… gene editing before you were even born. Hey, look at that, I did know how to tell you after all.”
His arrogant scoff was followed by an infuriating, brief chuckle. “Nah, you’re lying… you’re lying to get me distracted and run away.”
“I’m the one with the gun, remember?” she waved the pistol in front of her. “And it’s not just you, many others had their genes tempered with by your precious little cult.”
“It’s not a cult, they’re…”
“Stop defending them! I saw the logs myself. That Kerzinov of yours, do you know what goes into those nano-injections?
Lucas furrowed his brows. Maybe she was getting through to him. She took his silence as a sign to stay on the offensive. “Inhibitors for the side effects of the gene edits. The endless hunger, the anger management issues, the…”
“I am always angry!”
“Exactly. They created you Lucas. Made you exactly what they wanted you to be, a brute, a soldier… a pawn,” she spat the last insult.
Lucas gazed at his feet with no response. Her words must have had an impact on him, however slightly.
“Now, Julian. I need you to get your friend, who by the way is also bio-enhanced, and get the hell out of here.”
“Ares is… also an experiment?”
Rachel sighed and nodded. This was taking way longer than the time she had available.
“Why would I even help you? Even if what you’re saying is true, it doesn’t change anything.”
