A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) (40 page)

Inside her coat, Caitlin’s phone vibrated. She took a deep breath and, finally, pulled it out. It was Michael, or Holes, by the call ID. She picked up.

“
Caitlin Danae?
”

“Holes?” She realized a computer voice could be replicated.

“
Correct. I am with Michael Flynn. He is—
”

She checked her phone’s screen: the call was ended.

“Michael trying to reach you?” Jade asked with a glance over Caitlin’s shoulder.

Caitlin frowned, stopping. “Sounds like it. The call dropped.” She tapped the screen to try calling back. Jade tugged her elbow.

“Keep walking. You know this is a dangerous place to stop.”

Caitlin obliged. On the call, she got nothing but voice mail. It gave her a tiny pained twinge in her gut. Somehow, something was wrong. Before she could think of what, if anything, she could do about it, her phone buzzed to life again. She answered without looking, expecting Holes or Michael on the line.

Except it wasn’t either. “
Caitlin? It’s . . . um, it’s Gideon. Are you anywhere near your place?
”

Gideon! Thank goodness. “Not precisely, but I can get there. What is it? Are you alright?”

“Michael?” Jade mouthed. Caitlin shook her head.

“
I’m—
” Gideon began. “
Not over the phone. I’ll meet you at your place.
”

Something was definitely wrong. What if RavenTech had captured him, and he was being coerced? She reminded herself not to jump to conclusions, but . . . “Not my place. There’s a night club below Felix’s. I can meet you there in about fifteen.” It was public, and if this wasn’t some sort of RavenTech trap, she could ask his help to search Felix’s flat for any other strange equipment.

“
Yeah, I know it,
” Gideon said. “
Fifteen minutes. Hurry, okay?
”

“Aye, soon as I can.” She hung up and turned to Jade. “Time to find a taxi.”

Not until they’d crossed the bridge and hailed a taxi did it occur to Caitlin that Gideon hadn’t asked where Felix’s flat actually was.

Gideon was waiting for them at one of the more secluded tables along one wall on the ground floor. Caitlin’s heart wrenched: though Gideon surely didn’t know it, he’d chosen Felix’s preferred spot.

“I wasn’t sure you’d made it,” Caitlin found herself saying as they sat down. Aside from a gash down one side of his face—minor, considering it was synthetic skin—and burns and scratches on his armor and clothing, he looked alright at first. Yet as they made eye contact, there was something more: an unsteady urgency that she couldn’t quantify.

“It’s good to see you,” Gideon breathed.

Jade took the seat that shielded Caitlin from the rest of the room. “How did you get out?”

Gideon waved the question away with a shrug, fixed on Caitlin. “Caitlin, where—” He swallowed. “Where is Felix?”

She bit her cheek, clamping down on the flood of pain that threatened to boil up from her chest. “Gone.”

Gideon stammered, finally managing, “ . . . Dead?”

Caitlin could only nod.

“At RavenTech,” Jade added. “Soon after we saw you go through the floor.”

“Shit,” said Gideon. He looked up, and then across the club, just staring into space. “I don’t— I don’t know how to say this.” He reached for Caitlin’s hand where she’d rested it on the table, but her instincts pulled it back before he could make contact. Gideon hesitated, and then withdrew it as if stung.

“Everything hurts right now, Gideon,” she said. Did he find Ondrea? Or was he about to betray them? “Just say it.”

Gideon actually laughed; it was a bitter, short chuckle, but it was the most she’d ever seen from him. “This is a big band-aid to just rip right off.” He sighed and wiped his hands down his face.

“Gideon, just—”

“I’m not Gideon,” he blurted. “I’m Felix.”

CAITLIN FROZE.

“Apparently,” said the man who claimed to be Felix. “I think. I feel like me. Like Felix, I mean, but . . . ” He turned his hands over as if examining them.

“How can you even
say
something like that?” Caitlin growled. “You’re
Felix
? Do you even— I can’t—”

“Caitlin, it’s me, I swear! Gideon and Ondrea did something, and I’m confused and I need help! . . . Please.” He stared down her glare, his blue eyes pleading, and for just a moment she imagined she could see something of Felix’s brown. “Caitlin, I’m scared here. Ask me anything Felix would know.”

She shook her head. What if it was really him? “Just—Just tell me what happened.”

He nodded, and sat back in his chair. “I don’t entirely know. It’s confusing. Except it’s not, but actually experiencing it is proving to be—”

“Just tell me what
happened
!”

“A little while ago, I woke up in Ondrea’s place. In the chair in her workshop. The last thing I remembered was you and I on our way to see her. To get my memory fixed. And then suddenly, there I am. And I’m alone. I didn’t know where I was at first. You were gone. Ondrea was gone. Most of the room looked like a tornado hit it.” He smiled, weakly. “Or maybe Ondrea’s just a real slob, I guess I can’t be sure. And then I heard Gideon’s voice.”

He drew a tablet from his pocket and set it on the table with the screen angled toward Caitlin. “This was in my lap, playing on repeat.”

On the screen Gideon’s face appeared, identically scarred to the face now sitting across from her. His expression was grim, even for Gideon. “Ondrea is dead,” spoke the Gideon on the screen. “And you, Felix Hiatt, are dead.”

“That was a hell of a thing to hear, I can tell you,” muttered the one at the table as the one on the screen took a breath.

“And for all of it,
all of it
, I am at fault. I should have been dead long ago, when Diomedes killed the real me. I would be dead, if Ondrea hadn’t done everything she did to bring me back. If you and Caitlin hadn’t risked yourselves to rescue me.” His face hardened, and he pointed to his skull. “And I’m
still
dead! I’ve been walking around on stolen time! . . . In someone else’s brain. And now—my sister is dead.”

On the screen, Gideon looked away. He squeezed his eyes shut until he seemed to gain some measure of composure. “I’m just a collection of memories wrapped around someone else’s brain. This body, and the mind inside it, was it ever truly me?” He stared out at them from the screen and demanded, “Whose soul lies inside me? Is there one at all?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure if Ondrea ever really did this for me, or just because she couldn’t bear to be without a brother. Now with her dead, it doesn’t matter. I owe you, and I owe Caitlin. And if this brain, this body, this—this time I have is stolen, then I may as well give it to someone who deserves it.

“Ondrea betrayed you, Felix. She tampered with your memory, gave you hidden directives and ways for Fagles to control you. He and RavenTech forced her into it, but that’s not an excuse. She did it, and she only had the chance because you got hurt helping me.

“And then it got you killed. I don’t want that debt on me, and I don’t want that pain. Ondrea programmed a sequence into the chair you’re sitting in. It will wipe your memory and replace it with a secret copy she made when you were here.” He held up a data stick. “I figure it ought to work just as well for me. I give to you and Caitlin my second chance, Felix. At least you have each other. It’s the least I can do.”

The video ended.

“So now I get his pain and identity crisis,” he said with a quivering smile. “I’ve missed about three months? Some of it very interesting, apparently. And now I guess I’m the new six-million-dollar man.” He reached, hesitantly, for Caitlin’s hand. This time, she let him. “And I can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through. Hell, I can’t even imagine what I’ve been through before I—”

“You died in my arms, Felix,” she whispered. She kept her eyes on his hand, avoiding his face. “Shot. We pulled you to safety, I tried to stop the bleeding, to get you help, but I couldn’t! And you—” Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them away angrily. “And that sodding witch let it happen.”

“I can’t imagine losing you that way. God, Caitlin, I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” said Felix. “And through this. I’m sorry we both do. This is so severely messed up.”

“I should give you two some privacy,” Jade said. Caitlin tensed, startled, having forgotten she was there.

Caitlin shook her head. “No, stay.” Somehow the thought of being alone just then with Felix, such as he was, skewed her stomach. Caitlin forced herself to meet Felix’s gaze and tried to see him behind Gideon’s visage. “If you don’t mind.”

Felix nodded, though Caitlin hadn’t made it a question. He didn’t for a moment turn his eyes from Caitlin’s. “Though I’d appreciate if one of you could mention who she is,” he said.

“People call me Jade. I’m her bodyguard, for the moment at least, and glad to have you back.”

Felix’s gaze continued to hold Caitlin’s. “I can’t blame you there. I’m a fun guy to have around.” He swallowed. “Speaking of me . . . Where is my body? And there’s a question I’ve never had to ask before.”

“Safe, I hope,” said Caitlin. “It’s with the Agents of Aeneas, on the Moon.”

“You know about—?” Felix laughed, though an uncertain shadow seemed to pass over his face immediately. “Oh boy. Just what all has happened?”

MICHAEL CONVULSED.
Fire crackled through his bloodstream as if his body was breaking apart; it came in waves. Moments after each ebb the sensation renewed, like fresh magma swelling up through cracks in a cooling surface. Eyes clenched against the pain, his only choice was to hold out. Yet what had begun hours ago, as a gentle tingling, had grown subtly with each new wave until he’d begun to doubt he could take it much longer.

The Thuur had smuggled him back aboard
Paragon
in a crate—a precaution against Suuthrien trying to stop them now that it judged Michael “corrupted.” They’d gone deeper into the Thuur sections of the craft than the AoA had been before—areas that Uxil assured were isolated from Suuthrien’s presence, like the
Paragon
engine room once had been before the AoA’s entry three months ago. Within that isolated section lay the spherical chamber which had kept the syr in stasis during the Thuur’s interstellar journey; the chamber Sephora would have used to reconstitute the expended syr had things gone as planned; the place where Michael now suffered through the augmentation of the syr’s remnants within his DNA like a baptism of fire.

Somewhere amid the ordeal lay the shelter that Sephora maintained in his mind. “Remain in that place,” Uxil had warned him. “It will shield you from pain.” Yet every wave had shaken him more, until he could only cling to that space like a tiny raft in an ever more violent storm. As the pain intensified, he’d been thrown clear of that raft completely, and he struggled to find it anew each time, managing only a few moments of solace before being tossed aside again.

How long had he fought? Michael had lost track. Sephora’s shelter rose up before him, an aquamarine aura in his mind’s eye. He reached for it, pulled himself into it, and savored the scant relief before the augmentation process threw him into the fire once more.

He awoke into blackness and peace. The fire in his veins was gone. The curved floor of the syr focusing chamber pressed warm against his left side as he became aware of his body lying in a fetal position. Though his eyes were closed, Michael could sense a presence near him in the chamber and somehow knew it was Sephora. At the limits of his senses stood others—Thuur? Human? He couldn’t tell—perhaps ten or twenty feet away. They were less distinct, but he knew without a doubt that they were there.

He opened his eyes.

How do you feel?

Her voice came not from within his mind, but from without. It was not truly audible, but came to him along some newly discovered sense. He turned toward what felt like the source of the voice to find Sephora perched in a half-crouch along the curved chamber wall. She watched him with a glint in her pupil-less eyes.

“I can hear you,” Michael said.

She nodded.
I had wondered at the possibility. As the other Thuur hear me, now so can you. This is a good sign for the augmentation’s success. Now, how do you feel?

He considered the question. Though his body ached, it was the ache that came after a good workout, with a sense of sapped energy already returning. His muscles, his lungs, even his skin danced with a faint tingle. “Tired. But—not.” He stretched and felt his joints open, felt the blood moving through his body in a way he’d never felt before. Not only could he feel more of himself, the sense of Sephora’s presence in front of him and others nearby grew stronger. It was as if they each hummed with their own rhythms, somehow inaudible yet distinctly musical. “And—hyperaware, I guess you could say.”

This is a very good sign.
Sephora crept close, extending one double-thumbed hand to help him up.
Come.

She led him out of the syr chamber and into the larger room that surrounded it. The black material coated much of the walls there—a simple system, isolated from Suuthrien’s influence. Its midnight surface danced with Thuur readouts, the nature of which Michael could not understand. There, Uxil waited with two other Thuur. Their rhythms grew stronger in his senses as his eyes passed over them. Beyond, he could feel a faint yet steady hum swirling in the background.

Sephora motioned to the walls.
Touch the black interface, and tell me what you experience.

Michael did so, settling his fingertips against it before adding his entire palm. The swirling background hum he’d sensed before rushed to the forefront of his mind. “I can feel it,” he said. “I think I can feel the interface itself. It’s hard to describe.”

Concentrate.

He focused on the sensation and felt it broaden and multiply in his mind. There came a greater awareness of the cells and systems within it, though he could not put a name to them, nor understand just what it was that he saw. “I can see . . . depth. It’s complicated.”