Chaos Theory (15 page)

Blue’s body mirrored hers. His hand inched forward, reaching
for her. Whatever it was, he fought it.

The pressure bit into their flesh and pulled.

Kali screamed but the sinister tinkling drowned the
sound.

Blue’s face contorted in agony and disintegrated, his skin
tearing away until she saw skull. His flesh separated,
infinitesimal molecules swirling upward in a lazy coil. His thorax
peeled, muscle, ligaments, skeleton exposed until she watched his
heart nested between his lungs beat wetly in his open
chest.

She knew terror as she felt her skin divide. Experienced
unbearable pain as her body ripped apart.

Then she was nothing.

Kali existed again and the junkyard was gone. Senses
suppressed, she couldn’t smell, feel, or hear as the blue light
pieced her together. A void. Nanoseconds later, she stood whole
next to Blue. The solid beam became a pinkish psychedelic strobe
that made their skin tingle. The light cut and was replaced by
darkness.

In a blinding, deafening overload, Kali’s senses rushed back.
Her legs buckled. She fell face first onto the cold tiles.
Retching, she vomited the contents of her stomach. Her body felt
odd. Like it had been split apart then reassembled, and with a
whimper, she remembered that is exactly what happened. Her nostrils
flared and her body roiled at the reek of her sick mixed with that
of their new location. It smelt like an underground cave, damp
minerals, and stagnant water.

Instinctively, Kali knew she was high above the earth, not
below it.

Blue’s hands found her. He tugged her into him, protectively
hunching his body over hers. “Kali?” He checked her over, touching
her face, her neck, her back, making sure she’d been put back
together right.

A circle of white light haloed them and they locked
eyes.

“
I’m okay,” she rasped. “I’m alright.”

Unsteady, Blue cupped her face. His hold tightened and his
eyes flashed. “Knew you’d be trouble.”

Lucid enough to catch that bitter tone, Kali narrowed her
eyes and glared at him. “This coming from
the alien
.”

Something cold seized her ankles, and her lower body was
yanked from under him.

Kali shrieked as she was dragged backwards across the floor on
her stomach.

Blue dived and caught her outstretched arms.
“
Hold onto me
.”
Yelling the order at her, he clamped his hands down on her
wrists.

She grappled to hold onto him. “Don’t let go.”

Blue heaved, muscles straining. His body jerked forward when
the thing holding onto her pulled harder, trying to separate them,
pulling her legs and hips out of the light. Switching tactics,
Blue’s eyes narrowed. He bared his teeth in a grimace, focusing on
whatever was trying to pull his Kali into the shadows.

He encountered a vast swelling of consciousness unlike
anything he’d ever touched.

Blue centred himself and channelled the power of his mind into
physical action. A faint nimbus gathered, snaked around his form in
swirls of translucent radiance. At his command, the psychic energy
pulsed, leaping out to punch whatever held onto Kali.

An effortlessly stronger burst of energy shimmered through the
air in retaliation and slammed into his head.

The blow jarred, cutting through Blue’s mental barriers like a
blade of ice. His forehead thumped the floor – knocked out
cold.

Kali held onto Blue’s limp body as long as she could. Tears
streamed down her face, and she keened frantically, begging him to
wake up. “Don’t let it take me. Blue,
please
.”

Her nails dug into his hands, scratching furrows into the
flesh and drawing blood.

What held her breathed heavily, great rasps of breath that
blew strands of her hair into her face. She could smell
it
, dank, like wet rock.
Its hold on her was icy, and the fingers wrapped around her ankles
boneless and slick.

Kali thought of tentacles and squealed.

It tugged impatiently, and Blue’s body slid along the floor
with her this time.

Voices whispered in her mind.

Kali fought those voices like nothing she had before. She
squeezed her eyes shut and refused to listen to their seductive
crooning, knowing they meant only to trick her.

The voices became one voice, and took on a stern, paternal
tone.

Another yank.

Only her shoulders, head, and arms remained in the
light.

Kali didn’t want to be taken alone, but the guilt of dragging
Blue with her gave what gripped her the opening it needed. A soft,
persuasive cooing stroked her mind to make it feel less of an
invasion.

It commanded her to let go. It told her to save Blue and
herself that she had to let go.

Besieged by terror, her fingers snapped open. With a final
violent yank, Kali was dragged screaming into the black.

13.

Blue could move, feel, and talk again. There was a faint
ringing in his ears and a sour taste at the back of his
throat.

He was back at the junkyard. His FloBi lay on its side,
smashed into the ground next to him.

“
Kali?” he wheezed, rolling onto his hands and knees. “Kali?”
Blue staggered onto his feet and looked around. She wasn’t there.
The back of his hands burned and he frowned when he saw
angry-looking scratch marks crusting at the edges. Disorientated,
he shook his head to clear the fog and scanned the area
again.

Blue used his ComLink to connect with Hypatia to find out how
she and Caesar faired in his absence. He’d expected only to be gone
half the evening with Kali. His companion was mature and logical,
but he didn’t like the idea of Caesar being home alone for so long.
He found his FetchMe safe and whole. There was panic and fear when
she returned Blue’s hail, suggesting he had been gone a long time.
Worried, he asked after Caesar’s welfare, and the FetchMe tried to
send him the customary information packet summarizing their time
together, but Blue broke the connection.

The data was making him nauseous, his already overtaxed mind
unable to stretch any further.

They were safe, and that was what was important. He just had
to find Kali, and then he could go to them and take the time to
figure things out.

Screams drifted over to him on the wind. He could hear men
shouting and children crying. Blue jogged towards the disturbing
sounds and an ominous orange glow. The closer he got to the noise
and light, the wider his mouth hung. The inner domiciles of the
quadrant were on fire, and whips of a strange red smoke drifted
into the starry sky. Droves of people fled into the OutRim.
Military hover crafts zoomed overhead barking orders for people to
evacuate in an orderly fashion. Explosions were followed by
pulsations of light of heat. The ground shook. More screaming, and
the sound of laser discharge.

Blue ran right into the crowd, trying to get someone to talk
to him.

They rushed past in frenzy, valued belongings clutched in
hand, fleeing from the blasts behind them on the horizon. The
crowds were mostly made up of young men. The lone women Blue
spotted were shoved away as they sought to run with others, until
they hugged themselves, and ran in a small group of their
own.

There were even soldiers in the mass exodus.

“
What’s happening?” Blue yelled as people milled past him.
“Stop. Wait.”

Blue spun and reached out as people pushed past him. No one
paid him any mind, and when anybody took the time to heed his
cries, they took one look at him, and ran harder. He grabbed a
woman by the elbow, but she screamed in his face. Blue was so
startled by her vehement shrieks, he let her go, not wanting to
frighten her more than she obviously was. He was no closer to
finding out what was going on.

His head ached, and Kali was nowhere to be seen.

Blue lost his temper.

With a subtle flex of power, he doubled a lone man over and
dragged him from the stampede into the shadows.

The older man fought wildly, so Blue straddled his upper
chest, and slapped his cheek to get his attention. “Listen,” he
growled, lifting his knee from the man’s throat, so he could talk.
“I need to know what’s happening.”

The man stared at him with absolute terror. Blue closed his
mouth to hide his teeth, but it was too late, and the man renewed
his struggles with considerable fervour. “You’re one of them,” he
yelled. “Get off. Don’t hurt me.”

“
Calm,” Blue ordered. “Your name?”

“
J-Jake,” the man spluttered, eyes red with tears. “Let me go.
Don’t p-put one of t-t-those things on me. I don’t want to
die.”

“
Listen closely, Jake. Tell me what is happening over there.
Why are things on fire? Why are people running?”

“
Aliens
,”
Jake screeched. “It’s over, we’re
doomed
.” He wailed, sobbing into the
dirt. “We fight but nothing works. They move things with their
mind.
They’re in our
heads
. Red gas melts the skin off our
bones. The parasites take the women. They took my wife, my
baby-girl.”

“
Omicron?”

A dark haired male with glowing green eyes loomed over Blue.
He was dressed like an everyday LoCaste, except for a string of
bizarre looking pods attached to a strip of biomechanical material
slung across his chest.

Blue knew his name.

Peter.

“
Omicron, allow me.” Peter offered his hand and Blue
automatically took it, lifting off the pinned man to let him run
away.

Jake pushed onto his hands and knees, but Peter dropped onto
his back and flattened him. He pulled on one of the pods and it
detached from its anchor.

The pod’s armoured skin split down the middle to reveal a
sallow pudgy creature half a foot long. Tapered at one end, the
other was ringed with tiny teeth. Peter pried the fleshy thing from
the hard cocoon, clear slime dribbling onto his hand, and discarded
the shell. Exposed, the slug-like thing mewled, and wiggled in his
fist. The mouth opened and closed with a squelching, sucking
motion.

The name of the creature floated into Blue’s mind.

A Symbiont.

A parasite found by the Novae as the dominant species on a
dying planet. They harvested the creatures and bred them to obey
the commands of the Hive. They were spawned in batches of
thousands, and attached to a Host until death. It secreted a poison
that eroded the cerebral cortex, killing the Host’s original
cognitive function and becoming the primary brain.

“
You promised you wouldn’t hurt me,” Jake screamed. He
struggled to stare over his shoulder. Snorting, Peter mashed Jake’s
face into the ground. He ripped open the back of his shirt to
expose the nape of his neck. “You promised me. You–
Ahhh!”

The Symbiont attacked with a frantic wriggling, attaching
itself to the flesh exposed to its seeking mouth, and Jake
convulsed.

Wiping his gooey hand on Jake’s back, Peter stood shaking his
head. “You think they’d make it easy on themselves.”

Knowing he needed to keep his face impassive, Blue looked at
him blandly, but couldn’t find the nonchalance to respond with.
Instinctively, he wove a barrier of energy around his mind and
freaked out in there.

Jake stopped fitting. He lurched jerkily onto his feet; legs
bowed, hunched body swaying. His glassy eyes stared straight
through Blue, no condemnation, or any kind of emotion present at
all.

“
Gather women,” Peter ordered.

The Host once known as Jake turned at the command and strode
towards the city he’d run from in terror. Blue wanted to shudder
when he spotted the Symbiont, gleaming slickly as it controlled its
new Host.

He had to find Kali.

“
It’s better to keep the instructions simple, don’t you think?
Give them too much to remember and they get confused, slaughter
anything they set eyes upon.” Peter sighed, as if such a thing was
merely annoying rather than horrifying. “What shall we do now,
Omicron?”

Blue said nothing.

“
I see your aura settles. Have you only just returned after
reconditioning with the Hive?” Peter’s eyes narrowed. “Why did it
take so long to rehabilitate you and why do you look lost? You do
know who you are and your purpose?” Peter’s hand crept towards his
laser-knife.

“
He knows,” a voice drawled. “Do you know your purpose
yet?”

Peter relaxed. “Sister-Upsilon,” he greeted with
deference.

“
Brother-Omega,” she replied blithely
then
she moved
.

She grabbed Peter’s hair and yanked his head back. Deadly with
accuracy, she stabbed a laser knife into the side of his neck then
wrenched it across his throat, slicing around, and pulling the
blade away from his body in a clean downward thrust.