Parallel (8 page)

“Hari, what happened?” she asked, following the line of blood slithering down the human’s cheek. “Where are we? Where is Gerald?”

She loosed the questions quickly, but stopped when it became clear her words had caused the man pain. Hari wiped a tear from his cheek, which only served to smear blood across his face. Light cascading over his nose and cheeks cast long shadows, making Hari appear an older, hollower version of himself.

“Gerald’s dead.” Hari’s soft voice barely broke the silence. Ryol strained to hear. “The bloody idiot sacrificed himself so we could escape.”

“I am sorry for your friend, Hari.” Ryol placed her hand atop Hari’s, touching this alien species for the first time. Hari did not recoil, only chewed his lower lip and nodded.

Ryol wished she could manipulate Hari’s feelings to alleviate his suffering, but she had not yet regained control of her own. So they sat quietly, alone with their sadness.

“Have we escaped?” Ryol asked, becoming aware of her surroundings for the first time. Without Aurora’s subconscious aid she discovered she would have to be more intentional about her observations.

She lay on the floor, legs tucked to her chest in a tiny room barely large enough to accommodate the two. Hari squatted, taking up the sliver of space left unoccupied by her sprawling body. With a hand against the cold floor she twisted into a similar squatting position.

“No, we haven’t gotten away.” Hari steadied her with a sweat-soaked hand on her shoulder. His warm flesh carried with it a connection to a world outside her own. “Unless a broom closet constitutes an acceptable hideout.”

Hari clutched a shaft of wood between white knuckles. The end of the stick, simultaneously jagged and blunt, came to a fractured point. The head of the mop lay in a corner like the tentacled carcass of a jellyfish. The makeshift spear did not look like it would be particularly effective against the Graesian armor.

Ryol sat silently, reconstructing lines of thought that might help them escape.

“Listen, right about now would be a good time to tell me what the hell is going on,” Hari said without dulling the edge in his voice.

“I’m afraid by coming here I have inadvertently put your world at terrible risk.”

Hari nodded with pursed lips. “What are those things?”

“Graesians. Oath breakers to the Alliance. They have betrayed themselves and my people. In their desperation to save their planet, they have resorted to murder.”

“Can’t you call for help or something?”

“Something has disrupted my connection with Lenora.”

“Won’t somebody notice you’ve gone off the radar and send help?”

Ryol rolled her mother’s cold and unfeeling computer implant in her palm. No longer a thriving entity merged with a living host to create a symbiotic relationship of unrivaled computational ability. Now, it was dead like her mother.

“Nobody can help.” The loss of hope burrowed like a sliver into the deepest parts of Ryol’s heart.

Hari’s mouth drooped in understanding. “What do they want?”

“They want your planet’s resources.”

“We’re kind of attached to those,” Hari said, scratching his head. “Isn’t there something we can do to stop them?”

“I don’t have an answer for that. Perhaps if I could return to Lenora, but the Graesians are blocking the Inter-Dimensional Portal.”

Hari held up a finger to silence her and shivered.

Click. Click. Click.

The abrasive scraping of chitinous claws on tile grew louder. Ryol flinched away from the buzzing that swarmed her thoughts, uprooted her calm, and undermined her courage. She wrung her hands in her lap, resisting the urge to cover her ears and drown out the white noise. She’d need access to all her senses if she hoped to survive.

“They’re coming.” Hari rose slowly with his makeshift spear clutched to his chest.

The clicking and buzzing stopped. Ryol saw the shudder of quivering muscles ripple through Hari. He sucked long, slow breaths through his nose, expelling the air in a quiet rush from his mouth. The rhythm became a mantra, a meditation in purposeful energy that helped soothe the acidic burn of anxiety in Ryol’s stomach.

Something hard scraped the door handle. Ryol tasted the metallic flavor of fear. She didn’t have time to savor it before the door swung open and Hari leaped out into the hall with a warbled scream. The Graesian, stunned by the fervor of the human flying towards him, backed away while guarding his face with a long, sickly arm.

Hari’s inertia carried him into the alien. Flesh smacked hard against carapace.

The Graesian stumbled before finding the wall and using it to rebound towards his attacker. Hari jabbed his spear towards the alien’s face. The insectoid tried twisting away from the attack, but the thin shaft of wood punctured the alien’s obsidian armor where the shoulder linked with the throat.

Ryol gripped the door frame and watched green ooze spray from the Graesian’s neck. The insect pawed weakly at Hari’s throat as they fell. The two clattered to the ground.

A shrill death cry rose to a soul-piercing crescendo before drowning in a spastic gurgle of blood. Hari rolled off the Graesian’s lifeless body and flopped onto his back. The blood pooling on the floor looked wrong.

It was red.

Hari clutched at his side, where an ever-expanding circle of crimson soaked through his shirt. Sucking in quick, gasping bursts of air, he wrapped his fingers around the massive stinger buried in his abdomen.

Ryol knelt beside Hari, ignoring the mix of red-green liquid coating the floor. She studied the sac, still attached to the stinger, pulsing with its own heartbeat. Stealing a little more of Hari’s life with every beat of its toxic purpose.

Ryol smoothed Hari’s sweat-soaked hair and pushed what few calming thoughts she could into his mind. His whitening fingers relaxed their grip around the stinger’s arcing blade before a spasm ripped through his body. He whimpered like an animal caught in a trap. Guttural cries for mercy escaped his lips and burrowed deep into Ryol’s psyche. His pleas, slurred by sweat, blood, and yellow venom flung from his convulsing body, went unanswered.

Ryol’s heart sputtered and skipped alternate beats with the knowledge that Hari suffered because of her. She cradled his head in her lap, knowing she was powerless to ease the suffering that ravaged his broken body.

Hari babbled with a ragged whisper. Ryol lowered her ear to his mouth, hoping to make sense of his words, but there would be no understanding for the human, only pain.

Hari clung to the last thread of life, afraid of the Unknown Dimension waiting for him beyond the veil. His fear pulsed off him in rhythm to his thundering heartbeat. Ryol did not know what the man would find there. She could not tell him it would be alright. She would not lie to him now.

She sat quietly with him, holding his hand and pushing happy thoughts into his mind, until the pain became unbearable. It didn’t take long, but those seconds stretched in a way time could not define.

When it finally came, it did so with a soft sigh that carried the essence of life upon its vapor.

Hari’s body went limp, his head rolled gently against Ryol’s arm, and he died.

“Do not weep.” A voice echoed down the empty hall, reaching Ryol’s ears as a mocking laughter. “You will soon be reunited in the Dimension known as death with both your friend and your mother.”

Ryol’s heart jolted as she spun away from Hari’s battered body. Tzalear’s massive form blocked the light at the opposite end of the corridor. His long, deliberate steps reverberated off the sterile walls

Click.

Click.

Click.

Ryol rose to face the Graesian towering over her like an indomitable force of the Universe. She felt small and inconsequential.

“I will stop you,” she said, hoping the words would muster the courage she poured out of her with every breath.

“How? By force?” Tzalear chuckled and held a clear blue orb for Ryol to see. She instantly recognized the Lenorean technology—the Inhibition Field. “Take it and you’re free to return home.” He dangled the device over her head like a child taunting an animal.

Ryol clenched her fists. The vein in her throat throbbed along with the hammering of her heart. The world constricted. She desperately wanted to give in to the rage. To throw herself in fury against this beast and bury her fists in his skull until only dust remained.

She noticed the shaft of wood protruding from the dead Graesian at her feet. With a foot against the alien’s chest, she yanked the spear from its neck. The insubstantial weapon trembled in Ryol’s hands. She imagined driving it into Tzalear’s chest, his carapace cracking open like a hardboiled eggshell. Revenge for Hari, and Gerald, and her mother.

A temptation so sweet she tasted its hollow flavors upon her lips. A temptation to which she could not succumb.

To kill another creature would be to violate the oath she’d sworn to the Alliance. To break the promise of peace that bound countless lives across thousands of Dimensions would be to forfeit the Lenoreans’ legacy.

No. Her life meant less than that pact.

“As I suspected. Weak like your mother,” Tzalear said. “Too weak to rule the Universe.”

She could not overpower the Graesian High Lord, but there had to be a way to lift the Inhibition Field. A second was all it would take for the Alliance to reclaim and protect this planet.

That was, if the Alliance had survived.

No. Somewhere in the multitude of Dimensions the Alliance still existed. She would repay Hari and Gerald’s sacrifice somehow.

Tzalear tossed his head back and filled the hall with a disorienting buzz that echoed off the walls in all directions. More laughter from the overconfident Graesian.

Ryol hugged the stick to her chest and backed away. At that moment a line of thought resolved itself. She knew the action that would lead to the highest probability of disrupting the Inhibition Field.

“Go ahead, little Lenorean.” The Graesian, predicting her thoughts, thrust his arms to the side to expose the glistening exoskeleton guarding his heart. “I won’t stop you.”

Ryol balked. Her eyes flitted between the alien’s exposed chest and his unfeeling face. She wished she could plunge that shaft of wood into his pitiless heart, but hers was a different path to follow.

“You will not have this world.” Ryol twisted the spear and placed the jagged edge against her breast. Tzalear regarded the Lenorean with a head cocked to the side.

Time slowed in Ryol’s mind. She leaped into the air. The ground rushed towards her at half-speed. A lifetime of memories replayed in her mind in the second it took for gravity to pull her into the ground’s unforgiving embrace.

She tightened her grip as the spear jammed into the ground, followed an instant later by the full weight of Ryol’s body.

The wood slid into her chest. Pain became the only existence she’d ever known. It tore through her every fiber, ripping asunder the pieces of a body that had forever worked in harmony. Her mind screamed for relief. She wanted to dull the pain, pull away, and shield herself from the agony. But Ryol would not run from the pain.

Instead, she ran towards it. Amplified it with thoughts of her lost mother, of Hari and Gerald, who had welcomed her into their world only to be repaid with death, and of the millions of Lenoreans who would suffer for her failure.

Ryol gathered all the hurt she’d ever known and focused it like a laser. Then she released it into the atmosphere and into the Graesian’s mind, a tidal wave of suffering that overwhelmed his defenses in an instant.

The world filled with Tzalear’s haunted shrieks.

Through her failing vision that flickered with black shadows, Ryol saw the Graesian stumble. The blue orb slipped from fingers now used to claw at his head in a futile attempt to tear away the pain that had wedged itself into his consciousness.

Ryol followed the journey of the glass sphere towards the ground. Felt the psychic relief when it shattered, along with the Inhibition Field, into a million irretrievable pieces.

The invisible barrier fell. Aurora returned an instant later.

Child, you’re injured.
Aurora sounded maternal. Her voice spread like goose bumps across Ryol’s brain.
Your mother is coming.

Ryol couldn’t find the strength to respond. Somehow Tzalear had been wrong. Her mother lived.

But their paths would not cross in this Dimension. Ryol’s struggle was complete.

Darkness arrived and, in its numbing embrace, carried Ryol into the Unknown Dimension with a smile on her face.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Falia

A wave of alarms slammed into Falia’s mind.

I have reestablished a connection with Ryol.

Falia bolted upright, startling the Healer bent over her recovery pod.

“You’ve been—” the Healer began to say.

Take me to her, Aurora,
Falia said to Aurora. The translocation band on her arm released a burst of light that tore a hole through time and space. Falia stepped through before the Healer could finish her sentence.