Rayne's Return (Hearts of ICARUS Book 3) (31 page)

Their reaction to her call for help healed the old wound she’d been carefully hiding from them, and brought tears to her eyes.  She brushed them away impatiently and reached out to touch her men.  “I’m right here,” she said.  “I’m not in danger.  Feel me, please.”

As she watched, the light of anger in their eyes dimmed and they made visible efforts to relax.  Just when they were beginning to look more like themselves, Wolef must have repeated the call because they all tensed again, and Landor’s arms tightened around her to the point of discomfort. 

“Wolef,”
she called silently, reaching for the familiar path in her mind. 
“We’re here, Wolef.  Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can hear you,
Solin
,”
Wolef said sniffily, but she knew him well now, and caught the strong undercurrent of relief and worry. 
“Did you bring your bears with you?”

“I did,”
she said,
“and your calls are working a little too well.  Please don’t send out any more.”

“Of course,”
Wolef replied. 
“I hope their reactions were everything you hoped they’d be.”

“And a bit more,”
she replied. 

“Rayne?” Landor asked.

She opened her eyes.  “I’m speaking with Wolef.  I thought it would be good if he stopped sending out those calls.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said, setting her on her feet before they resumed walking toward the observation deck.

“I am quite glad that you returned so quickly,”
Wolef said. 

“Wolef, what’s wrong?” she asked, speaking out loud so her men could hear at least half of the conversation.  “You’re tense and worried.”

“
What makes you think that?”

“I can feel you, Wolef,” she replied.  “Tell me, please.”

“Very well,”
Wolef said after a short silence.  “
I’m afraid I have some rather difficult news for you.”

“Then it’s best to get it over quickly.”

“I’m not sure I see the logic in that statement, but I don’t suppose this is the best time for a debate
.”

“Stop stalling, Wolef,” she said.  “You’re scaring me.”

“I apologize,”
Wolef said.  There was a short pause, then he said,
“Your sister is here.”

Rayne’s entire body jerked hard as though she’d been struck.  She locked her knees, refusing to give into emotion.  “Which one?”

“
Salene
.”

“How did this happen?” Rayne demanded.  “I don’t understand.”

“How did what happen?” Landor demanded, fists clenched at his sides in an effort to prevent himself from snatching her up into his arms again.  They could feel her shock, and knew she was holding on to a thin semblance of calm with everything she had.

“Salene is there, in the
Facility
,” she said, her face white.  “It makes no sense.  The orders weren’t supposed to go out for another two days.”  She held up one finger when he started to ask a question, then reached for Wolef again.  While she spoke silently, Landor guided her into the observation deck and Con closed the doors behind them.

“Everything is different than before,” she said after a long silence.  “Wolef says she just arrived at the
Facility
yesterday, less than twenty four hours ago.”

“We made good time getting here from Garza,” Con said.  “The Doftle’s ships must be much faster than ours.”

“What else is different?” Landor asked.

“She doesn’t have a head injury this time, and they’re trying to force her to shift.  That’s what they did to me.”  Her eyes widened in sudden understanding.  “
Sukari
!” she hissed.  “This is my fault.  When I came back in time, my soul came with me, leaving a mindless shell behind.  They couldn’t torture a vegetable into shifting, so they abducted Salene sooner than they did in the other timeline so she could take my place.”

“That doesn’t make it your fault, Rayne,” Landor said.  “Don’t worry.  We’ll get her back.  Con?”

Rayne turned to Con who was doing something on his hand terminal.  He looked up and nodded.  “Wolef’s calls were successful.  We can feel him strongly enough to use him as a transportation target.  We’ll need him to call again two or three times when we get to the transport room so that we can plot the
Facility’s
orbit.”

“And then what?” Rayne demanded. 

“Then we’ll transport to the
Facility
, find Salene, and bring her back here,” Landor said.

“No, you can’t,” Rayne said as icy fear raced through her veins at the thought of her men in the Doftle’s hands.  “It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, they’ll track your transport signal the moment you send it.  It has to be me.”

“Absolutely not,” Landor said, fear making his words harsher than he’d intended. 

“Of the four of us, which one is capable of making herself virtually invisible?  Which one of us is familiar with the
Facility
, and the Doftle?  Which one can communicate with Wolef?”

“The answer to all of those questions is you, Rayne, of course,” Landor said, making an effort to gentle his tone.  “But it doesn’t change the fact that you will not go into that hellish place again.  We are incapable of sending you there.”

“I’ll send myself,” she said.  “I know the way to the transport room and I know how to run the console.”

“I’m sorry, Rayne, but no.”

“This is not your decision to make,” she said with tears of frustration in her eyes.

“As Commander of this ship, it is,” Landor said.

Knowing there was nothing she could say that would change his mind, she spun around and left the observation deck without another word.  She walked quickly up the corridor to the elevator, her mind racing as she tried to think of a way to do what she knew she had to do. 

“I believe that I have the strength to bring you here, since you’re so close,”
Wolef said.

Rayne stopped in her tracks. 
“Really?”

“Why do you always say that?” 

“What about the shields they’ve woven around me?”
she asked, ignoring the question.  She heard a door open behind her and immediately raised her partial shield, blocking her men from sensing her emotions.  Without looking back to see who was following her, she pressed the elevator call button and waited.  A moment later she was in the elevator and the doors were closing, cutting off her momentary view of Ari’s worried face.  She waited until she was in the room she’d used when first arriving on the
Armadura
, with the newly replaced door locked behind her, before reaching for Wolef again.

“Can you get through the shields?”
she asked impatiently.

“They are well woven, but they guard against technology, not magic.  They pose no problem.”
 

“Were you able to send the hand terminal and the card key back in time to yourself?”

“Of course,”
he said. 
“I have the pain baton as well.”

Rayne reached up to touch the pendant that Landor, Con, and Ari had given her, then wrapped her hand around it, blocking the micro cam’s view. 
“Okay, let’s do this.”

“Close your eyes and hold onto your stomach,”
Wolef warned. 
“I’m afraid that this may be somewhat rough.”

She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw tightly just before the world began twirling around her at stomach churning speed.  The door opened, Ari shouted something that she didn’t quite catch, and then her senses were filled with the familiar scents and sounds of the
Facility
. 

When the sensation of moving ceased, she opened her eyes and blinked back instant tears at the sight of the horrifically mutilated dragon before her, releasing the crystal so that her men could see what she saw.  “Thank you, Wolef,” she whispered softly, reaching out to touch the tarnished scales on his enormous head.

“You’re most welcome, of course,”
he replied. 
“I do hope that your bears will be able to transport you out of here when you find your sister.  I expect this place, along with myself, to be vaporized long before I can possibly regain the strength to repeat that exercise.”

Rayne heard the question hidden in his words and immediately sought to reassure him.  Touching the crystal around her neck lightly, she decided to continue speaking out loud so that her men could hear.  “I haven’t forgotten my promise, Wolef.  I’m very grateful that you told me about Salene so that I can try to rescue her, but whether I succeed or not, I
will
keep my promise to you.”

“I know you well enough by now to know that,”
Wolef said stoutly. 
“Please excuse my curiosity, but how long has it been since you returned to your past?”

“Six days.”

“I’m very impressed,”
he said, surprised.  “
The difference in your overall physical health in so short a time is remarkable.”

“I was fortunate enough to be healed by men who have a very strong talent for it,” Rayne said as she walked around to the front of the once magnificent creature, her boots crunching in the dry straw.  “How long did you have to wait before you were strong enough to send these things back to yourself in this time?” she asked, reaching in between Wolef’s great clawed toes for the items she’d hidden there a year in the future. 

“A few months,”
he replied
.  “I expected to be transporting them to you, not transporting you to them, however.”

“I know,” she said.  “I’m just glad they’re here.”  The first item she removed was the key card, which went into a pocket of her jeans. The second item was the pain baton.  She dialed it all the way up to
Kill
, then slipped her hand through the loop of cord at the end.  She gripped the handle tightly enough to depress the switch hidden there, and touched the end to the floor briefly.  The resultant shower of sparks indicated that it was still fully charged.  Relieved that she had a functioning weapon, she released the handle, letting it hang safely from her wrist, then removed the hand terminal from its hiding place.   Just before she turned it on Wolef stopped her.

“You might want to reconsider turning that device on.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s from an alternate timeline.  There may be information in it that can aid you in discovering what the Doftle will do in the coming year before they actually do it.”

Rayne was stunned by the magnitude of the idea, and mortified by how close she’d come to destroying what might well be priceless data the moment the device updated itself from the
Facility’s
mainframe.  She slipped the hand terminal into her pocket with trembling hands.  “The only problem now is, how do I find Salene?”

“I overheard someone say she’s on Level 3,”
Wolef said. 
“I’ve no idea how you can reach that level, but perhaps you can procure another hand terminal.  You’re so much stronger now than you were before, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for you with your shield fully up.”

“Excellent idea, Wolef.  That’s exactly what I’ll do,” she said, then switched to silent communication. 
“Do you know where the other version of myself is being kept?”

“I do not recommend that you approach your past self too closely,
Solin
.
”

“I don’t intend to,”
Rayne replied. 
“I only want to know so that I can better avoid such an occurrence.”

“Good,”
Wolef said, relieved
.  “As far as I can determine, it’s either in the same cell you occupied, or very close to it.”

“That’ll be easy to stay away from,”
she said.  “Wish me luck, Wolef.”

“I do not believe in luck,
Solin
, as well you know,”
Wolef said. 
“However, I shall happily wish you all the positive energy the universe can send your way.”

“That’ll do,” she said.  She stepped up close to Wolef’s head, raised herself up on her toes as far as she could, and kissed him on the cheek, just below one of his eternally closed eyes.  “I can never thank you enough for all you’ve done not only for me, but for my bears, and for all Jasani.  All I can do is renew my promise that you will soon be freed from the prison your flesh has become.”

“That is all the thanks I desire,”
Wolef said
.  “Now, off with you, and be careful.”
 Rayne patted him once more, then crossed the room, removed the key card from her pocket and slid it through the reader. 

The lock on the door
thunked
, causing chills to raise along her arms.  She returned the card to her pocket and raised her shield fully before stepping through the doorway.  Realizing that she was hunched over, she forced herself to stand up straight.  She was not a prisoner any more.  She was here to free her sister, and if she didn’t believe in herself, she would not succeed.

“Just so,”
Wolef said in response to her thought.  She nodded, her confidence rising at the knowledge that he was with her.  Raising the pain baton to a ready position, she walked quickly and quietly up the corridor.  When she reached the point where the two corridors intersected she turned left and walked past the cell that had once been hers without a glance, continuing on to the end and turning once again, leaving the cells behind her.

She approached a Doftle sitting at his post, arms crossed, eyes closed, proving to her that they did have eyelids after all.  She spotted his hand terminal lying on a table near his elbow so she picked it up and turned around, retracing her steps until she rounded the last corner.  The moment she touched the hand terminal it became as unseeable as she was, but the first hand terminal she’d used had chimed when she booted it up, and she couldn’t hide sound.

Hoping she’d gone far enough to prevent the sound of the hand terminal’s chime from being overheard, she turned it on, wincing at the soft electronic beeps even though she’d expected them.  She remembered how she’d broken through the security on the first device, so it didn’t take long for her to do it again.  A few moments later she had full access to the hand terminal, and by extension, the Doftle’s mainframe.  She muted it, then pulled up a floor-plan.