Scavenger of Souls (24 page)

I looked up and saw a man the size of two men leap to the ground, his long brown hair flying as he landed with a ground-shaking thud in front of the prostrate creature.
Muscles bulged on his bare chest and arms, stretched his too-small camouflage pants. The Skaldi, dazed from its contact with the energy beam, didn't resist when he swept it into his embrace and squeezed, its fleshless body bursting under the pressure. Mercy laid a quick hand on his forearm as he dropped what remained of the creature, then she went back to her work at the gate, firing at emboldened Skaldi that tried to work their claws through the gaps in the fence.

It was her brother, Ardan. His giant body was covered with a patchwork of scars from the fire that had scored him at the altar, but his broad face revealed no trace of pain or fear. He was back, fighting by his sister's side—and fighting, I could easily see, with every ounce of strength he'd possessed as his father's lieutenant.

But fighting, I could also see, a losing battle.

The Skaldi kept coming without end. They dragged themselves toward the fence, and no matter how many fell before the energy beam, there were ten more to take their place. Now that Ardan's victim had taught them they could pass through the fence without fatal damage, more of them began probing the gaps between fence posts, sticking their arms and heads through while others shoved from behind. The smoke and stench of their smoldering bodies filled the courtyard. Some of the creatures avoided the front gate altogether, fanning out around the compound to entry points the few members of Aleka's forces couldn't defend. With the creatures' numbers, they'd soon be able to form a ring
around the entire base, and there was no way thirty soldiers could prevent them from finding a way in.

Aleka must have realized it too. Strapping her rifle to her back, she climbed down the ladder of the guard tower, moving far more quickly than her emaciated frame and single arm would have led me to believe. When she reached the ground, the others retreated from the fence to join her. Mercy lingered to shoot a few stray Skaldi over her shoulder. I pulled up beside the group just as she did.

I looked at the defenders, sweaty and dirt-streaked, wide-eyed with exhaustion. Mercy shot me a grin, and I felt a fever start in my blood that had nothing to do with the energy beam.

“Querry,” Aleka said. Her face had lost flesh, but not its ability to hide whatever she was feeling. “Welcome back.”

I responded with the first thing that came to mind. “How long was I out?”

“Three days,” she said. “Udain's forces returned with you and the others yesterday.”

“The others?” I said. “Where are they?”

“Adem and Nekane are helping Tyris and Doctor Siva with the wounded. The old woman has not returned from Athan's colony.” Her eyes tightened with a moment's pain, then they became chips of granite once more. “Otherwise, all are present and accounted for.”

“And Udain?”

She frowned. “We've had some trouble with him, I'm
afraid. Udain is no longer the man you knew, Querry.”

Before I had a chance to ask what she meant, a loud crackling caught my attention, and I turned to see a pyramid of Skaldi tumbling over the gate. None moved beyond a feeble twitching when they hit the ground, but others had begun to climb the wall of bodies behind.

“I suggest we continue this conversation elsewhere,” Aleka said with the ghost of a smile. On her gaunt, whittled face, it reminded me of Yov's lopsided grin. “To the bunker!” she called, and everyone followed her as she moved off at a brisk jog to the rear of the compound.

As we ran, I saw sparks raining from the fence at every point we passed, smelled the odor of burning bodies on the breeze. The Skaldi were forcing their way in all around us.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The generator,” she answered tersely, her eyes trained ahead.

“But—”

“There's an underground bunker and escape tunnel accessible via the generator room,” she explained. “Built in the days this compound was a military installation. In case the brass needed to flee their own failed work.”

“This was where the Kenos trials started?”

“The very place,” she said. “Udain restored the compound after the wars, but the trials had begun long before.”

“Oh.” I glanced at Mercy and Nessa, who seemed to be doing a good job of ignoring each other. Then I said softly
to Aleka, “I sort of knocked off the door the last time I was here.”

“Yes, I noticed,” she said, the wisp of a smile softening her features. “Not to worry, Querry. Where we're going has been well defended against incursion.”

We ran on, retracing the path Mercy and I had followed the night we left the compound. When we reached the generator, Mercy let out a low whistle at the sight of the dangling door. “Love what you've done with the place,” she said. “But wouldn't it have been easier just to spray-paint ‘Querry was here'?”

Nessa tossed her hair, apparently forgetting it had been cropped too short to toss. I guess she remembered a moment later, because her cheeks flamed beneath her green eyes.

Seeing them all here, restored and alive, I felt a shiver travel through me that I must not have had time for at the scene of battle. I'd brought an army of Skaldi to the world, risked all of their lives. Yet here Mercy was, still looking at me with her flashing eyes, still teasing me with her jokes. And here I was, still feeling my heart stutter when I remembered her lips meeting mine. The kids clustered near me the way they used to: their hands twining with mine, their faces showing no awareness that I had killed others just like them. Ardan glowered at me, but not in a hostile way—just in the way I figured a big brother looks at the guy his sister is pressing up against. Did no one realize what I'd done? Did no one care?

“Guard our rear, Mercy,” Aleka said. “If anything comes remotely close, blast it.”

“With pleasure,” Mercy said.

“Querry first,” Aleka said, and I was about to squeeze through the cockeyed door when Ardan yanked the whole thing off its final hinge and flung it in the general direction of the Skaldi. He cut me another challenging glare before I started down the steps.

The others followed. Mercy's gun let off a few short bursts, the Skaldi moaning in response. Then there was nothing but our footsteps pinging in the empty room. I wondered at how silent it was, and then I realized the glow that should have lit the room and the vibration that should have stirred the walls were missing. The box that had housed the final drone had been opened, revealing nothing but the bands that had held the prisoner in place.

“The drone,” I said.

“Udain has removed it,” Aleka said. “I've no doubt he's secreted it somewhere, but we can't convince him to tell us where.”

She nodded into the gloom. I saw what I hadn't noticed in my previous visit: a door to the side, on the only wall that didn't hold the drone boxes. Aleka leaned over, punching a code into Udain's wrist cuff, which circled her calf, way too loose even there. The door slid upward without making a sound. Beyond lay a cement tunnel, lit by fluorescent bulbs. I had only a moment to wonder how she'd gotten the cuff
when a huge shadow moved and a voice spoke from within the tunnel.

“The drone is safe,” Udain said in a tone so numb I knew I was hearing the only words he had left to say. “I'm responsible for it. I'm responsible.”

The former commander of the
Kenos Project stepped out from the tunnel, ducking his whitened head beneath the low doorframe.

But even Aleka's warning couldn't have prepared me for how much he'd changed.

Where he'd once stood erect and indomitable, he now shuffled forward, his shoulders stooped as if they could no longer bear the weight of his giant frame. His uniform, once so pristine, was befouled with dirt and speckled with ragged holes as if it had been burned. His braids had come loose, his long white hair hanging in grimy strands over his cheeks and forehead. And the lines of his face had deepened so much they looked like cracks carved into solid rock by eons of water and wind.

His eyes were the worst, though. Still dark, still intense, but without the spark of angry pride I'd seen only days
before. They darted from face to face with no hint that he knew or cared who we were.

“Grandpa!” Mercy called out, bounding forward to give him a hug. She barely came up to his chest, and as she clung to him, I thought I was seeing her as she'd been years ago when he'd taken her into his care.

Now, though, he looked down at her in confusion and doubt. His hand stroked her hair, but his words were the same mechanical refrain as before. “The drone is safe,” he said softly, as if he was telling her a bedtime story. “I'm responsible for it. I'm responsible.”

“What's wrong with him?” I whispered to Aleka.

“He's been this way since his return from the impact zone,” she whispered back. “He ceded control of the compound to me, then retreated into his own private world. Tyris thinks it's trauma or shock, but we can't rule out the possibility that he's suffered a stroke. In either case, we've been unable to discover what he's done with the drone.”

Mercy peered into her grandfather's face, her eyes sparkling with tears. Ardan approached them, and I realized he was even taller than Udain, though maybe that was only because of the stoop in his grandfather's shoulders. Ardan laid a hand on Udain's arm, and the old man's eyes wandered from Mercy's face to his.

“Grandfather,” Ardan said. “We must leave this place. Will you come with me?”

Udain looked at him helplessly, his lips beneath his
yellowed mustache mumbling the empty words.

“It's Ardan, Grandfather,” the young colossus continued. “Give me your arm and I'll take you from here.”

Mercy squeezed the old man's side before moving to make room for her brother. Gently, but with a strength I knew couldn't be resisted, Ardan laid his hand on the old man's elbow and steered him back into the tunnel.

At first Udain let himself be led, the bewildered look remaining on his face. But a few paces into the tunnel, he stiffened and began to fight against the pressure of Ardan's grip. I caught sight of Mercy's face as she jumped forward to help, saw the alarm in her eyes. Udain pulled free and began swinging an arm dangerously, forcing her to duck out of the way.

“No!” he bellowed. “The drone must be protected. I'm responsible for it. I'm responsible. Let me be!”

A moaning sound from outside made us all turn. At the top of the stairs, a jumble of shadows showed that some of the creatures had revived and were almost on our heels.

“Take him, Ardan!” Aleka shouted. “Mercy, guard our retreat. The rest of you, inside. Now!”

Without a moment's hesitation, Ardan tightened his grip around his grandfather's arms and lifted him from the ground as easily as he had lifted people half the old man's size. Udain moaned, the sound eerily like the Skaldi's senseless voices. But he couldn't fight his grandson's full strength, and his moans were his only form of protest as Ardan held him and sprinted down the tunnel.

Mercy's gun pulsed behind me. Skaldi screamed, the smell of their burning bodies wafting down into the room's stale air. With Aleka waving us ahead, we crowded after Ardan.

“Now, Mercy!” Aleka ordered.

Mercy threw herself into the tunnel. A second later the Skaldi came pouring down the stairs. A second after that, Aleka activated the button on the cuff, and the door slammed closed. Bodies reverberated against it, but it held.

I turned to look down the tunnel. I could hear Ardan's echoing footsteps, but the corridor branched into three a few paces ahead of us, and I couldn't tell which route he'd taken.

“Where to now?” I asked Aleka.

“Follow me,” she said.

She took the rightmost of the three branches, and I fell in step beside her. The tunnel carried ahead for long minutes, angling steadily downward and cutting left and right, broken every hundred yards or so by a door. Aleka used the cuff to open each one, closing them on the other side. Though I wasn't 100 percent confident Skaldi in large numbers couldn't force their way through, I felt somewhat reassured when I realized the route wasn't a straight line but a maze, with multiple options leading the wrong way. Our course only looked direct because Aleka walked it so confidently. I tried to match strides with her, and was surprised to discover it wasn't as hard to do as it had once seemed.

To keep my nerves from bubbling over, I asked her a
question I thought she might answer. “How's the power still running?” I said. “With the drone gone?”

“The compound was designed to run on stored energy for several days,” she answered. “In case the drones were captured or destroyed.”

“Do you think Udain destroyed it?”

She looked at me sharply. “If he had, we'd know it. The drone is extremely dangerous, Querry. We need to locate it before the Skaldi do.”

There was no accusation in her voice, but I couldn't help thinking of what Udain had said before Mercy and I left the compound.
You're dabbling in forces you don't understand
. He'd been right. And now he himself was another victim of my ignorance.

“I'm sorry,” I told her.

Her eyebrows lifted. “For what?”

“Everything.” I couldn't begin to think where to start. “You told me to—to take charge. And I tried. But all I did was make things worse. And now . . .”

She didn't slow her stride, but she cast one of her long, appraising looks on me. Her eyes seemed enormous in her gutted face. I felt exposed, as if she could see everything about me, everything I couldn't. But I didn't expect what she said next.

“This doesn't begin with you, Querry,” she said. “Now why don't you go talk to Mercy?”