Survival (61 page)

“They're here!”

Mac rubbed her eyes, still half asleep, and blinked at the flapping curtain. Whoever had brought the news was already gone, but she could hear excited voices outside in the dark. From the snores closer at hand, the other two patients hadn't noticed.

“Go.”

She glanced down at Brymn. “Are you—?” What she saw took the words from her lips. “How do you feel?” Mac asked instead, pleased her voice was steady.

The lanterns hanging in the shelter were enough for her to see that the metamorphosis had begun while she'd dozed. His eyes were
smaller,
though no less warm; the bony ridges that had surrounded them and defined his ears were now smoothed back into the skull. The intense blue of his skin seemed to have washed away, leaving it light and almost translucent. His arms lay flaccid on the blanket, thinner, so that their bandages, soaked in drying blue, had come loose and slipped around. She couldn't be sure without moving the blanket, but she had the impression his torso was wider, flatter.

His voice had changed, too. No longer a bass, with that hint of infrasound, it came out sounding almost Human. “Feel? Glorious, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. I feel glorious.” A pause. “And hungry.”

She reached out her hand but drew it back, fearing the consequences of touching a body in the midst of reforming itself so quickly. “The ships arriving will have synthesizers, Brymn Las. I know the makeup of your food. Hold on a little longer, okay.”

“I do not know this self. What am I to be,
Lamisah?
” Brymn asked her, giving a one/two blink. He lifted an arm and stared at it. So did Mac, fascinated. The bone was distinctly pliable between joints that had shrunk to one third their former size. The musculature was less rounded beneath the skin, as if what had been distinct bundles were lengthening and connecting. Brymn tried to open his hand but couldn't. The fingers were fusing together at their base, forming a hollow where there had been a palm.

“Not one of the Wasted,” Mac assured him, for lack of a better answer. He nodded as if satisfied, then used a free hand to poke at the coverings on his shoulder. “Do you want the bandages off?”

“Please. They—itch.”

Mac looked around. There wasn't much in the shelter besides the three cots, the other two still occupied by slumbering Humans, and the ration boxes she'd arranged as a seat. “I'll have to get scissors. Will you be all right?”

Another blink/blink, and a smile. “In your care, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol, how could I be otherwise? But you should greet the arrivals.”

Mac brushed her fingertips over the blanket. “They'll find us,” she assured him. “I'll be as fast as I can.” She stood to leave.

“Mac.”

“Yes, Brymn Las?”

“We've come a long way together, you and I.”

Mac smiled down at the Dhryn. “There's an understatement. I don't even know where this planet is.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant.”
There were no words
. Instead, Mac put her fingers to her lips and blew Brymn a kiss. “I'll be right back with those scissors.”

The camp was alive with lights, bobbing in hands, hung from poles. And people, dozens more than Mac remembered, busy transferring gear to and from a bank of skims parked in the dust. She kept to the shadows, not deliberately, but from a sudden shyness. She wanted to see him first.

No, she wanted scissors
.

Mac spotted the medic standing with two others and walked over to him. “Excuse me,” she said brightly, having to look up. “I need a pair of scissors. For bandages.”

The other two were in uniform, beneath sensible coats. Seeing those, Mac felt the bite of the night air for the first time and wrapped her arms around her middle.

The medic, presumably in the midst of arranging transport for his patients, spared her hardly a glance as he produced a microscalpel from a pocket. “This do?”

“Yes, thanks.”

They resumed their discussion. As Mac headed back to the shelter, she flipped on the 'scalpel to check its power supply. The tiny blade formed in the air with a reassuring gleam.

“Mac!”

The shout gave her barely time to turn the 'scalpel off again before she was being crushed while a voice said desperate, incoherent things into her hair.

The universe could stop right here,
Mac decided, putting her arms as far around Nikolai Trojanowski as their length, and his gear, permitted.

It didn't, of course. A shaky breath later and they were apart, Nik doing his best to look official and not flustered; Mac grinning like a fool. After a second, he relaxed and smiled down at her, his hazel eyes taking green sparks from the lights.

“You're alive,” she said, finding it necessary to say the words.

“So are you. And it's over, Mac. We did it,” he told her. “Drove away the Ro.”

The name sent a shock through her body. Mac managed to ask: “What about the Dhryn?”

“Don't worry. The IU made sure all of their colonies received the equipment to disrupt the no-space fields. The Ro's advantage is gone. It should be a case of alerting Union members what to look for—what's wrong?”

“Maybe nothing.” Mac looked up at Nik, drinking in the sight of him, wanting to believe in safety, then had to say it. “Maybe everything. Emily told me—”

The first scream hit the air.

- Portent -

T
HE FIRST drop fell.

Green and glistening, it landed on the blanket, etching through the woven fibers as fire would consume kindling.

Another followed. Another.

Another, reaching the bandages beneath, eating through those to find flesh.

Another. Another.

The flesh responded, instinct fighting drug. The scream should have had meaning.

More drops, until they began to collect in the dust.

And the mouths could drink.

26

 

 

 

BECAUSE she didn't need to understand, grab weapons, or bark orders, Mac was first to the shelter. She tore back the flap that protected the occupants from the dust and staggered inside.

The screaming had stopped.

The lights were gone.

“Brymn?”

Air stirred wisps of her hair. “Goooooo,” it said. “Gooooo.”

Gooseflesh rose along Mac's skin. She felt the flap open behind her and reached to stop Nik, knowing beyond doubt it would be him.

“Brymn. It's Mac.”

“Goooo—ooo.”

That voice alone could give nightmares.
No wonder they'd inherited legends of ghouls and monsters from the Chasm
. Mac wrinkled her nose, smelling rot. “There are two people here,” she whispered to the man waiting by her shoulder. “We need light to find them.” When Nik hesitated, she pushed. “He won't hurt me.”

He won't want to hurt me,
Mac told herself, trying to keep very still. She heard Nik ordering people away, calling for a light. Closer, she heard rain and pictured Brymn curled in agony, bleeding from his wounds. She could picture it, but something kept her at the entry.

A hand touched her arm, followed it down to put a light in her hand. Mac aimed it at the dust, then switched it on.

On Brymn.
What had been Brymn.
He—it—was lying on the floor, arms ending in a pool of bright green, a pool disturbed by drips from . . . Mac let the light trace the drips upward . . .

. . . from what had been a woman. Now, ribs dissolved as she stared, the mass turning into droplets as Mac tried to breathe, the droplets collecting in the pool, the pool where Brymn—
drank
.

The light had followed her gaze. The metamorphosis was complete. His hands had become mouths. His shoulders and sides had grown membranes that shimmered. His organs shone through his skin, including the stomach where green gathered with each sucking sound.
A pufferfish Dhryn
, Mac thought inanely, too terrified to move, unable to believe she'd seen this form before without screaming.

She had to help Nik.
He'd yanked the other casualty from his bed, and was now dragging him to the door flap without care for anything but speed.

But Mac couldn't move. She watched as yellow mucus trailed from Brymn's nostrils.
Grief?
His eyes, lidless, their orbs sinking below the skin as she watched, looked at her.
Knew her—
even as the light of intelligence flickered and died. Still, his real mouth trembled around a word:
“Promisssse.”

“I know,
Lamisah
,” Mac said, activating the 'scalpel even as she threw it into one sinking eye.

What had been Brymn filled its body with a single breath and launched itself toward the ceiling, green drops spraying outward from the mouths. One hit Mac's hand as she covered her face. She screamed. Another. Somehow she remained conscious as Nik grabbed her around the waist to carry her outside.

Behind them, she could hear weapons fire and closed her eyes, sobbing with more than pain.

27