souls it had already taken. Something—something terrible, something impossible, tried to take me, but I wouldn’t let it. The insane wail of the voices in my head…There was something more. They were all being absorbed. Like they were all merging into one entity. It felt like choking. So many voices. Billions, trapped in that web. I was slipping. I would’ve fallen before long, but you tore me away and the link was broken. I would’ve become one with the blackness, the hell, if you hadn’t saved me.”
“But you also saved me. You shifted through the webs that I was caught in. We both would have died if you hadn’t shifted.”
“Shifted?”
“Yeah.” To make his point, he shifted his arm. It flickered and became a ghostly image of itself.
She remembered the voice in her mind ((HELP HIM HELP HIM NOW)) calm, whispering, and the flood of images as some higher power took over her mind long enough to destroy the metal bonds that held West—
She smiled. “Oh. It was my first time.” Had she possessed enough human flesh to do so, her cheeks would have blushed.
“Well, thank you.”
Patra looked with wonder at the cool, matte black surroundings.
“Is this one of the alien vessels?”
“Same techbase, from what I’ve seen, but somehow different. Little changes…And no silver webs.”
“How did it get into a mountain?”
“That’s what they were trying to find out before they found the light in the chamber. Milicom became more interested in that than in the craft itself. It was right after Three, and MSI was terrified. We’d barely made it out of the last war, and with things heating up in Quebec…They wanted to use the tech in this ship for our own weaponry. And then they stumbled onto the light. Enter the Styx.”
“No wonder why my father was afraid. He must’ve thought the rightful owners of this were coming back to claim it.”
“Maybe they were.”
She frowned almost imperceptibly, shivered a little. Whether from the cold interior of the vessel or the fact that alien creatures had once traversed these dark metal passages, she did not know.
West walked to the round hatch that served as the doorway of the spherical room. It slid silently open when he approached, revealing a dark, slightly canted passageway that led further into the vessel.
“Let’s look around.”
They walked into the black.
“Yes.”
Zero-Four stood in the open doorway. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ll go back with you.”
Zero-Four studied the man seated before him on a bunk. Middle-aged, hair brown, whitening at the temples, faded blue eyes. He was surprisingly fit for a man who had gone through such a trying life. His eyes were somehow distant, giving him the look of age beyond his years. He was weary, yet attentive.
David Jennings.
“How did you find out?”
Jennings weakly smiled. “The yard’s grapevine extends even to the refugee wing. I’ve thought it over, and I want to go back with you. There’s nothing for me here.”
Zero-Four noticed the fresh burn of the Judas encoder on Jennings’ left temple. How long ago had he received his own? It might have been decades; it might have been centuries. He looked away from the pattern of scarred lines. “I’m sorry about the interrogations. We have to be thorough.”
“Understood…” He had followed Zero-Four’s gaze, and he reached up to touch the rectangular pattern on his temple. “But did they really have to brand me?” He grinned. “When do we leave?”
“Immediately. Simon’s waiting for clearance.”
“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The flickering of another meager campfire. The night air was frigid, the sky bereft of stars or moons or hearts or clovers. They had each retreated to their one hundred-eighty degrees of the fire circle.
Simon’s hand and forearm flickered as he shifted. He resolidified and shook his head. “What kind of technology creates dimensional shifting capability in a biological structure? This breaks all the rules. Einstein, Hawking, Huntress, each would have given their souls to see this. This is impossible.”
Maggie smiled, distracted by something within the fire that had held her attention all evening. “Don’t question it, Simon. You’ll go crazy like me. You’ll want to stay shifted forever and let the boogey monsters that live in the light steal your soul.”
Simon frowned. “What, Maggie?” He had never seen her so fixated on the flames before.
“What?”
“You said something about boogey monsters that live in the light.”
“Really? I… I don’t know where that came from. Don’t mind me; I’m just babbling.” Her gaze never left the sanguine flames. She pulled her blanket around herself and moved closer to the fire. It was getting too cold.
Simon unrolled his sleeping bag and crawled in. From his angle on the ground, he could barely see Maggie on the other side of the fire, but somehow he could feel her there. He could feel the gentle touch of her mind; he closed his eyes, inhaling her essence. He knew that she felt his touch as well.
Maggie pulled her sleeping bag open, got in. She looked at him from the other side of the fire. They said nothing; their minds cautiously retreated from each other. Their eyes locked.
One hundred-eighty degrees.
Maggie smiled her sad smile. Her eyes glimmered; the fire revealed the tear-wet surface of her face. She wiped the tears from her face and laughed at her emotion. Simon sat back up, as did she.
“Maggie, I—”
“Simon,—”
They both tried to speak at once, realized what had happened, laughed. Simon motioned to Maggie. “Please, you go first.”
“Today, when we—When we shifted together, you have to know that I did it so that you wouldn’t get hurt. That wave of light—Nothing could have survived that. I knew I could shift and it wouldn’t hurt me, but you would have been—I shifted into you so I wouldn’t be alone.”
One hundred-eighty degrees.
“When you shifted into me, I—I’ve never… Maggie, don’t leave me. I can’t do this without you.”
One hundred-eighty degrees.
She smiled that disarming smile, wiped the final tears from her face. He felt the press of her mind stronger than ever, a soft, warm, overpowering tugging. He did not mind in any way.
“What’re you thinking, Simon?” The mischievous dimples made their appearance. “Don’t lie to me; I can read your mind, you know.” Her upper teeth dragged slowly across the wet surface of her bottom lip. “I told myself once that I’d know you. Do I know you, Simon Hayes?”
One hundred-eighty degrees shattered.
Simon went to her, their eyes locked in the bleeding firelight. He sat before her, grasped her hands. Silver eyes gazed upon silver eyes as bodies and minds shifted into one another. They illuminated the encampment brighter than any fire could.
Simon and Maggie resolidified. Their souls had intermingled; for an instant, they had been one being, living as one entity. They sat in silence for a while, lost in each other’s now-gray eyes. Simon still held Maggie’s hands. She smiled a quiet smile, opened her sleeping bag. The air was decidedly frigid on this mid-June night. Maggie laid down, and Simon laid next to her. Side by side, their minds were one as he traced every inch of her face with his lips. He shivered, from the emotion of the moment or the cold of the night he could not tell. Maggie’s eyes closed, a gentle smile still on her face. His shaking hands found her back, and he pulled her close. Simon’s lips eventually completed their survey of the terrain of her face and neck, and he looked at her angelic face and curly spill of hair for an eternity.
Without warning a dull throbbing pain swept though Simon’s head, emanating from behind his eyes to his temples. He looked from side to side, and Maggie frowned with worry. “Simon?”
A voice tore through Simon’s head, overpowering, tangible. It was Maggie’s voice, but not Maggie’s voice. It
