Scavenger of Souls (18 page)

“What now?”

“He jammed my gun,” she fumed. “He actually jammed my gun. I didn't even know he could
do
that.”

She shoved the pistol into its holster, ripped the rifle from her back, tried to bring it to life. When it failed to respond, she gripped it by the barrel and flung it far into the air, where it flashed in the compound's blinding strobes before falling with a clatter out of sight.

“Goddamn it!”
she screamed.

“The code . . . ?”

“Doesn't bloody work. Everything's out. The protograph!” she said, realization dawning. “He must have spied on us through it.”

Hearing my suspicions confirmed didn't help the knot in my gut. “What do we do now?”

“We bust out of this insane asylum!” she said, looking around frantically. “We blow the goddamn gate to hell and leave him to pick up the pieces!”

“But your grandfather—”

“Locked me in a goddamn cage!” she said. “All my life. For my own
protection
. To keep me
safe
.” From her mouth, the words sounded worse than curses. “Ever since I was a little girl, staring at that screen he installed in my room, going out on his pointless patrols only to have him reel me back in. You don't think he'll do the same to you? You don't think he already has?
He's using you, Querry, now that he knows what you can do. Using you, like he used me, and my father, and my—oh,
God
!” Her words ended in a cry, and she aimed her useless pistol into the night, as if she could blast a hole in the darkness to free herself from the glowing cage.

“Maybe we can convince him,” I said softly. I reached for her arm, but she jerked away. “If he already knows about me, maybe he'll come with us. He wants to stop Asunder as much as you do.”

“Does he?” Her voice rose, and for a second I thought I saw her father's madness in her gold-lit eyes. “Without Asunder, how could he keep us in his prison? You don't know what it's like here, Querry. You don't know what it's like to have to live
his
life every single moment instead of mine.”

By
his
, I didn't know if she meant her father's or her grandfather's. Maybe both. But I tried to reason with her.

“Let me talk to Udain,” I said. “It's our only chance. We're obviously not getting out of here without his permission.”

Her face froze as if I'd slapped her. Then she laughed, the high-pitched laugh I'd heard earlier in the day. She pointed the dead gun at her head and pulled the trigger, made the sound of the explosion.

“Better talk fast,” she laughed.

I lifted my eyes from hers, and saw the guards approaching.

All six of them from the power station, plus Geller from the front gate, with Udain at their head. As always, the commander dwarfed those around him. In the compound's harsh
light his white hair bled a bright energy painful to my eyes. For the first time, I felt I was seeing him as his older son had seen him all those years ago. And I realized why the commander of Survival Colony 9 had deserted his base and his family, why he'd never returned, why he'd never brought his new colony close to the compound in all their years of wandering. Not only because he was angry that his younger brother had found favor in his father's eyes. Not only because he doubted the technology his brother had created.

But also because he was afraid.

“Mercy,” Udain said, drawing up in front of us, his guards silently forming a circle to block all chance of escape. “I am sorry this was necessary.”

She said nothing, only slumped before him, her breathing heavy and her eyes dull. Udain reached for her gun, and she handed it to him obediently.

“Your friend is too dangerous to let slip away,” he said, sliding Mercy's pistol into his belt. “I'm thankful to you for bringing him here. And thankful to Geller for keeping tabs on him this past day.”

Mercy didn't even look up as Geller's pimpled face smiled in victory.

“You merely suspect what this boy is,” Udain continued, laying a huge hand on my shoulder. “But I know. He is the final piece of the puzzle, the answer we've sought all these years.”

“Laman said the same thing,” I muttered.

Udain shook his head, and despite his imposing frame and calm mien, I was sure I saw fresh pain in his eyes. “Laman never understood,” he said. “The risks we took, the losses we suffered. The sacrifices we made. To him, you would have been nothing but a mystery, a freakish chance.”

“He treated me like a son,” I said.

“He had no right!” Udain roared, and I flinched from the fury in his face. For the second time in as many days, I was afraid this Goliath was about to strike me down. But then his voice returned to its usual level, a rumble like a shaking beneath the ground's crust.

“Laman failed in his vigilance,” he said. “He had you in his keeping, but he didn't know what he had. It falls to me to atone for his errors. And his brother's.”

With that, he gestured to his guards, and two of them detached themselves from the circle to approach me. Their rifles prodded me in the back as their leader grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the power station. No gentleness this time: he dragged me with all the strength in his giant frame. I looked over my shoulder once, saw Mercy surrounded by the remaining guards. Geller's face beamed with malicious glee, while hers appeared drained and lifeless in the compound's remorseless light. In that glimpse, I could imagine what she'd witnessed so many years ago at the foot of the impact zone.

Udain punched the generator's code into the cuff around his wrist. The front door panel hissed as it swung open, revealing stairs that led down into dimly glowing depths. He
entered, ducking beneath the low ceiling, the guards pushing me down the stairs behind him. The body of the camp's commander filled the stairwell, blocking my view of what lay below.

At the bottom of the short flight, we entered a cramped room lit by an angry golden glare.

Cables ran down the concrete walls to a series of metal boxes, each of them roughly the size of a fuel transfer tank. The yellow light came from one of them. Udain stood staring at the boxes, veins of gold lining his face. Then he turned to me.

“My younger son,” he said, “was a genius. Everything he did, he did for the future of this world. You need to understand that.”

He tapped a code into the cuff on his wrist, and the front panel of the single glowing box slid open.

I shielded my eyes from the light. A form resolved itself, a figure that burned with bright golden energy as if its blood and bones were on fire.

A living figure. A human figure.

It was no larger than a child.

I stared, unbelieving. The figure's eyes stared back. It wasn't entirely human, its head far too big and its limbs far too scrawny. I would have called it Skaldi if not for the suffering in its puckered face. Its chest heaved convulsively, and I thought I could hear its heart beating, in time with the pulse of its burning blood. Other than that, it stood motionless, locked into its casket with metal bands, cables erupting from
its head and shoulders and chest. Udain allowed me one more torturous look before entering another code and sealing the figure in its cell once again.

My eyes met his. Tears sparkled on his cheeks like jewels, fierce and bright.

“Biosynthesis,” he said. “On a scale that dwarfs the imagination. Living energy from cell metabolism, generated and stored to operate this compound for a thousand years. My son did this. At my command.”

“Udain,” I whispered. “How could you?”

“It was my charge,” he said. “It was what gave rise to the survival colonies. For years after the aliens' discovery, our government studied the creatures, seeking to tap their abilities. Here was an organism, to all appearances without life, but capable of draining life-energy from others. And yet the alien cells, unable to store the energy they'd stolen, deteriorated rapidly after colonizing another body. What might the potential be if the aliens' genetic material could be mated to normal cells, healthy cells—human cells?”

He drew a heavy breath. “It was known as the Kenos Project, from a very ancient word meaning ‘to empty' or ‘to drain.' Its full name—the Strategic Kenos Living Defense Initiative—gave birth to the code name SKLDI, from which we were bequeathed the word
Skaldi
. It sought two objectives: to spawn supersoldiers, and to breed human bombs.” His voice and eyes never wavered, but I thought his eighty-plus years had accumulated on his frame in a single instant. “I
was its head in the years immediately preceding the wars of destruction.”

“The wars,” I said. “Is that what caused them?”

“The wars were both product and impetus of the Kenos trials,” he answered. “The drones”—and his arm swept the row of sealed boxes—“represented some of our first successes. What we didn't know was that the energy stored in their bodies, when released with explosive force, would draw the Skaldi in even greater numbers. Drone after drone was detonated in an effort to terminate the threat, but with each new blast, more and more of the creatures poured through the gateway. There are those who believe the Skaldi infiltrated the project in its early stages, forcing us to turn our world's resources to their ends. Knowing the creatures' methods, that wouldn't surprise me. But I've witnessed enough destruction among my own kind to think we needed no such prompting from another world.”

I could see it now, reflected in Udain's mournful eyes: the Skaldi's power bred in living hosts, the world bombed and broken, turned to a lifeless desert. “What do you want from me?” I asked.

“An end,” he said. “An end to all this ruin and waste. I pushed my son to continue the Kenos trials, believing that if we could refine the drones, we could use them to defeat the Skaldi at last. Build a weapon that would drain them of power rather than feeding them more. A weapon that would neutralize them without damage to us.”

His face flickered in the light of his son's creation.

“But I was wrong,” he said. “His weapon failed too, and you've seen the result. This final drone is all that remains of his handiwork. For years he's been seeking to recover it, for purposes I think I can guess. He would destroy everything that remains in the name of his mad theology, and only I stand in his way. That's why you can never leave this compound. And why my granddaughter's impetuosity had to be curbed.”

“You think I'm like that . . . that thing?”

“I think your own theory of origins is fundamentally sound,” he said. “Through a process I don't fully grasp, you bear the drone's power within you. Its power—and its danger. I know you and Mercy intend to confront my son. But you're dabbling in forces you don't understand. If that power should again be unleashed . . .” He shook his head. “The consequences are beyond anything you can imagine.”

“Udain,” I said, as gently as I could. “My friends are out there. Your son has them, and he plans to kill them, or—or worse.”

“My son's mind is closed to me,” he said tonelessly. “It's possible he wishes to provoke a confrontation to further his ends. I regret the loss of your colony, but I can't risk an attack. Not anymore. All I can do is remain here and protect what he so desperately seeks to possess.”

He stepped closer. The room grew even smaller, the guards crowding my back while his giant frame trapped me.
I expected him to catch hold of me again, but instead he tapped a code into his wrist cuff, and another cell slid open, a larger one.

An empty one.

“Don't you see,” he said in a voice turned soft, “that this is the only way?”

I stared at the empty cell, letting his words sink in.

“It's not,” I said. “I'm sorry, Udain. I'm leaving.”

He backed off, glaring at me. “Even if you could leave,” he said, “even if you could save the rest, I hold the one you care for most. Aleka. Your mother.”

I fought down panic at his words, though it no longer surprised me that he knew. He'd known all along, connected the dots far faster than I had. Whether through the eyes of his hidden lenses or through his own eyes, he knew everything that took place in his compound.

“If you touch her,” I said, trying to meet the imposing man's gaze, “if you touch any of them . . .”

Unexpectedly, he laughed. It boomed in my ears, and the light blinked as if the walls of the underground prison were about to collapse.

“Boy,” he said, his face still shaking with mirthless laughter. “I've led armies, fought monsters in their dens. Who are you to threaten me?”

He reached for my arm, and I braced myself against the wall of the tiny room.

“Actually, Udain,” I said. “So have I.”

Without stopping to think what I was doing, I leaped for the pistol tucked in the giant commander's belt.

Udain shouted a warning, but it came too late. The buzz of the guards' rifles hit me, jarred me, but didn't hurt me. The pulse Mercy had felt when she shot me was so strong this time it knocked them against the cement walls, their rifles clattering to the floor. Before they could regroup, I sprang for the stairs. I feared that Udain might have closed the door at the top, but I shouldn't have worried. The moment I touched it, a buzzing sensation ripped through my body and the door snapped from one of its hinges, freeing me from the building that would have been my tomb.

I ran for the gate. Mercy's guards hadn't moved from the spot where we'd left them. They'd tightened their ring around her, Geller leading them in taunts and laughter, while Mercy stood silent, her face expressionless.

They saw me at the same time she did. But she reacted faster.

In the seconds it took me to reach her, she had Geller down and, from what I could tell, out. The rest backed away from the rifle she'd taken from their felled ringleader. They hesitated for a second, fingering their own weapons—but though they outnumbered her, it only took them a second to make up their minds and run. I was too far away to see her eyes, but I wouldn't have wanted to face her at that moment either.