Survivor (15 page)

"You will."

"If we don't, then it's your job to finish
what we started."

"I understand."

"Good, now get on with you."

The two Ancients held up their hands. Yellow
light shone out from their armoured palms. The light grew brighter
as they moved their hands closer. Their hands connected and the
yellow light sparked brighter before it died out.

They turned away from each other. One of
them walked into a deep room and the other slid a massive door in
front of the entrance. After sealing it shut, the alien walked away
from the tomb with its head hung low.

Nova followed. She crept behind the creature
as quietly as she could manage. It was hard when everything hurt,
threatening to fall apart beneath her.

The creature's back was bent as if it
carried a massive burden.

Nova's mind raced. If the Ancients were
worried about a plague then maybe they weren't as big a threat as
they pretended to be. It sounded like all she had to do was wait
until the aliens died of natural causes. That would certainly help
her guilty conscience when she left the known galaxies.

The Ancient led her straight up to the exit,
and she followed it into the moonlight. The red and blue glowing
moons illuminated the scene before her. The Ancients had been busy
while she was gone. The alien ships were arranged in neat rows,
built and ready for invasion. There was no sign of the Confederacy
ships, or bodies for that matter.

Nova frowned; something wasn't right. She
couldn't tell how long she'd been gone, but surely it would have
been easier for the Ancients to leave the Confederacy ships
wherever they fell. They wouldn't bother moving them. There was
something else; a sinister red glow covered the landscape.

Nova's heart leapt into her throat.

The red moon had been destroyed by the
Ancients. She'd watched it happen. The whole thing was reduced to a
black-hole and then nothing.

She looked up and stared. The red moon
glowed above them as if nothing had happened. There was no sign of
the black-hole.

A rumbling roar surged from the fleet. The
entire armada's engines fired and they lifted into the sky. They
created an intimidating force; so many powerful ships with
unimaginable technology. There was no way for Nova to stop them
now.

The air thundered with the force of the
ships. Gale-force winds rushed past and sent her flying backwards.
She landed with a hard bump.

Back inside her sandstone prison.

"What!"

The panorama of the outside, of the ships
taking off, was gone. Instead, she was back inside the small room
with Tobius's body. The blood stains were still there as was her
gun. The door was shut.

Nova clenched her head in her hands.

She remembered clear as day following the
yellow-eyed alien back up into the world. Why was she back here?
How!

She scrambled over to her pistol and, with
shaking hands, put it into her belt's holster. At least she was
armed. Whatever mind games the Ancients were playing with her, at
least she was armed.

Rage burned inside. She hated whoever kept
laughing. She hated the voices, just at the edge of her hearing and
the sights and smells she couldn't quite perceive. She hated
feeling like there were a thousand eyes on the back of her head and
that her mind was on the very edge of madness.

Most of all, she hated the damned room.

She stomped over to the door. All the rage
bubbled inside her. It felt as if a vat of acid had been poured
into her veins and coursed through her. Her whole body felt red and
raw; her chest was constricted, burning with fury.

She reached the door and raised her fist
above her head, swinging it forward with all her might. She would
break through this door, chipping away individual specs of sand if
she had to.

Her fist sailed towards the door. In her
mind's eye streaks of red trailed behind it, like the blazing trail
of a rocket.

Just as it was about to hit the door, Nova's
hand disappeared.

She stared at the piece of empty space, her
mouth gaping.

The anger drained from her body as she
stared up at the impossibility. A cold spear of icy dread went
through her heart and dropped to her stomach. Her wrist ended in
empty space and she could see right through to the door beyond.

Panic rose in her throat. It was hard to
breathe or think.

It felt like her fingers were still there.
She waved them back and forth, feeling the air brush past them.

Vomit threatened again, this time from pure
panic. Perhaps she had slipped into the abyss of madness. It was
the only way to explain what she was seeing. Tears welled at the
corners of her eyes.

She imagined throwing a grappling hook and
catching the very last shreds of her sanity.

She did the only logical thing; she stepped
backwards.

Miraculously, her hand reappeared. It was as
if it withdrew from behind a curtain. Her palm, followed by her
fingers, came into view. Only it didn't look like her hand, it was
dark, practically black, and covered in a fine powder.

She brought her hand to her face and stared
at it. Soot. There was a fine layer of ash and soot over her hand.
She frowned deeper and rubbed her hand on her torn jeans. With each
pass, more soot came off.

She kept looking at the appendage as if it
could disappear at any moment. For all she knew, it could.

She shook her head. Despite everything she'd
seen there had to be a logical explanation. She walked towards the
door and swiped her left hand through the air. Nothing happened.
She lifted her right arm and waved it through the area. Again
nothing happened.

She tried a few more times, but her hands
remained firmly in place. She sighed and stomped to the far corner.
She slumped down and stared between the door and her hand.

She had only one explanation; she'd been
subjected to the time vortex and in response she'd gone mad. It
made sense. What sort of person could see all of time and space
flying by them and not go mad? It was the only natural response. So
here she was, trapped in a tiny room of her memory.

"But if I were mad," Nova said to herself,
"Wouldn't I know it?"

"No. That's the whole point," she
replied.

She rolled her eyes, trying to bring her
panic under control.

Usually she prided herself on being a rock,
completely unshakable.

The Ancients had shaken her.

Whatever she may have seen in the past,
nothing had prepared her for the madness she faced. Things swirled
on the edges of reality, or perhaps reality swirled at the edge of
her madness.

She closed her eyes and leant against the
wall. If she was going to survive her madness, she was going to
need sleep, and a lot of it. She let her mind drift, floating from
one daydream to another. It was difficult to relax when she was
sure that her mind was lost.

She thought about everything she'd seen
while in the time vortex. Entire galaxies had flown past. She could
have been there forever, watching every bit of reality happening at
once. But if she'd done that, she would have gone mad.

"You're already mad," she said to herself
and giggled.

The first picture she remembered was of a
bright light. It had looked like a picture at the time, but in her
memory, it was a movie. She watched in slow motion as the bright
light expanded out. It was intense, immeasurable. In front of it
pieces of rock and dust blew out on a wave in front of the
bang.

Nova's vision homed in on a rock. There were
so many facets to it; so many surfaces. It spun through space. It
had no destination, just the force pushing it onwards, outwards.
There were colours everywhere. The bright white light was broken up
into every colour imaginable.

The colours bounced around her body in an
inconceivable rainbow. Her tiny rock rolled with her, also bathed
in the many-hued light. Blues and purples shimmered next to greens,
yellows, reds. A psychedelic mixture filled her mind. There were
colours here she couldn't name. Some of the light went into the
infrared and ultraviolet spectrum and yet somehow she could see
them, she could see everything.

She could see the future path of the rock;
how it would spin through space before reaching another rock and
then more until together they formed a planet.

Everything around her was the same. She
could see the past and future of everything. Every speck of dust
had a story, every atom of every star going on through big bangs
and crunches.

It was too much for her mind to handle.
There was too much information. This was why she'd stopped looking
into the vortex in the first place. Why couldn't she stop seeing
it? She forced her eyes open but they were blinded by bright white
light, as if she was staring into the very heart of a
supernova.

Someone was screaming.

Nova squeezed her eyes shut and opened them
again. The screaming was louder. It was her. She was curled up on
the sandy floor, writhing.

Her hands were clenched in her hair.

She closed her mouth, confining herself to
stifled cries. She stopped convulsing, instead staring straight at
the door and thinking how peaceful death could be. Her memory shied
away from the vortex, from everything she'd seen. She drew deep
breaths. She had to stay calm, to keep the madness at bay.

There was someone at the door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nova whimpered in the darkness. She rocked back and forth,
her back hit the wall every few seconds. There were noises outside
the door, but she didn't trust her ears, not with all the other
noises echoing around her.

The noise got louder. It was footsteps,
footsteps outside the door.

Nova's heart clenched. She couldn't stop
terror rising in her throat as panicked thoughts crashed around her
head. If an alien came down, then she had to do something. They'd
show her the time vortex again and there would be no coming back
from that. Assuming she'd made it out the first time.

Grinding came from the door and the massive
stone block slid to the left. Nova's gaze was pinned to it. Her
shaky right hand clasped her gun. Her palm was sweaty and the gun
threatened to fall out. She clutched it tighter and pointed it
towards the door.

She would only get one chance. The alien
wouldn't hesitate to kill her; it probably thought she was already
dead. It was impossible to tell how long she'd been trapped with
Tobius's body. With the hallucinations swirling around her, time
had become meaningless.

The door opened wider and the glint of metal
was all the confirmation she needed. She rested her hand on her
knee to steady it, staring down the barrel.

"Tobius, are you done with the human? What
did she say?"

The door opened fully and an armoured alien
stepped through. The helmeted head glanced around the room in
confusion and then down at Tobius. The Ancient whirled around to
face Nova, reaching for its gun.

She didn't wait a second longer, squeezing
the trigger. A blue blast of energy slammed into the red button at
the creature's neck. An audible click signalled that the helmet was
loose.

She fired two more shots.

The first sent the helmet flying free and
revealed the hard flesh underneath. The third shot slammed into the
creature's face and melted the expression of surprise. The Ancient
stumbled backwards and fell in a heap next to Tobius, dead.

Her hand shook worse than before. It rattled
from side to side. She couldn't trust herself not to shoot her own
face off. She lowered the pistol back into its holster. It took
four tries before she managed to push the gun into place.

She stared at the open door. It looked real
enough, but she'd already escaped once from the small room. It
could be another mirage, another trick of her imagination.

She pushed against the wall and hauled
herself onto her feet. The room spun around her. Her thoughts
flitted around her head like moths searching for a flame. Noises
and colours swirled at the edge of her senses. She tried to block
them out, to focus on what was in front of her, but it was hard.
There was so much going on at the edge of her awareness. She was
sure she saw herself a couple of times.

"That's impossible," she said, shuffling
towards the open door.

The corridor was dusty and covered in sand,
just as she remembered from when she first arrived but very
different to the last time she'd walked it.

"It was just a dream," she said.

"Then if you follow the same path it won't
take you outside," she replied.

She nodded firmly. There was only one way to
separate reality from imagination. If she followed the same path
she'd taken in the dream, there was no way it could lead to the
outside, and then she'd have proof.

She strode into the corridor. She remembered
the path as if it was burned into her memory. She remembered
hearing the voices and following the Ancient through the catacombs.
She followed the twists and turns of the tunnels.

The further she went, the more the hairs on
the back of her neck stood on end. The path was so familiar, and
yet she'd never been here before, except in a dream. The corridors
turned and split just as she remembered. Every step was like a
familiar dance.

By the time light spilt through the end of
the tunnel, her breathing was ragged. The proof she'd been looking
for, that it had all been some vivid dream, was nowhere to be
found. Somehow the path had led her straight to where it promised:
outside.

Only this time, when she crept out of the
tunnel, she was faced with the broken remnants of the Confederacy
forces. The Ancients were still working on building their ships.
There was no sign of the formidable force which Nova had watched
take off.