Spires of Infinity (48 page)

Clearing the distortion field, the Apostle came alongside Gabriel and he could see that her face was as blank as the mask she’d worn before.

“Stop looking at her, you idiot,” Allie growled in his ear. “I cannot see what I am doing!”

“Hurry up,” Gabriel said anxiously. “She could jump over here from there at any moment!”

“I am working as fast as I can,” Allie hissed. “You try inputting all of the math required to tear a hole in the universe by hand! We would be here for a thousand years waiting on you!”

“All right,” Gabriel mumbled as the Apostle passed out of the corner of his eye.

“Just try to hurry. I don’t like not being able to see her. Hopefully whatever wound Marius gave her will slow her down enough that she won’t instantly slaughter me like she almost did last time.”

The Apostle’s footfalls on the metal grating echoed throughout the cavern as she slowly moved toward the tangential catwalk Gabriel occupied. With every step she took he could feel her getting closer. He could feel her sword moving toward his heart with its every beat. He began to sweat profusely. The anticipation and the inability to look back to check her progress were killing him.

“I don’t know why,” the Apostle said in a flat tone as she reached Gabriel’s

catwalk and came to a stop, “but my master wishes you to die, and so I obey.”

With a shriek of rage, or pain, or maybe even outrage, the Apostle threw herself at him. Her feet pounded the catwalk behind him as she rushed forward with a speed he wouldn’t have thought her capable of considering the way she’d barely seemed able to walk before.

“Time’s up,” Gabriel cried.

“Wait,” Allie cried. “I am almost done! Just a few more—“

“We’ll be dead in a few more seconds!”

Snatching his pistol from the console, Gabriel could feel Allie trying to fight him for control of his hands, but he found that unless he allowed her to use them she really couldn’t exert enough force on him to do more than be mildly annoying. He grabbed the pistol that Marius had given him from the belt draped over the railing, trying to ignore the burning sensation of carpal tunnel that seemed to be eating away at the backs of his hands. He didn’t think he’d ever typed so much in the rest of his life combined.

Turning, Gabriel had just enough time to cross the barrels of his two pistols above his head, catching the gleaming, black blade of the Apostle’s sword as it fell at him. For someone who could not possibly weight over a hundred pounds she sure was strong. The force of the blow knocked Gabriel off his balance and he stumbled backward.

Spinning, the Apostle kicked Gabriel in the chest with enough force to lift him from the catwalk and send him sailing backward into the computer console. His healing rib screamed pain in protest of the blow even as another broke under it.

Picking himself up, ignoring the pain of at least one broken rib in his back,

Gabriel dove under a slash that would have taken his head off. Striking the underside of the console, the blade shrieked against the metal, throwing a shower of sparks as Gabriel rolled away.

As he came to his feet, he and the Apostle both rounded on each other. Though she snarled like a beast, showing teeth that never belonged in a human mouth, her eyes were still empty. No, they weren’t quite empty. There was something in them, something very well hidden, but still visible if you really looked for it. What was it?

Despair? It was gone in a second, but it had been there.

Eyeing the Sa’Dhi in his right hand as he raised both pistols to point at the

Apostle, Gabriel wondered how much longer he had before it quit on him. He’d lost track of time since he activated it during the gunfight over the hatch. Would it quit before the job was done like in the Haven? This time he had no second Sa’Dhi with recorded moves to rely on if it failed him.

Eyes flicking toward the silvery sphere of the black hole, the Apostle shuddered before throwing herself at him once more. This time Gabriel was ready for her. Taking aim with his borrowed pistol, he emptied it into her. Slamming into her breastplate, three bullets halted her advance. Another sparked off the railing beside her, as she actually seemed to dodge it. Cutting another from the air with her blade, she missed the last and it pinged off her forehead, knocking her head back as far as her neck would allow.

Gleaming metal shone through the blood that began oozing between her eyes and down her nose. The skin actually started to knit before his very eyes as she rushed him.

Tossing the pistol aside, Gabriel drew his knife just in time to turn the Apostle’s sword aside. Her momentum knocked him against the railing and their blades sliced right through it.

Though she pressed with considerable strength, she wouldn’t have weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. Still, the awkward angle she held him at offered little in the way of leverage. He couldn’t throw her off.

With the screech of straining metal, the severed section of railing slowly bent outward under their combined weight. Gabriel felt himself slipping closer and closer to the containment field. His hair began to stand on end as if charged with static electricity, as the Apostle grabbed his throat, forcing his head further backward.

Choking the life from him as she pressed him toward disintegration against the containment field, the Apostle remained devoid of emotion. Her mouth snarled, but her eyes were dead. Even murderers he’d represented in court had shown more emotion over what they’d done. That tiny flicker of despair came back for just a second and then it was gone.

Scrabbling at the Apostle’s grip, Gabriel tried to break free, but she was insanely strong. His vision began to narrow, and her pretty face seemed to look down on him through a long, dark tunnel.

With a final surge of desperation, Gabriel raised the pistol he’d forgotten he was holding, and pulled the trigger. It clicked, but the shell didn’t fire. Cursing inwardly, Gabriel realized that it must have gotten wet when he’d fallen into the water in the coolant duct.

Desperately, he pulled the trigger again, and the recoil caused the railing to buckle backward suddenly. The jerk of movement lessened the Apostle’s grip and he was able to throw her off with a foot to her belly, rolling away to safety. Choking for breath, Gabriel had one killer of a headache coming on from the lack of oxygen.

Feeling at her right wolf ear, the Apostle bared her teeth in what looked like a cross between an evil grin, and a sneer. Blood trickled down into her chestnut hair as she put her finger through the hole his bullet had made with childlike amusement.

“You put up a good fight.”

Backing away with a respectful bow of her head, the Apostle unexpectedly gave

Gabriel time to recover from the strangulation. Emotions began flowing across her face as though his bullet through her ear had opened a floodgate. Anger, hatred, frustration, despair, and even a small bit of admiration all jumbled across her features as she looked at him, fingering the bloody hole.

“You’re trying to destroy this facility, right,” Gabriel gasped, having to force the words through his throat with a wheeze that could not possibly mean anything good.

“Don’t you understand what that’ll do?”

“No,” the Apostle replied. “And I don’t care. All I know is that my master

commands it, and I am unable to disobey.”

“Let me spell it out for you in purple crayon. What do you think is going to

happen if you destroy this place
before
you had a chance to use it to travel back to destroy it?”

Staring at him with incomprehension, the Apostle considered. Her eyes widened slightly and she took a step forward, lowering her sword.

“What will happen?”

“The general consensus is the end of the universe. I won’t let you do that, even if it costs my life.”

“What good can a dead man do?”

She was the absolute last person he would have expected to say something like

that. She was right, and her words hit him very hard. He could feel a lot of the anguish that had been crushing him since the Children of the Chosen melting away. What
could
a dead man do? Nothing. A living man, however, could work to make things right again.

If he died here, how could he ever make up for killing Allison?

A life for a life might seem like just punishment. It was what he’d been taught to believe was fair in all his years of studying law, but it was the easy way out. A dead man couldn’t pay the price for his actions. A dead man couldn’t suffer, and drag himself through the trial of repentance. He had to live. If he didn’t, how could he ever make things right again?

“Good advice,” Gabriel said. “Look, you and I both know what will happen if

you win. Everybody,
including
you, loses. What do you say we both just leave off and go home?”

She didn’t reply.

Once Gabriel caught his breath, the Apostle stepped forward, twirling her sword in both hands with an intricate pattern. Though she seemed to ignore whatever wounds Marius had inflicted on her, they were still affecting her performance. She was slow and had none of the demonic grace she’d displayed in their first meeting.

Still, she was very fast, and stronger than he was. Her blade sparked off of his knife, and the pistol barrel that he used to block when he couldn’t get the knife up in time. Her blade sliced cleanly through the catwalk and the railing when he deflected it into them.

Continuously blocking, Gabriel dodged backward steadily. It was all he could do to keep one of his weapons between her sword and his flesh. Neither of them scored any hits on the other, but Gabriel could feel himself tiring, while the Apostle showed no sign.

Thinking back to his favorite movie of all time, Gabriel thought it rather amusing to find himself fighting a black-armored foe on a catwalk like one of his childhood heroes. It hadn’t turned out so well for Luke, and he had a very bad feeling that it was going to end even worse for him.

Things seemed hopeless as the two of them danced backward across the catwalk,

their bodies strangely distorted, making it harder to attack and defend. Their weapons sparked against each other as they dueled. Even as his endurance began to flag, Gabriel’s newfound desire to survive pressed him onward. He was
not
going to let her win. Sam was waiting for him, and he’d
promised
that he’d return to her. He always kept his promises.

Falling steadily backward under the ferociousness of the Apostle’s relentless

assault, Gabriel began to feel real fear. Death held no fear for him, as he’d already died once before and it hadn’t been so bad. Not even the thought of the end of the universe caused his mouth to go dry. He was utterly terrified that he would never see Sam again.

He loved her so much. She was the reason he’d come back here to fix things in the first place, and he was never going to lay eyes on her again.

Pushing Gabriel ever backward, the Apostle unleashed a flurry of attacks that he only just fended off. That was when he noticed the pattern in her movements. Every time she increased her speed to shower him with attacks, she would take a step back to recover before jumping into it again. In that Gabriel saw a very small chance. Though he couldn’t trust all of the bullets in his pistol, it was a better chance than hoping she would tire before his own strength dried up.

Stepping into another flurry of attacks the Apostle pressed Gabriel against the railing hard. Just as he’d observed before, she stepped back, and that was when he struck. Jumping forward, he jammed his knife into her wrist. Jerking it hard to one side caused her to drop her sword. Smoothly catching the falling blade with her other hand, the Apostle drove it into Gabriel’s thigh just above the knee.

Ignoring the explosion of pain that shot up to his groin and hip, Gabriel thrust his pistol past the Apostle’s blade into the gap between the armor plates on her left leg and pulled the trigger several times until it fired. All four remaining shells were duds, but the first one to misfire went off this time. Blood exploded from the Apostle’s knee, splattering her face and breastplate, but miraculously, none hit Gabriel. Unable to remain on their feet with their respective wounds, they both dropped to the catwalk bleeding.

“I’ve never fought so hard,” the Apostle panted as she extricated herself from Gabriel’s knife, dragging herself out of his reach and pulling her blade free of his leg.

Blood welled from Gabriel’s wound, soaking his pants and the leather chaps over them. Snatching the spare gunbelt still hanging by the console, he tightened it around his thigh to stop the bleeding. Dragging himself to his feet, Gabriel emptied the misfired shells from his pistol and reloaded from the shells on his belts, careful to use ones that were less likely to have gotten wet. He prayed that they fired.

“Gabriel,” Allie said urgently. “The computer. You have played action hero long enough. While she is incapacitated I need to finish and get us out of here! Preferably
before
you bleed to death.”

“Right,” Gabriel nodded. He’d almost completely forgotten their work at the

console in the heat of the fight.

Keeping one eye on the Apostle at all times, he limped back to the console. She seemed content to lick her wounds for the time being, figuratively speaking of course.

“You might have done well in the arena,” the Apostle said in a husky tone.

“Though you are slow and weak, you know your way around a knife, and you have a good mind for strategy.”

Ignoring her, Gabriel whispered the activation word for Allie’s Sa’Dhi and she took control over his hands to use the keyboard. Seconds later a bolt of lightning widened into a Gate at the end of the catwalk where it met the inner ring. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said it would only take a few seconds longer.

“Everything is ready,” Allie said. “Press the E key to execute lowering the

containment field. After that you will have thirty seconds to make it to the Gate before the black hole is freed.”

“Could you have put the Gate in a worse place,” Gabriel cried. “I have to go