Erin M. Leaf (15 page)

“What’s wrong?” Bea asked, touching
his arm.

“Something’s not right,” Gideon
said, trying to figure out what was bothering him.

“What do you mean?” Theo asked,
leaning against the wall. His brown hair was tousled, but he looked rested.

“All of this is just too easy,”
Gideon muttered, unable to explain what he was feeling.

“You’re kidding, right?” Theo
laughed. “Nothing in the past twenty-four hours has been easy. Or normal.”

Gideon shook his head. “I don’t
mean the invasion. I mean this. The tower.” He waved his hand around. “Where is
everyone? Why is Eran the only person we’ve seen?”

Bea leaned her head on his
shoulder. “Why don’t we find the silver door and see what happens? We can only
do one thing at a time.”

He tried to push his doubts down. “You’re
right. I’m just unsettled.” He got in the transport. Theo followed, guiding Bea
with a hand on the small of her back. Gideon put another hand on the wall
control, using barely remembered skills to choose the top level. The doors
whooshed shut and Bea laughed uneasily.

“This feels a little bit too much
like the elevator back home,” she said.

Gideon snorted. “I was just
thinking that. But is it a good comparison or a bad one?”

“Maybe a little of both,” she
replied, leaning into him. “The kissing was nice. The sudden disaster, not so
much.”

“I agree with her,” Theo said,
smiling a little. He looked calm, but after years of working together, Gideon
knew better. His partner was keyed up, getting ready to go to work.

And isn’t that what we’re doing?
he mused, thinking
about Earth. He was a cop. He might not be human, but he’d grown up like one.
He
felt
like one. And his loyalty was with his adopted planet. He wasn’t
sure why he felt so uneasy all of a sudden, but Bea was definitely right.
One
thing at a time.

He ran a hand down her back,
enjoying the way her curves felt against his side. It soothed him to touch her.
Theo watched him, eyes warm. Gideon sighed and tried not to think too hard
about what they were doing. He didn’t want to lose them. He didn’t want to go
to war.
You have no choice,
he told himself, thinking of Earth. The
place he’d called home for most of his life.

When the door opened, he took Bea’s
hand, leading her out into the hall. They were at the top of the sand tower.
Unlike the rest of the place, this corridor was thick with dust. Only a few dim
lights lit the way. At the far end sat a silver door twice his height. There
was no balcony, no windows to the outside, just a featureless hall with the
strange door at the very end.

“Wow. It’s real,” Bea breathed.

Gideon nodded. “Yeah. I almost can’t
believe it.” He started walking. His feet stirred up little puffs of soft sand
as they moved down the corridor. “I’ve dreamed about this door for a long time.”
When they reached it, he stopped and put a hand on the smooth surface. “It’ll
take all three of us to open it.”

Theo moved up and put his hand next
to Gideon’s. Nothing happened.

“Bea?” Gideon asked.

She took a deep breath and moved
up. “I’m here,” she said, putting her hand next to theirs. A rumble sounded
from somewhere deep within the tower, then the door cracked in two and silently
slid open. Lights flicked on in the room beyond the door and Gideon took a step
inside and stopped, staring.

The room was completely round.
Three sets of armor lay neatly on the floor near a long window. A few empty
counters ran along another part of the wall. There were no chairs. No kind of
machinery or computer equipment. The room was entirely empty except for the
armor and a floating black cube in the center of the space. He remembered his
mother touching the cube, her expression terrible. It wasn’t a good memory. He
turned away and headed to the other side of the room. When he turned around,
Theo and Bea were still staring at the weapon.

“Whoa,” Theo finally said, moving
toward the cube. “Is this it? The weapon your mother designed?” He stopped a
foot away, staring at the device. “What the hell is keeping it up?”

“Don’t touch it!” Bea said sharply,
taking a step towards him.

Theo glanced at her. “I wasn’t
going to.”

Gideon moved closer to the windows.
The desert beyond the tower was empty of everything except sand. “I don’t think
anyone has lived here in a very long time,” he murmured. His instincts were
screaming at him. Something was very wrong with this place.

“What about Eran?” Theo asked,
still staring at the cube.

“He brought us food,” Bea said. “He
didn’t hurt us.”

Gideon shrugged uneasily. “I know.”

“We can’t just stay here, staring
out the windows,” Theo said.

Gideon walked over to him. “What do
you suggest?”

“Do you remember anything about
this?” Theo asked, pointing at the cube.

Gideon looked at it and then closed
his eyes, trying to jog his memory. “I remember my mother putting it together,
like a disassembled puzzle cube, and putting it there. That’s it.” He didn’t
mention the look on her face.
No reason
to burden them with that.

“How do we get it down?” Bea asked.

Instead of answering her, Gideon casually
reached for it. Bea cried out a warning, but his hand stopped an inch from the
cube. “Something’s blocking me.”

“We probably have to do it
together,” Theo said. “Just like the door.”

“This is crazy,” Bea muttered, but
she lifted her hand. “We don’t even know what it is. It’s like voodoo. All
we’re doing is guessing.”

“That’s worked for us so far,” Theo
said.

She gave him a sour look.

“Theo, move around to the other
side,” Gideon instructed, following his instincts. He nudged Bea until the
three of them were equidistant from one another. “Ready?”

Bea nodded.

“Copy that,” Theo said, all
business now.

Gideon took a deep breath and let
it out again. “On three. One, two, three.” Together, they reached for the cube.
A spark of silver flared along their arms and then their hands were through the
barrier and touching the cube. Instead of it dropping into their palms, it
began to glow.

“Um, is it supposed to do that?”
Theo asked.

“Shit,” Gideon said as the light
began to tingle along his skin. Before he could move away, it flared again and
the cube spattered into molten silver pieces, like mercury flung across a room.
The stuff splattered his arm and he flinched. He thought it would burn, but
instead it felt cold.
My God,
he wondered, staring as the silver shards
slid into his skin. He glanced at Bea and Theo just in time to see the same
thing happening to them. The light winked out.

“What the fuck?” Theo asked, very
clearly.

****

Bea stared at her arm. It had been
over fifteen minutes since the cube exploded, but nothing else had happened.
The silver stuff had disappeared without a trace. The only reason she knew it
was still there, in her body, was the hint of chill along her skin. “Maybe they’re
nanites.”

Gideon stared at his hand. “I don’t
remember this. I don’t remember it doing this.”

Theo finally let out a sigh and
began prowling around the room restlessly. “Does it matter? We need to get back
to Earth.”

“Theo’s right,” Gideon said,
turning away. He stared at the silver door, his face drawn.

Bea rubbed her skin, trying to get
the cold to go away. Nothing happened. For some reason, this freaked her out
way more than the silver eye thing.

“Come over here,” Theo called from
where he crouched near the armor.

Bea glanced over. He was trying to
take one of the suits apart. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t look up. “So, the
doomsday weapon was a bust, but maybe the armor can help us when we go back.”
He poked at it, huffing in frustration when he couldn’t get it apart. “Shit!”
He jerked back his hand. Blood welled up from a tiny cut on his thumb. “I was
being careful, but the scales are really fucking sharp.” He sucked on small
wound.

“Stop it,” Gideon said, striding
over. “Look.” He knelt down and put a hand on the Cearvall rune etched onto the
chest of one of the suits of armor. A low humming sound began and then the
armor slid up his arm and over his body like water moving over rocks.

“Oh my God,” Bea said, watching
him. When he was completely encased, he stood up. The face mask made him seem
inhuman, and then it slid open. He was smiling.

Theo stared at him, then reached
down and put a hand on the rune of the armor he’d been poking. Within a few
seconds, he was encased, too. The face mask slid back. “Okay, that’s really
cool.” The armor fit his body like a second skin. Every one of his muscles was
outlined beneath the scaled surface, like a strange kind of modern art sculpture.

“How did you get the mask to slide
back?” she asked, trying not to stare at his groin. The armor hid
nothing
.

Theo grinned, not noticing her
preoccupation with his assets. “It’s kind of like a neuro-interface thing. I
just thought about wanting it to slide back and it happened.”

“Is it heavy?” She stared at them.
The armor was all black, except for the silver Cearvall rune on the front. It
gleamed, star-like, in a sea of darkness. The overlapping scales made the armor
immensely flexible, but also provided edges in unexpected places.

“No, it’s not heavy at all,” Gideon
said, flexing his arms. He reached down towards his thigh, and then, like
magic, the scales exposed the knife he’d tied to his leg, depositing it on the
outside of the armor. He drew the blade, holding it lightly in his fingers. “Even
with the extra gravity here, the armor isn’t heavy.”

Bea steeled herself, then reached
down and put her hand on the rune on the last set of armor. Immediately, it
flowed up and around her. She nearly panicked, but as soon as the mask closed
over her face, it opened, responding to her wishes with no lag at all. “Whoa,”
she murmured, standing up. The armor flexed as she moved, giving her a little
extra stability and strength. She hoped she didn’t look ridiculous. If it fit
the men closely enough so that she could see their muscles, she knew the armor
would highlight every last bulge of fat on her hips. “How do I look?” she
asked, trying to suck in her stomach.

Gideon smiled. “You look dangerous.
And beautiful.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You
must be kidding me.” He was flattering her.

Theo shook his head. “No, he’s not.
The armor sucks the light, makes you look like something out of a sci-fi movie.
It’s a bit unsettling.” The look on his face told her he wasn’t lying. “You
look very, very dangerous. And hot.” His eyes drifted down her body and he
grimaced uncomfortably. “Okay, getting an erection in this thing is
not
fun.”

Amusement bubbled up as she watched
him close his eyes and take a few deep breaths.
Well. I guess I don’t look
that
bad, if that’s the reaction I get,
she thought. She stretched her arms out and down, getting used to the way the
armor felt. “We need to go back to Earth. Maybe we’ll be able to figure out
what happened with the weapon on the way.”

“I agree,” Gideon said, moving
closer. He put a hand on her arm, smoothing down until he reached her fingers.

Bea shivered. Weirdly, the armor
didn’t clash or get caught together. Instead, the scales felt permeable, giving
Bea almost as much tactile information as her bare skin. She grasped his hand,
squeezing. She needed his strength. She needed something to help her focus on
what they could do, rather than what she could lose by going into a war.

“We can fight, at least, with
these,” Theo said. “Better than we could before.”

Bea shoved her fear down and away. “Yeah.”
She thought of the hospital, burning, with all her friends inside. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Ten

Eran drove them back to the cave
that held the tesseract rima. Bea watched him move, wondering yet again how a
man so old could be so nimble. They’d said their goodbyes to Ella and Ivy,
which had sucked, to be honest. She really liked Theo’s sister, even though
they’d only known each other a short while. Leaving them here, on an unfamiliar
planet, felt a little like abandoning them. She sighed and ran a finger down
her thigh. The scales rippled with the motion. Gideon stared out the window.
His continued unease was starting to worry her. When she caught Theo’s eye and
tipped her head at Gideon, he offered her a small shrug.

Eran drove into the tunnel,
oblivious to their unspoken communication. Gideon rolled his shoulders,
frowning. Bea wished she could soothe him, but she had no answer for his worry.
Truth was, she felt similarly disturbed. She leaned against his arm and he gave
her a small, strained smile. When Eran parked the transport, Gideon stared at him
while they walked, as if he were a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.