Heart of Annihilation (13 page)

I blinked against the blackness encroaching on my vision, the rage bursting from me in a homicidal wave. I staggered forward, murder on my mind.

Rannen’s leg bumped against the crate as he backed away. He put out a hand to keep his balance. Fear shimmered in his eyes. His hand came up, and I was staring into the muzzle of his weapon. I narrowed my eyes.

“Put that away.” Thurmond attempted to push the weapon away. “Knock it off, Rose!”

The hatred leaked away, taking with it the pressurized ache in my head. I sagged against the wall, drained and sick. I recognized that voice, the one that had come from my mouth. And it wasn’t mine.

Rannen dropped the weapon to his side, unaware that Thurmond’s hand was still on it. Both of them stared at me open-mouthed.

Too ashamed of myself to speak, I turned away. I stood at the edge of a steep embankment looking in the direction we’d arrived.

Miles of empty desert stretched before me. Trapped on an island in the middle of a sandy ocean. Trapped and dying. Trapped and losing my mind. I didn’t know which was worse.

My eyes followed the line of electrical towers and the thin track of road running alongside it. A dirt cloud rose not more than twenty miles away. The sun retreated behind the glowering clouds and the whole valley was cast into a dark, stormy shadow. The dust cloud was only barely visible now, but I knew what I’d seen.

“Hey,” I called over my shoulder, “someone’s coming!”

Thurmond stepped to one side of me. Rannen’s hip brushed my other shoulder. They followed my gaze. No one spoke. Not about the convoy of vehicles, and not about me going off about drones and cutting throats and such, although I caught a wary flick of the eyes from Rannen.

“What do you think the chances are that’s the commander coming to do us in?” Thurmond said.

That was my first guess too, but I couldn’t seem to put the timeline together. Get shot, fall from a plane, blah, blah, blah, stumble across miles of desert, find aliens, be accused of mass murder, blah, blah, get some weird injection, threaten to kill someone, blah-diddy-blah. Yeah, I guess they might have had time to land, unload the plane, gear up, and drive all the way out here.

“How far out would you say they are?” I asked.

“I’d say they’re driving between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour.” Thurmond looked at his watch. “A generous guess would put them here around twenty hundred hours. That’s less than thirty minutes from now.”

“Are they coming for us or these other guys?”

“Probably both.”

A shard of lightning cut the sky, followed instantly by a boom of thunder. My insides bounced.

Energy surged throughout my body, increasing exponentially with every moment. It refused to hold still, racing throughout every cell like a child on a newly discovered playground. I rested one hand on my knee. I couldn’t stop shivering.

Thurmond’s voice continued to intone somewhere to my left; Rannen joined in a moment later with a quiet rumble. I lost track of the conversation. In fact I lost track of everything.

Lightning, thunder, electricity, ice. Icy cold.

“It’s all right, Rose.” Thurmond rested his hand on my back. “We’ll be fine.”

I opened my mind and eyes back to the outside world. Thurmond stood by my side. Deputy Hoth, a.k.a. Ponytail Guy, had joined Rannen at some point. The Rethans chattered and worked in the background. A drop of water landed on my cheek, then another.

Something sparked on my skin. A flash of light. Then another. I blinked. Water plus electricity equaled . . .

“Rannen?” I called. Fear clutched my throat.

I turned my face to the sky as the clouds released their heavy load. A sopping deluge saturated my hair, skin, and clothing. Water filled my eyes. I brushed it away only to have it obscure my vision again.

Rannen and Hoth stood together, their shoulders lifted in an instinctual defense against the sudden watery assault. Water dripped from Hoth’s ponytail onto his shoulder.

“The officiate is ready for the inmate over at the portal,” Hoth hollered over the rapid-fire of thunder and accompanying rain.

“How long is this going to take?” Thurmond left my side to join them. “Marshal Rannen, those people are coming to kill you.”

“Rannen?” I tried again.

No one looked at me. The three of them grouped together in a tight, arguing fist. Blood trickled in watery rivulets down my arm. Electricity sparked through the crimson streams, like power pouring from the injury.

“I realize that,” Rannen said. “But the safest thing for us is to get through the portal.”

“The safest thing for you guys maybe, but what about Rose and me?” Thurmond swiped water from his face.

“What are you talking about?” Rain flecked from Deputy Hoth’s lips.

“It appears that the government soldiers Specialist Rose referenced are on their way.” Marshal Rannen gestured behind him. Hoth stepped to the edge of the hill.

Headlights were now visible, tiny twin penlights repeated over ten times, fading in and out as the rain overwhelmed the vehicles. Hoth was suddenly at my side, wrapping his cold fingers around my wrist.

If he’d been holding my left arm, I would have yanked it away. As it was he took my electricity-riddled right arm that was attached to a leaking hole in my shoulder and pulled me in the direction of the portal. He didn’t seem to notice or care about the snakes of electricity crawling down my arm.

“G-get off me!”

Thurmond blurred through the rain. His fist met Deputy Hoth’s jaw in a squelching thud. Hoth went down, dragging me with him. I hurt enough when I was holding still. Moving, falling, and landing was a friggin’ mother.

I was vaguely aware of Thurmond going in for a follow up. Rannen snagged his arm and yanked him back. Snarling voices. My hip and a rock doing the tango. Hoth’s hand jerking on my arm.

I blinked over at Hoth’s angry face, then at my arm, where electricity danced over his hand. A sharp ache clamped my head in a vice.

“Get off me!” I shouted, sending every amp of power collected within my body out of the hole in my shoulder, through the streams of water and into Hoth’s fingers.

A spasmodic pop exploded in a crackle of blue light. Hoth yipped in pain, releasing me. I scrambled away, my hands splashing in the mud. Electricity crawled across my soaked skin, clothing, and through the rainwater collected on the ground. My back hit building twelve. I slid down the wall and my body sprawled across the ground, head propped up. The electricity jerked my muscles in uncontrolled spasms.

Marshal Rannen crouched before me.

“Stay calm, Kris.” His voice was intense but calming. “You have the control. The power does not. Sense the power. Draw it in. Contain it to the water in your cells. Master it. Control it.”

“Gah!” I breathed out. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the fact that I had long since lost any control.

“Kris, listen. If you can’t draw the power, at least contain it. Think of it like shutting off a valve.”

I sensed it. The valve he was referring to. Unfortunately the valve included a giant hole in my shoulder that I was far from able to patch at the moment.

You stupid child,
growled the voice—louder and stronger.

I felt something akin to a switch being flipped, and the electricity stopped its mad steeplechase. The world was too dark. I was very cold, but my muscles were at least still. Rain pattered on my head.

Lightning flashed across the faces of Thurmond and Rannen.

“Whoa,” I breathed out. “That was weird.”

“Damn, Rose,” Thurmond said. Rannen almost smiled.

My vision adjusted. At least it wasn’t quite so dark any more. Hoth held his wrist to his chest, his fingers curled across his palm.

“Officiate Lafe needs her
now
, Marshal Rannen,” Hoth sounded winded.

“In a minute,” Thurmond snapped over his shoulder.

“No. Now!”

Something white flashed in Deputy Hoth’s hand. A warning caught in my throat as he jabbed the weapon into Thurmond’s neck.

“Get out of the way,” Hoth snarled.

Thurmond flinched. He raised his hands and got slowly to his feet.

“Deputy Hoth, this is contrary to our laws.” Rannen was up now also.

“What’s the matter, Rannen? Losing your edge?”

“We don’t need an edge when we abide by the Rethan standard.” Rannen’s voice was cool.

“The Rethan standard doesn’t apply to them.”

“These two have been cooperative since we arrived at the camp. There’s no need for your weapon.”

“Cooperative. Is that what you call what they did?”

“They were antagonized.”

“The officiate needs inmate two-three-six right now and if I recall, this one is expendable.”

“Holster your weapon!” Marshal Rannen ordered.

Deputy Hoth looked surprised. He glared at Rannen for another moment, and then lifted the weapon from Thurmond’s neck with a reluctant jerk. Thurmond rubbed at the spot on his neck but didn’t move otherwise. Rannen drew himself up to his considerable height.

“Now then. I will discuss an exit strategy with her friend, if you can manage to get Kris Rose to the officiate without another incident.”

Deputy Hoth’s lip curled, but he retreated. His weapon disappeared in his pocket or holster, or wherever he kept it when it wasn’t at Thurmond’s head.

Rannen followed him with his eyes. “Do you think you can handle that?”

“I can handle it!”

“Good.” Rannen stepped over to me. He held out a hand, his face gentle and expectant. “We do need your help, Kris. In the meantime I’ll work with your comrade on an exit for the both of you.”

I swallowed, hesitated, and then took his hand. He put his other hand around my waist and hoisted me to my feet. I blinked the rain out of my eyes, swaying but standing.

“Rose?” Thurmond took my arm.

I couldn’t look at him. My embarrassing and downright sinister moments were stacked precariously high. A wrong look from Thurmond was sure to topple any of my remaining dignity. And even now, among alternate-dimensional aliens, injuries, and imminent death, it somehow still mattered what he thought.

“I’ll be right back,” I mumbled, and pushed past Thurmond.

I weaved toward the center of the camp. The adrenaline seemed to be wearing off, because my energy and clarity of thought wavered. I focused on the silver plates of the portal shimmering with every flash of lightning and the officiate standing next to the southernmost leg.

Lightning illuminated each drop of rain in brilliant white. Static on a television screen. Uncontrolled chaos. The Rethans had piled their metal crates not far from the portal: the large ones two or three high in several different clumps, the smaller ones in short pyramids. The crackling chatter of the mingling Rethans made the air itself seem electrically charged—an assessment not too far off considering the storm.

They quieted as I approached, conversations ending with a sharp look in my direction. Feet stopped mid step, and hand gestures hung forgotten in the air. The occasional Rethan flinched out of my way, but other than their eyes following my every step they might have been part of the desert.

At the sudden silence, the officiate looked up from a glowing, dripping screen lying on her arm. Her eyes went directly to mine, and then she glanced at her troops.

“Get back to work!”

The Rethans jumped. In a flurry of movement and noise, their tasks were resumed, their conversations remembered. I slumped onto a single crate a few feet from the officiate, thankful for even that much of a luxury. Deputy Hoth arrived. She spoke before he could.

“That will be all, Deputy. I’ll take it from here.”

“But, Officiate, the government soldiers—”

“Are on their way. Yes, Boderick already informed me. Go help Marshal Rannen.”

Hoth gave me one more dark look before striding away. The officiate’s fingers flew across the screen, flicking water this way and that, her eyes glowing in its light. I rose a little out of my hunch to get a better look. Whatever the thing was looked very twenty-first century Earth to me.

“I thought we were in the Jurassic era compared to you guys,” I said.

Officiate Lafe huffed but didn’t say anything immediately. She opened a panel on the leg of the tower, just to the left of the portal plates. She pressed her palm to a bright blue pad of light and waited while it scanned her hand.

“Our technology doesn’t work well in this dimension. We’ve assembled what we need from your primitive equipment to create a Third Dimension border.”

The enormous armadillo plates pulsed with a faint blue light, turning the officiate into a silhouette. I put my hand in my pocket and rubbed the coin with my thumb. What would she say if she knew I had this rare dimensional catapult? Would I suddenly become unnecessary and expendable? I tightened my hand around it and kept my mouth shut.

The officiate handed the screen over her shoulder to Deputy Boderick, who had magically appeared to retrieve it.

“Here, finish up the coding for the first five,” she said without looking at him. Boderick vanished again. She clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face the increasing glow of the portal plates. “Inmate two-three-six, I know we have not gotten off on the right foot in either dimension, but our survival as well as yours depends on your cooperation right now.”

I didn’t say anything, although I might have nodded if she’d have bothered to look at me.

“The storm is putting out a great deal of electricity,” she said. As if to prove her point a jagged shard of lightning split the sky, making her hair look like liquid metal. “Can you feel it? Have you been able to absorb any since your injection?”

“Yeah, I had a whole bunch about ten minutes ago. But that nasty, little deputy with the ponytail got a little handsy, and I had to use it to volt him into the next dimension.”

She did a snazzy, Rethan-style about face. “You what?”

I stared her down. “Don’t worry, it’s starting to come back.”

“Starting to come back?” She massaged her throat. “You know you’re powering a portal, not a vacuum, right?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Fine,” she snapped, and was about to continue but I cut her off.

“Uh, Officiate.” I chewed my lip and she gave an impatient shrug. “You seem to know everything that’s going on around here.” She gave no indication that flattery affected her. “I was just wondering if you’ve ever heard of Benjamin Rose?”