Ouroboros 2: Before (27 page)

Instead, she saw her opportunity.

The device.

It was still on Cara’s hand as she twisted Nida’s own.

Using every scrap of strength she had left, Nida pushed forward, and she thrust forward with her wrist as she did.

It was enough to see Cara stumble.

And that was all it took.

Nida directed the device against Cara’s own chest.

Though Nida was not wearing the Goddess’ tear and had no idea how to use it, in that moment she forced her mind forward.

Her thoughts—filled with hope, bitter determination, and an urgent plea—sprang from her mind.

She concentrated them just as she would when using her implant.

Then it happened.

The red.

The surge of energy.

It shot from the device and ate into Cara’s chest.

She was flung back far across the roof. And when she struck the concrete and eventually came to a rest, Nida knew she was down.

For a bare moment she stood there and breathed heavily, her body a broken mess.

The device was still in her hand—it had broken off Cara’s wrist as she’d been thrust backwards.

The device still glowed a powerful red.

It surged in fact.

Nida did not let it distract her.

She turned.

She reached him.

She crumpled beside Carson Blake.

As she did, as she thought the worst, he whispered her name and rose to meet her.

Carson Blake

He had used all his remaining strength to fight against unconsciousness. It had tried to claim him with its black, shadowy grasp, but he’d held it at bay.

So he’d seen it all. With a languid, slow gaze, he’d watched as Nida had grabbed the gun only for Cara to attack her.

Then Nida, in a moment of pure strength, had thrust against Cara and used the device against her.

Now she was above him.

He could see her worried, blood-soaked face.

‘
Carson?’ Nida spluttered through her tears.

He pushed himself up.

It was stupidly hard, but he did it.

Immediately she collapsed an arm around his shoulder for support.

He fell into her, and it felt great.

But no matter how much he wanted to remain there, breathing back his energy and fighting back the fatigue, he couldn’t. Though her chest and neck were warm and his shoulders and face pressed against them, there was still an army down there.

. . . .

There was an army down there.

While it had doubtlessly held back its attack to give Cara a chance, it wouldn’t hold back forever.

‘
We have to get out of here,’ he croaked.

‘
You’re injured,’ she whispered.

He could barely hear her voice, and he knew his didn’t sound any better; Cara had very almost choked the life out of him.

Carson had a little bit of a history for choosing bad dates. His taste in women sometimes caught up with him.

But this . . . this was ridiculous.

Cara had tried to kill him and was, now that he paused to think about it, a complete psychopath.

It was such an odd thought to entertain now, and he almost wanted to laugh.

He didn’t though.

Instead, he reached up, bracing his back to do so, and checked Nida’s face.

Her nose looked broken and there was a deep gash along her left jawline. And that wasn’t to say anything about her leg or wrist.

She was in a bad way, yet she still had the strength to hold him.

. . . .

Now that was real strength—that was proper resilience.

What Cara had was the fire of righteousness to help her burn through all she didn’t agree with.

Nida had something so subtle and unique, that to the untrained eye it would appear like weakness.

It wasn’t.

He pushed up and out of her arms.

‘
Come on,’ he hissed, stumbling to his feet.

‘
Carson,’ she rose beside him, somehow standing despite her injuries.

The wind whipped against her blood-caked hair, plastering it over her shoulders and neck.

It brought with it the sound of the troops below.

They were amassing, no doubt readying for an attack.

. . . .

He quickly concluded he couldn’t take them on. Not with Nida like this.

No.

Only one of them could get away.

One would have to stay and fight. Take the heat off the other, give them a chance to escape. ‘Nida,’ he said through a labored breath as he collapsed one hand against her chin.

Her skin was so warm under his touch.

She just looked at him, those eyes wide with terror.

‘
You need to go.’

Those same eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘I’m not leaving you,’ she snapped at once.

‘
You have to. We talked about this. If we got separated, the other would go on
—’

‘
We aren’t separated,
’ she interrupted wildly. ‘You’re right there, and I’m not leaving you.’

‘
Nida,’ he raised his voice. ‘You have to. I need to stay and fight. You have to go.’

‘
I’m not going.’

‘
It’s an order.’

‘
I’m not going
.’

‘
It’s an order
,’ he screamed back. ‘Go, just go.’

She took a step back from him and shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t make it a meter without you, Carson Blake,’ she stopped shouting now, her voice bottoming out with confusion and exhaustion.

‘
Yes, you will. You saved me, Cadet. You defeated Cara. You got free from Varo. You can and you will get out of here.’ He tried to hold her gaze, tried to convey how honest and heartfelt his words were.

He believed in her.

He hadn’t always done so. But now he did. With every fiber of his being.

She could do this on her own.

She would have to.

He took a step back and nodded, pulling his armor bands off as he did.

His armor was still overtaxed, and it would likely take several hours and a careful hand to get it working again.

But he handed the two bands to her anyway.

If Sharpe were here, the commander would likely point out there was no way Cadet Harper could fix a set of sophisticated armor.

He would be wrong.

Cadet Harper was capable of more than anyone had ever given her credit for.

‘
Go,’ he said once more.

She took a step back, her eyes filled with confusion.

He reached around and took the scanner from his pocket. It had remained there through thick and thin. Whenever he’d commanded his armor to form over his body, it had formed around the holster, locking the scanner in place and keeping it safe.

He handed it to her. ‘This will help you fix the armor. Take it.’

‘
I,’ she took it off him, tears streaking down her face.

He pressed his lips together as he realized a tear or two met his eyes too. Then he nodded his head sharply. ‘Go, Cadet.’

She took a step back.

She appeared to hesitate.

He snapped at her to go one last time, drawing on his years as a lieutenant to give the command all the punch it needed to blast through her reservations.

She shook back.

She turned.

He could hear her crying.

She’d get over it.

He was starting to realize Cadet Nida Harper was just a slow starter. She’d have trouble with new situations, she’d get confused, she’d make mistakes. But she would build. As she became comfortable, she became strong.

He knew she could do this.

He turned.

Then he heard her gasp.

He twisted his head in time to see her make an odd move.

She took a step forward, her legs wobbling, her body shifting back and forth as if she’d lost all control over it.

Before he could wonder whether her leg injury was acting up, he watched her fall.

She dropped the armor. She dropped the scanner.

They went scattering over the roof.

He reached her.

Then he saw it.

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

Her body became stiffer than reinforced diamond and colder than the oldest glacier known to man.

He collapsed his arms around her.

She was having a vision.

She’d been pulled into that strange realm of the entity.

That nightmarish world where time stood still and the stars fell from the sky.

‘
No,’ he whispered bitterly as he held her.

Not now.

Not now.

Cadet Nida Harper

Her vision shut down around her.

Blackness spread out like water from a broken dam, engulfing the night, the roof, and the battle below.

She hit the ground.

Then she lost all sense of her body.

Briefly the by-now-familiar view of Remus 12 returned to her.

The dust, the rubble, the destruction.

She tipped her head back to see the carcasses of ships in the sky. The United Galactic Coalition heavy cruisers. The bodies. The decimated fleet.

She saw flashes of the insignia of the United Galactic Coalition. She saw snippets of dead faces drifting past.

Then the world around her changed.

The entity leapt up.

She watched that blue energy build and rush into the sky like a geyser erupting from the earth.

As it surged upwards, it warped space.

The dust began to disappear, and the ships in orbit gradually blinked out like extinguished stars.

Then Nida was no longer standing in the dust.

She was in a city.

A bright, big, beautiful city.

It was astounding. It had huge, magnificent white spires. They reached for the sky, looking like so many outstretched arms parting the heavens.

The streets were clean and wide, and dotted with verdant purple and green trees.

The air smelt sweet and truly clean.

Miraculous.

This city was almost as beautiful as her own back on Earth.

As she turned and stared, it was as if the horrible vision of the dust-caked Remus 12 simply drifted from her mind.

Wonder swelled her heart, making her large and warm.

She collapsed a hand over her chest, her fingers instinctively travelling to her implant.

‘
What . . .’ she began.

Then she saw it.

The people.

Whilst the city was a marvelous testament to technology and a startling future, as she saw the people rush past, she saw their fear.

Their palpable, shaking, hot fear.

It owned them.

It saw them stumbling in the streets.

It saw them screaming at each other.

It saw desperation push them forward with no heed for their safety.

Nida doubled back.

The people surged around her.

Rushing through the city streets as if they were trying to get away from something. Something so devastating, that no matter how far they fled, they could not get away.

Nida saw it.

She looked up to see the wall.

Of light.

Of fire.

Of destruction.

It blasted through the city. It obliterated the towers.

And it burnt through the people, turning them instantly to ash that tumbled on the wind.

She couldn’t scream.

She tried, but she could not make a sound.

Her throat was closed, stone-like, too narrow to force a word through.

She tried to collapse to her knees.

Again she could not.

Instead, she stood there, untouched as the city around her crumbled.

The buildings. The spires. The people.

They tumbled down into ash, into rubble, into death.

Enormous dust clouds swirled through the air, turning the once bright day into nothing but a grey, swirling mess that reminded Nida of the vortex of destruction the entity could cause.

She stood there, trying to close her eyes, trying to make it end.

‘
Wake up, wake up,’ she begged.

But no matter how hard she forced the vision to end, it did not.

Instead, she stood there as the dust and rubble surged around her like a dirty, grey ocean that had smothered the city entirely.

She could smell it—taste the burning acrid smell of total annihilation—yet she didn’t breathe it. It could not make her choke.

Nor could the fire burn her.

None of the buildings crushed her as they tumbled to the ground. Instead, she stood there and watched as the world became nothing but dust before her.

Finally she saw it.

The blue.

It was the only color. The only light bright enough to penetrate that swirling mass of grey cloud.

The entity.

It danced.

It twisted.

It shifted like liquid movement, like an ocean given life.

It crackled over the crumbling buildings. It played over the ash of bodies.

Spreading, it covered more and more. It even reached up to claim each trapped scrap of dust that whirled in the vortex above.

Onward, upward, it soon covered all until everything was blue.

Yet as she looked down, Nida realized she was not.

The entity had left her.

She was whole.

Human again.

And as she tipped her head back to survey the destruction, she understood.

This.

This would happen if the entity left her.

This would happen if she could not protect it.

So she would have to try, with every power she possessed, to help it.

With that thought building in her mind, finally the vision ended.

It shut before her, folding like a book that had closed.

The blue gave way gradually to the dark night above.

Then to his face.

‘
Carson,’ she whispered as she tried to fling herself forward.

Yet it was not Carson.

. . . .

She was still on the roof.

But she was not alone.

Soldiers stood around her.

Their expressions were a mix of awe, hatred, and greed.

She could not stare into their eyes without shivering.

Soon she heard it.

The sound of someone choking.

She looked past the men before her to see Carson.

He was on his hands and knees, sucking in a breath as blood trickled from his mouth.

Someone had just kicked him.

Then, with a snap, the soldier by his side brought the butt of his gun down and jammed it against Carson’s head.

Carson fell, rolled to the side, but didn’t get up.

He was a mess.

A bloody, broken mess.

And now the fog of her vision passed, Nida realized she was no better.

Another soldier struck Carson, and to his unending credit, he took the blow and managed to push to his hands and knees again. With blood soaking his mouth and nose, he looked across at her.

They made eye contact.

Silent, but precious. In those brief seconds she realized he was alive, yet would not be for long.

They were trapped. The government troops had clearly overcome Carson whilst she had been ensconced in her vision.

Shaking, she realized with a horrible stab of sorrow that it was over.

They’d been captured.

No.

No.

It couldn’t end this way.

‘
Take them,’ someone said.

Nida watched as the soldiers beside her pushed in, grabbing her up by the arms and suspending her in place like a lifeless puppet.

She watched as more soldiers roughly grabbed Carson to his feet too.

‘
Nida,’ he said.

She couldn’t really make out his words—his voice was little more than a soft shudder. But she could see his lips moving and she could note the look in his eye.

He was spent. He was broken.

He’d failed.

Yet he spent the time to stare at her, sorrow lifting off him as if it were waving good bye.

No.

No
. She thought again.

It wasn’t going to end like this.

She had to do something.

She had to fight.

As that thought burst through her like a bullet through flesh, she felt it.

The power within.

The entity.

It held it at bay. The energy. The force.

For the very first time, Nida could feel the entity; she could locate it in space. She could sense it.

And she knew where it held its power.

She had no idea why it wasn’t helping her, why it wasn’t forcing her to point to the sky and send the soldiers hurtling into the clouds.

It had protected her before; it had fought for her when it mattered most.

Yet now it held back.

Why?

Did it want them to be captured?

Because if they were, Nida could guarantee Carson would not have long. These people were only really interested in her.

Not him.

She had to protect him.

She had to.

So she called on it.

The power.

She pushed past the entity.

She didn’t wait for it to deign to help her; Nida just muscled in, her desperation vibrating around her like a protective shroud.

Then it happened.

The surge.

It blasted through her, opening her veins and pushing power, not blood through them.

It was the same thrill she felt at using her implant—not that she’d ever mastered it, of course. But the first time she’d moved a training block a centimeter, her body had filled with unmistakable energy.

Well this experience trumped that a thousand fold.

The energy shot through her arms and up into her implant.

She knew it brought with it the ability to move more than TI objects.

So she didn’t hesitate.

She flicked her hand out.

Every soldier on the roof went flying.

She didn’t send them scooting off the roof; she didn’t kill them.

She would not press them against the ceiling until the force of gravity pushed the blood from their veins and sent it trickling down their lips.

Instead, she got them out of the way.

Then, spying Carson’s armor bands and scanner, she pulled them towards her.

They reached her, instantly taking up orbit around her.

She took a step forward, reaching out to Carson.

Her hand shone. Her whole body glowed in fact. A deep bright blue. But at the edge was white.

Blinding, glorious white.

She had no idea what she looked like. A vision from heaven maybe, or more likely hell.

But that didn’t stop Carson from reaching up to her, his eyes wide and cheeks slack with surprise.

She felt his hand fold into hers, his fingers lock through her own.

She had him.

But she still had to get out of here.

She could still feel the energy vibrating within her, the power raw and incredible.

Yet she knew it could not last.

She had to use it to get them free.

Free before the entity corrupted.

Seconds.

She only had seconds.

All of a sudden she felt something.

A possibility.

A door.

It opened before her mind.

Time seemed to melt around her, hanging in droplets against her arms and neck and cheeks and legs.

It slowed into drudge.

A gate.

She could open a gate.

The realization roared into her mind.

She felt that knowledge claim her with perfect certainty.

For those brief moments she felt connected to the entity, and she gained access to its memory, to its knowledge.

And its full abilities.

She realized just in time she could create a gate.

Right here.

Right now.

With all her energy.

She could do it.

She could escape this time.

It was the only way.

She didn’t even think.

The energy within her had a mind of its own. It pushed through her reason, it screamed at her not to stop.

She forgot about the entity.

She did not think of whether her actions could corrupt it. She did not ponder that by stealing away its power to open a gate she could be the force to destroy it and all of reality.

She just did it.

She lifted off the ground, the energy building so much it cancelled out gravity.

Blue light erupted from her, spewing from her fingertips like arterial blood.