It wasn’t until he’d severed the head from the neck that he felt the urgency and adrenaline in his limbs begin to abate.
He looked at the mutilated body, feeling light-headed. Ripping the deactivated collar from his neck, he leaned on the glass wall.
He couldn’t pass out...couldn’t.
He felt light again, his and others...a flood of presence so near and warm it shocked him, brought tears to his eyes. For a long moment, he let it hold him, trying to pull himself out of the dark, to feel something different.
Slowly, he felt himself grow almost calm.
There would be more bodies. Terian built redundancy after redundancy into every system he created. There would be more. Maybe a lot more.
He remembered Jon and Cass then, and dragged himself up the wall to his feet.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
26
RESPITE
Revik limped down a narrow, military-green corridor. He felt a larger room at its end. Naked, he still had only the knife he’d gotten off Terian-6 and the drone’s belt wrapped around his knuckles. Hitting the panel to open the second set of doors, he slid behind the wall before peering out, using his sight to glance lightly over the room’s landscape.
His head felt clearer with the wire gone.
He was pretty sure he wasn’t all right, though. He could still feel something else, drugs probably, clouding his mind. Now, with the sight-restraint collar off his neck, and having left the green tile room that shielded his light, the drugs fought to take him out of his body, to make him too visible in the Barrier. He fought it, fought his mind back into reasonably straight lines, fought to stay in his body, took a breath.
Stretching out his light, he located a weapons locker, looking obsessively in the background for other seers, for any ripple or touch from the Barrier. His light detected a few more bodies behind glass or maybe embedded in the organic wall.
Once fully in the Barrier, he can tell his sight is still blurred from the drug.
He feels strangely alone.
Even so, he knows his scan is only long subjectively.
He clicked out as the door to the next room finished opening, and found himself staring at what looked like an enormous fish tank hanging from steel and organic cables in the ceiling. Hookups for at least three living beings floated in the jelly-like liquid, but only one had an actual body attached to it. Revik focused on the man floating inside, felt his heart stop as it occurred to him it might be Jon.
But it wasn’t Jon. He studied the man’s features. He didn’t recognize him, but he was young, in good shape, handsome. It must be another Terian. He looked at the other three hookups. One seemed to be rigged for a body the size of a dwarf.
Or a child, perhaps.
The thought sickened him a little, but even that was muted by the drug.
He didn’t flinch until the remaining body moved in the tank, opening its eyes to stare at him. Gritting his teeth, Revik walked around the transparent window until he found the control panel. Using his sight to discern keystrokes...then to speak to the organics...he gained access to the main computer. He turned off all of the functions supporting life support he could find.
When he looked back at the tank, the tubes leading into the suspended body were no longer pumping liquid.
It took a few seconds for the man in the tank to comprehend the change.
Then Revik watched him start to suffocate. He banged on the plexiglas...sharp at first, almost a demand. Then he thrashed, screamed, beating against the transparent wall.
Revik felt sick, wondered if he should try to break it, to snap the creature’s neck. He could feel more of them now, somewhere.
But no other seers. Terian didn’t seem to have housed anyone here but himself. Before he could confirm this by looking physically, a voice nearly made Revik jump out of his skin. He slammed his back into the plexiglas tank, hard enough to hurt himself in his effort to get away.
“Jon! Look! Look!”
Revik fell into a half-crouch, wishing he’d started with weapons.
Unable to comprehend at first what he was seeing, unable to get over the fact that they could have shot him if they’d been armed, he didn’t move at first, fighting to get his equilibrium back.
He found them then, with his sight.
Still, he couldn’t make himself relax.
He crossed the room, knelt down in front of the low cages he hadn’t seen buried in a military gray wall. He peered inside, confirming with his eyes what he’d already felt with his sight.
“Revik! Holy shit!” Jon banged on the hard plastic of the kennel. “You got out! How’d you get out, man?”
Revik barely heard.
He jumped into the Barrier the second he verified their appearance.