Rubicon, page 46
After a few minutes of intense acceleration, the vibration finally ceased. Adriene sucked in short and shallow breaths, ribs laced with pain.
She forced herself to unclench her teeth, stretching out her aching jaw. She unhooked her harness, steadying herself for the telltale rolling nausea that would indicate entry into subspace. It never came.
She turned to Daroga. “You okay?”
“Fine.” His harness clattered against the seat as he slid it off.
With a groan she stood, stretching out her shoulders. “Why aren’t we entering subspace?”
Daroga shook his head, expression tight. “I don’t know. But if we’re still on sublights—even if we leave orbit—it’ll only be a matter of time before the scrappers catch up.”
“You’re sure those were Mechan?”
“Too far to tell; they’d just broken atmo.”
Adriene shook her head. “It’s not likely to be friendlies this far out—we’ve never had troops in this sector before.” She picked up her rifle. “Let’s head to the bridge, see what the fuck’s going on.”
She checked the gun’s charge—less than 3 percent. She slid open her hyphen to find over half the sections of her suit at under 10 percent integrity, and her overall charge was less than 5 percent.
She let out a gruff sigh and slid the hyphen shut. She couldn’t risk depleting her suit to charge the gun—though she wasn’t sure she even could without her gloves.
Daroga freed the pistol from the holster on his thigh and headed toward the hatch exit. She primed her rifle as he palmed the release button, and the door slid open.
On the other side, six armed suits waited.
Adriene didn’t need her HUD to confirm who those suits belonged to: bulky Coleson, broad-shouldered Rhett, tall Ivon, stocky Wyatt, thin Gallagher, short Kato.
Hope rose when for a fleeting moment, she wondered if they may not be hybridized. That they’d escaped their captors and hadn’t been inducted into West’s hive mind. Which caused her to hesitate a fraction of a second too long.
She was knocked off her feet by a hard-edged glove to the face, pain firing through her skull. Her vision danced as she hit the ground.
A trio of rounds echoed across the hangar, and Wyatt collapsed beside her, visor shattered. Daroga re-aimed and got a few more shots off before Coleson swept his legs out.
Daroga hit the ground, kicking Coleson away right as Ivon dove on top of him. But Daroga twisted under him with surprising deftness, using Ivon’s own momentum to throw him into Coleson.
Adriene refocused on her own pressing issues as Gallagher appeared in her still-spinning vision. Adriene swung a fist out as hard as she could, and her bare knuckles cracked with pain as they hit the hard metal of Gallagher’s chestplate. Adriene cried out, and the suit-powered punch sent Gallagher stumbling back far enough for Adriene to bring a boot up and kick her away.
Gallagher fell, and Adriene brought her rifle up, then shot her point-blank in the visor. It ripped through in one shot. The force threw Gallagher back, crashing into Rhett.
The two tumbled to the ground and Gallagher’s limp, heavy corpse weighed Rhett down long enough for Adriene to scramble to her feet.
Rhett thrust Gallagher away as Adriene rushed forward, pressed the barrel to Rhett’s visor, and fired. She winced as the charged slug imploded the helmet into the lieutenant’s skull.
Before Adriene had even thumbed the primer again, Kato grabbed her from behind. He hooked his arms under hers, locking his hands together behind her neck.
She dropped the rifle and thrashed against him. The seam at her left shoulder sparked, and she could practically feel the section’s integrity depleting as the suit bled charge.
Gathering a swell of strength, she tried to throw her weight down to slip out of the hold, but he’d tightened down with suit-assisted strength. Her shoulder burned as he strained against it. With a sudden jerk, the joint popped.
Adriene bit down on a scream as pain fired and the muscles of her left arm slackened.
Teeth bared, she leaned into Kato’s hold. She gripped his arms and bent forward to try to throw him over her shoulder—but he was too short.
So she dropped to her knees and spun, using his weight to topple them both to the ground. His hold loosened just enough for her to slip away. The pain from her shoulder blurred her vision as she twisted around to straddle him, squirming to pin his arms with her shins.
With her good hand, she slid her calf compartment open and grabbed a grenade.
He yanked his arms free and threw her off, then climbed on top of her. But she’d already activated the charge.
She summoned whatever remaining power and strength her suit could provide and jammed the grenade as hard as she could into the seam at his shoulder.
Kato froze for a heartbeat, then frantically pawed at the seam.
Adriene let out a smooth breath. It would all be okay. Daroga would finish it. She’d rather take herself down than let any of these hybridized abominations live long enough for the approaching Mechan to get hold of them.
But Kato—West—processed the situation with inhuman speed aided by Rubicon. He grabbed her by the shoulders, her limp, dislocated joint screaming in agony as he threw her away from him. He spun at the same time, putting almost three meters between them before he exploded.
Adriene’s breath sucked from her lungs, a wall of flame engulfing her vision. The right side of her exposed face smoldered before going numb, and her sight blacked out as she tumbled.
She landed on her back, writhing. Panting ragged breaths through clenched teeth for a few long moments, she flinched when hands touched her chestplate, pressing her into the ground. Trying to hold her still.
“Mira’s end, Adriene…” Daroga’s voice, equal parts worry and disbelief. “What did you do?”
She forced her eyes open, though her right stuck partway. She lifted her fingers to peel the skin apart, but Daroga stopped her.
“Shit,” he hissed, “don’t touch it.”
“It’s fine.” She was cognizant of suppressed pain, the burn just a mass of numbness, pricked with sharp tingles like a thousand needles prodding thickened skin.
“Targets are all down,” Daroga confirmed. His visor was shattered, forehead slick with blood and sweat, bare knuckles raw and bloodied.
Adriene glanced past him to the line of bodies he’d produced.
He caught her look. “I said I washed out,” he rumbled. “Not that I couldn’t handle myself.” He released his broken helmet and tossed it away.
“Fair enough.” Adriene grimaced, muscles protesting as she lifted herself to sitting. The bloodied and swollen knuckles of her right hand were probably broken, but her disjointed shoulder screamed over everything else, overwhelming her with bolts of pain.
With bloody fingers, she slid open her hyphen. The screen flickered uselessly before shorting out. Her throat crackled as she growled.
She didn’t need the stupid hyphen to tell her the obvious. Her limbs were too heavy, sluggish, and not because she’d practically blown herself up. Her suit had protected her one last time, but it was done. She was using her own strength to move it now.
With her good hand, she unlocked her helmet and tossed it away, then slid off a few of the heavier pieces—chest and back first.
“What are you doing?” Daroga asked, voice tense.
“It’s done.” She climbed to her feet, then detached her leg plates next. “It’ll only slow me down.”
She slid open the manual override tray beside her broken hyphen and thumbed the disassembly switch. The suit’s chassis creaked as it expanded, leaving her feeling naked and exposed, yet free and light. Stepping out of the frame, she rolled her neck, and the charred skin on her cheek smarted as the numbness began to reside.
She lowered back down to her knees. Pain fired along her nerves and she glanced at her limp arm, fingers twitching. “My shoulder’s out, can you…?”
“Shit, yeah.” Daroga knelt beside her, taking her wrist in one hand, upper arm in the other. “Ready?”
She sucked in a hard breath. “Yeah.”
He pulled and twisted. Her vision brightened, a chalky crack sounding as the joint snapped into place.
She growled out a half-bitten scream, and the taste of blood pooled in her mouth. Her vision blackened. When she opened her eyes, Daroga hovered in front of her.
“Hey,” he breathed. “You okay?”
She braced on her knees, each beat of her heart a steady pulse of pain between her temples. The lancing down her arm was replaced with a dull but tolerable throb.
Daroga frowned. “Pass out a little bit there?”
“Maybe.” She drew herself up and glanced at her fallen comrades—their suits in various states of disarray. Even if she found one in working order, it’d take too long to resize it.
Daroga seemed to make the same assessment as he paced toward Ivon’s and Coleson’s bodies, then tilted his head at Rhett. “Yeah, Kato was the only one close to your size…” He released a long breath through his nose.
She cast her gaze to her former squadmate, or rather to the bloody, charred mass of warped metal that remained. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I kind of blew him up, though.”
“He blew himself up,” Daroga said. “To save you. West really doesn’t want us rezoning.”
“Clearly.” She pushed her hands through her waves of short hair. “Zeroing out can still be our plan B. Or C or J or whatever fucking plan we’re on at this point.”
Daroga holstered his pistol, then picked up Rhett’s rifle and passed it to Adriene. “Let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
The empty corridors of the ship echoed eerily as Adriene and Daroga made their way toward the command deck.
Two guards stood post outside the door to the bridge—not MPs but hybridized soldiers, likely the ones who’d escorted the others back to the Aurora with Rhett.
After a few coordinated, well-placed shots, the guards were dead.
With the bridge on lockdown, Daroga had to hack the door to gain access. As Adriene waited, she adjusted her rifle, her pulse tremoring with agitated nerves. With no suit to wick it away, sweat slicked her skin, loosening her bare grip on the weighty gun.
Finally, the door opened. She stepped through the threshold, sweeping her aim across the empty upper tier. She halted at the top of the stairs, Daroga on her heels.
On the lower deck, Commodore Thurston stood facing the large bank of viewscreens between control consoles.
“Commodore,” she panted. “Thank Mira.” With no Rubicon, Thurston wouldn’t be under West’s thrall. He could still be reasoned with. “We think we saw Mechan in atmo—we need to enter subspace.”
Thurston continued to watch at the monitors, unresponsive. Adriene darted a glance around the rest of the bridge. No crew sat at the stations.
Brows pinching, she looked back at Thurston, then focused on the screens he stared at. One displayed a grid of security feeds. Views of the containment cells.
Adriene squinted. Of her containment cell. Daroga helping her stand up, hours earlier.
“Sir?” she prompted, voice cracking.
Thurston didn’t reply. He seemed bulkier under the weight of a full suit of gleaming white armor, helmet tucked under one arm. He turned a metal object over in his hands, though his body eclipsed most of it from view.
A shadow flashed in her periphery. She spun as Blackwell lunged at her.
She turned her rifle on him, realizing too late that he was actually going for Daroga.
Daroga thrust out an elbow, but Blackwell had a thick arm around his neck within seconds, clamping him into a headlock.
Adriene kept her aim on Blackwell, but darted a quick look down the stairs to Thurston. “Sir, Daroga’s innocent—it’s Major West.”
Thurston still didn’t turn. Another of the security feeds showed a recording of the Creator’s cell. Adriene enlisting his help, then Daroga freeing him.
Thurston’s chest swelled with a deep, crackling breath, then his rumbling, dry tone cut through the silence. “I did not realize how close the two of you had grown over the last few weeks.”
Adriene blinked, mind racing.
“I should have paid more attention,” Thurston continued. “I truly did not think you had it in you to make a real connection with someone.”
“Sir…” she began again, but confused dread drained the air from her lungs.
She glanced back at Daroga, held in a firm grip by Blackwell. Blackwell’s movements were stiff—the same calculated rigidity as the other hybridized soldiers.
Her eyes darted to Thurston, the beginnings of bitter realization sinking deep into her stomach.
Thurston stood canted, favoring his left leg. His actions, though, were fluid, natural. He didn’t move with the same forced stiffness as Blackwell. He didn’t appear to be hybridized. At least … not in the same way.
“I’m sure I can blame your Rubicon for that too,” Thurston continued. “For humanizing you.” He finally turned to face her, his gray, weathered brow low over two steel-gray eyes.
She froze, fixating on the tremoring fingers of his left hand.
“I have not had time to reseat the commodore’s ocular implant.” Thurston sighed, tone almost casual. “It would have been a critical step in ensuring the transfer went unnoticed.”
Adriene’s lips parted, but her breath had left her entirely, and she wouldn’t have known what to say even if she had the capacity to form words.
Thurston let out a deep, crackling sigh. “But it makes no difference now. Just as our Architect guest had warned, the pathways were too delicate. The commodore’s neural structure was inadequate. I can already feel this body giving way.”
Adriene flinched as a memory surfaced: the putrid, stale stench of viscous, gray mucus.
The bin she and Daroga had found hidden on the lower decks … West hadn’t used it to build a husk of himself. He’d built one of Thurston.
West had rezoned as Thurston. Hijacked another human’s consciousness. True hybridization.
A wave of numbness rolled down her limbs as she looked him over. It was seamless. No stilted, rigid motions. His mannerisms, posture, presence … they were in every way West, unaffected by new muscles and bone structure.
Adriene sucked in a breath and reaffirmed her grip on her rifle, pressing the stock into her shoulder and lifting her aim toward Thurston—toward West.
Daroga ceased struggling against Blackwell, staring at West in abject horror. “Julen…” Daroga breathed. “What have you done?”
“I always suspected you sought to undermine me, Carl,” West rumbled half under his breath, brow furrowing. “I can’t say I expected it to happen like this, however.”
Daroga glared. “What are you talking about?”
West’s shoulders swelled as he took a step forward, jaw set. “Time and time again she proved the lengths she would go to get that ‘chip’ deactivated.” He jutted a finger back at the security feeds. “All it took was one whisper from you to bring it all crashing down.” He tossed his helmet on the console, but kept a grip on the arc of metal in his other hand. “She would be standing by my side right now if it weren’t for you.”
Daroga scoffed a dark laugh. “You can’t really believe that. She never would’ve kept helping you—you’ve strayed so far off course with this, Julen. You need help.”
Blackwell pummeled a fist into Daroga’s side.
Daroga keeled forward, coughing out a mouthful of blood. Blackwell yanked him back upright by the open collar of his suit, then dragged him toward the door.
“Stop!” Adriene shouted, locking her aim onto Blackwell. “Where are you taking him?”
“Just for a quick bout of surgery,” West replied. “It’s better for everyone if he forgets this whole … misstep.”
“No!” Daroga thrashed against Blackwell’s grip, managing to slide a shoulder out for a fleeting moment before getting pulled back in. Blackwell towed him toward the door. Daroga reached toward Adriene, green eyes wide with dread. “Adriene, please,” he begged. “Don’t let him!”
Adriene faltered, a swell of horror rising with the musty scent of the damp basalt cave, Harlan’s panicked screams echoing in the back of her mind.
She glanced down at the charge on her rifle. Two shots left.
She inhaled a deep breath through her nose.
Aim would be critical. He still had a rezone chip in his head. In his first body … his real body.
“Adri—”
Her finger slid across the trigger with too much ease.
The base of Daroga’s neck erupted in the charged blast, sending a spray of viscera against Blackwell’s dark suit.
Blackwell lunged, but fell with Adriene’s second shot, the lower half of his face crumpling into an indiscernible mass of bone and tissue.
Panicked adrenaline rushed through her veins so fast it threatened to rob her of consciousness. Her bruised, burnt face smarted, startling her back into focus.
She swung her useless rifle back toward West. It was now completely discharged. But he didn’t know that.
West’s stoic expression remained on Daroga’s and Blackwell’s bodies, gaze steady for a few silent seconds. “I … honestly did not expect that.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I suppose it’s no matter now.”
Adriene flinched as klaxons ripped through the quiet. Warning lights washed the gleaming white surfaces of the bridge in a violent orange.
Her gaze diverted to the screens over West’s shoulder. A proximity alert flared, but showed no enemy contacts.
West turned to tap on the main control panel.
Adriene’s clenched jaw tightened. She expected him to hop into the pilot’s seat, to set any random destination to throw them into subspace, or at least move them out of orbit, but he only silenced the warning.
Though the klaxons ceased, the lights continued, casting the mute bridge in an eerie, coruscating glow.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why aren’t we entering subspace?”
West turned to face her again, Thurston’s white hair flashing orange in the pulsating lights. “I didn’t want it to have to come to this, Sergeant. I told you not to interfere, but you defied me.” He shook his head, frowning. “Which left me no choice.”
She forced herself to unclench her teeth, stretching out her aching jaw. She unhooked her harness, steadying herself for the telltale rolling nausea that would indicate entry into subspace. It never came.
She turned to Daroga. “You okay?”
“Fine.” His harness clattered against the seat as he slid it off.
With a groan she stood, stretching out her shoulders. “Why aren’t we entering subspace?”
Daroga shook his head, expression tight. “I don’t know. But if we’re still on sublights—even if we leave orbit—it’ll only be a matter of time before the scrappers catch up.”
“You’re sure those were Mechan?”
“Too far to tell; they’d just broken atmo.”
Adriene shook her head. “It’s not likely to be friendlies this far out—we’ve never had troops in this sector before.” She picked up her rifle. “Let’s head to the bridge, see what the fuck’s going on.”
She checked the gun’s charge—less than 3 percent. She slid open her hyphen to find over half the sections of her suit at under 10 percent integrity, and her overall charge was less than 5 percent.
She let out a gruff sigh and slid the hyphen shut. She couldn’t risk depleting her suit to charge the gun—though she wasn’t sure she even could without her gloves.
Daroga freed the pistol from the holster on his thigh and headed toward the hatch exit. She primed her rifle as he palmed the release button, and the door slid open.
On the other side, six armed suits waited.
Adriene didn’t need her HUD to confirm who those suits belonged to: bulky Coleson, broad-shouldered Rhett, tall Ivon, stocky Wyatt, thin Gallagher, short Kato.
Hope rose when for a fleeting moment, she wondered if they may not be hybridized. That they’d escaped their captors and hadn’t been inducted into West’s hive mind. Which caused her to hesitate a fraction of a second too long.
She was knocked off her feet by a hard-edged glove to the face, pain firing through her skull. Her vision danced as she hit the ground.
A trio of rounds echoed across the hangar, and Wyatt collapsed beside her, visor shattered. Daroga re-aimed and got a few more shots off before Coleson swept his legs out.
Daroga hit the ground, kicking Coleson away right as Ivon dove on top of him. But Daroga twisted under him with surprising deftness, using Ivon’s own momentum to throw him into Coleson.
Adriene refocused on her own pressing issues as Gallagher appeared in her still-spinning vision. Adriene swung a fist out as hard as she could, and her bare knuckles cracked with pain as they hit the hard metal of Gallagher’s chestplate. Adriene cried out, and the suit-powered punch sent Gallagher stumbling back far enough for Adriene to bring a boot up and kick her away.
Gallagher fell, and Adriene brought her rifle up, then shot her point-blank in the visor. It ripped through in one shot. The force threw Gallagher back, crashing into Rhett.
The two tumbled to the ground and Gallagher’s limp, heavy corpse weighed Rhett down long enough for Adriene to scramble to her feet.
Rhett thrust Gallagher away as Adriene rushed forward, pressed the barrel to Rhett’s visor, and fired. She winced as the charged slug imploded the helmet into the lieutenant’s skull.
Before Adriene had even thumbed the primer again, Kato grabbed her from behind. He hooked his arms under hers, locking his hands together behind her neck.
She dropped the rifle and thrashed against him. The seam at her left shoulder sparked, and she could practically feel the section’s integrity depleting as the suit bled charge.
Gathering a swell of strength, she tried to throw her weight down to slip out of the hold, but he’d tightened down with suit-assisted strength. Her shoulder burned as he strained against it. With a sudden jerk, the joint popped.
Adriene bit down on a scream as pain fired and the muscles of her left arm slackened.
Teeth bared, she leaned into Kato’s hold. She gripped his arms and bent forward to try to throw him over her shoulder—but he was too short.
So she dropped to her knees and spun, using his weight to topple them both to the ground. His hold loosened just enough for her to slip away. The pain from her shoulder blurred her vision as she twisted around to straddle him, squirming to pin his arms with her shins.
With her good hand, she slid her calf compartment open and grabbed a grenade.
He yanked his arms free and threw her off, then climbed on top of her. But she’d already activated the charge.
She summoned whatever remaining power and strength her suit could provide and jammed the grenade as hard as she could into the seam at his shoulder.
Kato froze for a heartbeat, then frantically pawed at the seam.
Adriene let out a smooth breath. It would all be okay. Daroga would finish it. She’d rather take herself down than let any of these hybridized abominations live long enough for the approaching Mechan to get hold of them.
But Kato—West—processed the situation with inhuman speed aided by Rubicon. He grabbed her by the shoulders, her limp, dislocated joint screaming in agony as he threw her away from him. He spun at the same time, putting almost three meters between them before he exploded.
Adriene’s breath sucked from her lungs, a wall of flame engulfing her vision. The right side of her exposed face smoldered before going numb, and her sight blacked out as she tumbled.
She landed on her back, writhing. Panting ragged breaths through clenched teeth for a few long moments, she flinched when hands touched her chestplate, pressing her into the ground. Trying to hold her still.
“Mira’s end, Adriene…” Daroga’s voice, equal parts worry and disbelief. “What did you do?”
She forced her eyes open, though her right stuck partway. She lifted her fingers to peel the skin apart, but Daroga stopped her.
“Shit,” he hissed, “don’t touch it.”
“It’s fine.” She was cognizant of suppressed pain, the burn just a mass of numbness, pricked with sharp tingles like a thousand needles prodding thickened skin.
“Targets are all down,” Daroga confirmed. His visor was shattered, forehead slick with blood and sweat, bare knuckles raw and bloodied.
Adriene glanced past him to the line of bodies he’d produced.
He caught her look. “I said I washed out,” he rumbled. “Not that I couldn’t handle myself.” He released his broken helmet and tossed it away.
“Fair enough.” Adriene grimaced, muscles protesting as she lifted herself to sitting. The bloodied and swollen knuckles of her right hand were probably broken, but her disjointed shoulder screamed over everything else, overwhelming her with bolts of pain.
With bloody fingers, she slid open her hyphen. The screen flickered uselessly before shorting out. Her throat crackled as she growled.
She didn’t need the stupid hyphen to tell her the obvious. Her limbs were too heavy, sluggish, and not because she’d practically blown herself up. Her suit had protected her one last time, but it was done. She was using her own strength to move it now.
With her good hand, she unlocked her helmet and tossed it away, then slid off a few of the heavier pieces—chest and back first.
“What are you doing?” Daroga asked, voice tense.
“It’s done.” She climbed to her feet, then detached her leg plates next. “It’ll only slow me down.”
She slid open the manual override tray beside her broken hyphen and thumbed the disassembly switch. The suit’s chassis creaked as it expanded, leaving her feeling naked and exposed, yet free and light. Stepping out of the frame, she rolled her neck, and the charred skin on her cheek smarted as the numbness began to reside.
She lowered back down to her knees. Pain fired along her nerves and she glanced at her limp arm, fingers twitching. “My shoulder’s out, can you…?”
“Shit, yeah.” Daroga knelt beside her, taking her wrist in one hand, upper arm in the other. “Ready?”
She sucked in a hard breath. “Yeah.”
He pulled and twisted. Her vision brightened, a chalky crack sounding as the joint snapped into place.
She growled out a half-bitten scream, and the taste of blood pooled in her mouth. Her vision blackened. When she opened her eyes, Daroga hovered in front of her.
“Hey,” he breathed. “You okay?”
She braced on her knees, each beat of her heart a steady pulse of pain between her temples. The lancing down her arm was replaced with a dull but tolerable throb.
Daroga frowned. “Pass out a little bit there?”
“Maybe.” She drew herself up and glanced at her fallen comrades—their suits in various states of disarray. Even if she found one in working order, it’d take too long to resize it.
Daroga seemed to make the same assessment as he paced toward Ivon’s and Coleson’s bodies, then tilted his head at Rhett. “Yeah, Kato was the only one close to your size…” He released a long breath through his nose.
She cast her gaze to her former squadmate, or rather to the bloody, charred mass of warped metal that remained. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I kind of blew him up, though.”
“He blew himself up,” Daroga said. “To save you. West really doesn’t want us rezoning.”
“Clearly.” She pushed her hands through her waves of short hair. “Zeroing out can still be our plan B. Or C or J or whatever fucking plan we’re on at this point.”
Daroga holstered his pistol, then picked up Rhett’s rifle and passed it to Adriene. “Let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
The empty corridors of the ship echoed eerily as Adriene and Daroga made their way toward the command deck.
Two guards stood post outside the door to the bridge—not MPs but hybridized soldiers, likely the ones who’d escorted the others back to the Aurora with Rhett.
After a few coordinated, well-placed shots, the guards were dead.
With the bridge on lockdown, Daroga had to hack the door to gain access. As Adriene waited, she adjusted her rifle, her pulse tremoring with agitated nerves. With no suit to wick it away, sweat slicked her skin, loosening her bare grip on the weighty gun.
Finally, the door opened. She stepped through the threshold, sweeping her aim across the empty upper tier. She halted at the top of the stairs, Daroga on her heels.
On the lower deck, Commodore Thurston stood facing the large bank of viewscreens between control consoles.
“Commodore,” she panted. “Thank Mira.” With no Rubicon, Thurston wouldn’t be under West’s thrall. He could still be reasoned with. “We think we saw Mechan in atmo—we need to enter subspace.”
Thurston continued to watch at the monitors, unresponsive. Adriene darted a glance around the rest of the bridge. No crew sat at the stations.
Brows pinching, she looked back at Thurston, then focused on the screens he stared at. One displayed a grid of security feeds. Views of the containment cells.
Adriene squinted. Of her containment cell. Daroga helping her stand up, hours earlier.
“Sir?” she prompted, voice cracking.
Thurston didn’t reply. He seemed bulkier under the weight of a full suit of gleaming white armor, helmet tucked under one arm. He turned a metal object over in his hands, though his body eclipsed most of it from view.
A shadow flashed in her periphery. She spun as Blackwell lunged at her.
She turned her rifle on him, realizing too late that he was actually going for Daroga.
Daroga thrust out an elbow, but Blackwell had a thick arm around his neck within seconds, clamping him into a headlock.
Adriene kept her aim on Blackwell, but darted a quick look down the stairs to Thurston. “Sir, Daroga’s innocent—it’s Major West.”
Thurston still didn’t turn. Another of the security feeds showed a recording of the Creator’s cell. Adriene enlisting his help, then Daroga freeing him.
Thurston’s chest swelled with a deep, crackling breath, then his rumbling, dry tone cut through the silence. “I did not realize how close the two of you had grown over the last few weeks.”
Adriene blinked, mind racing.
“I should have paid more attention,” Thurston continued. “I truly did not think you had it in you to make a real connection with someone.”
“Sir…” she began again, but confused dread drained the air from her lungs.
She glanced back at Daroga, held in a firm grip by Blackwell. Blackwell’s movements were stiff—the same calculated rigidity as the other hybridized soldiers.
Her eyes darted to Thurston, the beginnings of bitter realization sinking deep into her stomach.
Thurston stood canted, favoring his left leg. His actions, though, were fluid, natural. He didn’t move with the same forced stiffness as Blackwell. He didn’t appear to be hybridized. At least … not in the same way.
“I’m sure I can blame your Rubicon for that too,” Thurston continued. “For humanizing you.” He finally turned to face her, his gray, weathered brow low over two steel-gray eyes.
She froze, fixating on the tremoring fingers of his left hand.
“I have not had time to reseat the commodore’s ocular implant.” Thurston sighed, tone almost casual. “It would have been a critical step in ensuring the transfer went unnoticed.”
Adriene’s lips parted, but her breath had left her entirely, and she wouldn’t have known what to say even if she had the capacity to form words.
Thurston let out a deep, crackling sigh. “But it makes no difference now. Just as our Architect guest had warned, the pathways were too delicate. The commodore’s neural structure was inadequate. I can already feel this body giving way.”
Adriene flinched as a memory surfaced: the putrid, stale stench of viscous, gray mucus.
The bin she and Daroga had found hidden on the lower decks … West hadn’t used it to build a husk of himself. He’d built one of Thurston.
West had rezoned as Thurston. Hijacked another human’s consciousness. True hybridization.
A wave of numbness rolled down her limbs as she looked him over. It was seamless. No stilted, rigid motions. His mannerisms, posture, presence … they were in every way West, unaffected by new muscles and bone structure.
Adriene sucked in a breath and reaffirmed her grip on her rifle, pressing the stock into her shoulder and lifting her aim toward Thurston—toward West.
Daroga ceased struggling against Blackwell, staring at West in abject horror. “Julen…” Daroga breathed. “What have you done?”
“I always suspected you sought to undermine me, Carl,” West rumbled half under his breath, brow furrowing. “I can’t say I expected it to happen like this, however.”
Daroga glared. “What are you talking about?”
West’s shoulders swelled as he took a step forward, jaw set. “Time and time again she proved the lengths she would go to get that ‘chip’ deactivated.” He jutted a finger back at the security feeds. “All it took was one whisper from you to bring it all crashing down.” He tossed his helmet on the console, but kept a grip on the arc of metal in his other hand. “She would be standing by my side right now if it weren’t for you.”
Daroga scoffed a dark laugh. “You can’t really believe that. She never would’ve kept helping you—you’ve strayed so far off course with this, Julen. You need help.”
Blackwell pummeled a fist into Daroga’s side.
Daroga keeled forward, coughing out a mouthful of blood. Blackwell yanked him back upright by the open collar of his suit, then dragged him toward the door.
“Stop!” Adriene shouted, locking her aim onto Blackwell. “Where are you taking him?”
“Just for a quick bout of surgery,” West replied. “It’s better for everyone if he forgets this whole … misstep.”
“No!” Daroga thrashed against Blackwell’s grip, managing to slide a shoulder out for a fleeting moment before getting pulled back in. Blackwell towed him toward the door. Daroga reached toward Adriene, green eyes wide with dread. “Adriene, please,” he begged. “Don’t let him!”
Adriene faltered, a swell of horror rising with the musty scent of the damp basalt cave, Harlan’s panicked screams echoing in the back of her mind.
She glanced down at the charge on her rifle. Two shots left.
She inhaled a deep breath through her nose.
Aim would be critical. He still had a rezone chip in his head. In his first body … his real body.
“Adri—”
Her finger slid across the trigger with too much ease.
The base of Daroga’s neck erupted in the charged blast, sending a spray of viscera against Blackwell’s dark suit.
Blackwell lunged, but fell with Adriene’s second shot, the lower half of his face crumpling into an indiscernible mass of bone and tissue.
Panicked adrenaline rushed through her veins so fast it threatened to rob her of consciousness. Her bruised, burnt face smarted, startling her back into focus.
She swung her useless rifle back toward West. It was now completely discharged. But he didn’t know that.
West’s stoic expression remained on Daroga’s and Blackwell’s bodies, gaze steady for a few silent seconds. “I … honestly did not expect that.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I suppose it’s no matter now.”
Adriene flinched as klaxons ripped through the quiet. Warning lights washed the gleaming white surfaces of the bridge in a violent orange.
Her gaze diverted to the screens over West’s shoulder. A proximity alert flared, but showed no enemy contacts.
West turned to tap on the main control panel.
Adriene’s clenched jaw tightened. She expected him to hop into the pilot’s seat, to set any random destination to throw them into subspace, or at least move them out of orbit, but he only silenced the warning.
Though the klaxons ceased, the lights continued, casting the mute bridge in an eerie, coruscating glow.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why aren’t we entering subspace?”
West turned to face her again, Thurston’s white hair flashing orange in the pulsating lights. “I didn’t want it to have to come to this, Sergeant. I told you not to interfere, but you defied me.” He shook his head, frowning. “Which left me no choice.”
