Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

B anging on the rock did nothing but bruise her hands and make her knuckles bleed. Kicking did even less. Stella wished she could say that she wasn’t panicking, but her heart pounded in her throat and every sense went on high alert. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she couldn’t stop looking behind her, terrified that one of the monsters from the cave would jump out and tackle her.

She was alone.

She screamed.

It did nothing.

Grasping for some hint of sanity, she ran her hands along the wall, searching for a control panel to open the door back up. In the room they’d found before, lights had blinked and the controls were easy to find. Here all she saw was solid rock and dashed hopes. Still, she dug her fingers into a jagged seam in the stone and ripped at it until one of her nails tore away, making her gasp.

No hidden panel, just a useless crack.

She slapped a hand hard against the wall, the sting climbing all the way up to her shoulder, but still nothing happened.

Stella forced herself to pull back. She pressed her ear up to the wall and heard nothing from the other side, but she knew that didn’t mean anything. The door was probably as thick as her arm and made from solid rock, of course it would be silent. She needed to think .

She and Arest hadn’t run into any of the monsters in a while, but he’d seen something that spooked him, something that made him go ahead. That meant that there could be a monster in there with him now and he had to fight it before he could figure out how to open the door. That was what happened before. Monster, closed door, fight, open door, body.

But that had only taken minutes. How long had they been separated?

Now Stella really wished she had a watch. Every second dragged on into eternity and with every imagined tick, Arest could be bleeding out. And then they’d come for her.

She looked for another panel, but even though she’d calmed down a little, nothing revealed itself to her. One, two, three, four, five, she counted the seconds one by one until a minute passed and then another, hoping a bit of patience would open the door for her. But patience did shit.

Stella forced herself to turn away and look back down the hallway. They’d been walking for a while and the hallway was just as bare as it had been when they stepped down it the first time. Except for a subtly blinking light.

She placed a hand on the wall behind her and took two small steps to it, hesitating when she reached the end of her arm. She didn’t want to get further from the door in case it opened, but the light beckoned. Stella forced her hand away, curling her fingers into a fist and pulling her arm in, even if it felt like she was moving through molasses to do so.

Each step back down the hall echoed eerily around her, and she kept turning her head back to make sure the door hadn’t slid open. The farther she stepped away, the brighter the light down the hall pulsed. With a gentle whoosh, a door she hadn’t noticed before slid open, the lights beyond it almost bright enough to blind her. She couldn’t make out anything in the room, but now the hallway seemed dim in comparison.

She gave the wall that Arest was trapped behind one last look. She had no way to get it open, and as the minutes passed it became clear that he was in the same situation. Her only choice was to find another way around, and she knew that there was nothing back the way she came.

So she stepped through the door with nothing more than a prayer in her thoughts.

The bright lights dimmed to a more manageable level, and the door slid shut behind her. Stella didn’t flinch—she didn’t think there was anything in the place that could surprise her anymore. It was hell. Or purgatory. And while it kept her and Arest safe from the whirling snow outside, it was far more dangerous than any blizzard could ever be.

She was still in a hallway, almost like every other one she’d traversed so far. But instead of the solid beige that dulled her senses, the bottom half of the walls were painted steel gray, and metal grating lined the ceiling. She studied it for several moments, trying to determine if it was meant for storage or as a walkway.

Stella tried to imagine a map in her head as she walked these new halls alone. She’d relied on Arest to show her the way before, but now she had to find him. And to do that, she couldn’t afford to get lost. Of course, whoever controlled these halls seemed to be leading her. Since she hadn’t encountered a single monster since the lights started leading them, she decided to trust them for the moment. She didn’t see that she had another choice.

The hallway split, one way lit and the other dark. Though a contrarian part of her was tempted to turn left and take the darkened path, she went right and followed the light. Her fingers shook and she curled them into fists, sticking them into her pocket to try and hide the evidence of her discomfort.

It was colder here and her dirty shirt didn’t do much to protect her from the chill. Her teeth chattered and wind buffeted her hair, blowing it in her face. That had to mean she was getting closer to an exit. Right?

Stella picked up her pace, jogging down the hall as far as the lights were lit. It got colder and colder, but her speed kept her from shivering. But instead of an exit, the hallway turned again, and it grew warmer, more comfortable. Her teeth stopped chattering and she slowed down, confused.

The next break in the hall gave her a choice. She could turn left or keep going straight. And this time both hallways were flooded with bright white light. She could see that the leftward hallway curved and headed back the way she came, and the air was cooler. Maybe down there she would find an exit and help.

If she kept going straight, she would head deeper into the tunnels, and toward whatever trouble lurked.

But Arest was stuck in there. She didn’t have a choice at all.

She kept going straight. And when she came to the door at the end, it slid open silently and she walked through without any hesitation.

“Hello,” said a tall man with skin so smooth it didn’t look real. “I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience. Please take a seat.”

Arest walked into a cage.

The door behind him slammed shut and bars slid down, cutting off his escape but leaving him with a full view of everything in front of him. The cage was tiny, not even large enough for him to lay down and stretch out. Barely long enough to pace.

But he took in his surroundings and tested the bars. They were strong and embedded in the stone from the ceiling down to the floor. No amount of jostling would see them free. On the floor at his feet a control panel faintly glowed, the buttons for opening and closing identical to the ones he’d seen earlier.

So the cage wasn’t for him.

He held himself back from lifting the bars. They’d slid down for a reason and Arest wanted to know why. Something tickled the back of his mind, something he was supposed to be doing. But he couldn’t summon the thought to the forefront, couldn’t make himself know what he didn’t remember.

The room outside the cage wasn’t very different from where he and Stella had slept. The walls formed a circle and ended in a dome overhead. But unlike that room, there was no control panel on the wall, and on the far side, in a space almost completely shrouded in shadow, he thought he spied an opening big enough to be a short door into the room.

Nothing moved in those shadows, but his senses were on high alert. An unfamiliar scent tickled his nose, much like the creatures he’d already encountered, but more . Worse. He remembered the gouges on the floor in the room behind him and knew that whatever had made them, used this room too.

Nicks scored the metal of the bars and Arest reached out a hand to trace them. The scores were superficial, but anything that could do that much damage to metal this thick could end him with a swipe.

The shadows stirred and one of the creatures he’d fought scurried out, scuttling across the room, claws clicking against the stone floor. It stayed away from where Arest stood, but Arest took a step back, just in case something decided to reach for him. But the creature paid him no mind.

It ran in circles, scratching against the walls and doing its best to stay away from the shadows that it had crawled out of. Arest crouched and peered, trying to make out what it was running from. A little keening sound of fear escaped the creature’s throat and danced down Arest’s spine. He knew terror when he heard it, no matter the species.

The shadows moved.

Sharp claws and sharper teeth glinted from the faint light as a beast more than twice as tall as Arest slid out of the shadows. It moved on agile feet, its height belying a grace one only found in dancers and assassins.

The running creature’s keens turned to screams and it fell over, backing into the wall and scraping desperately, trying to escape an inescapable fate.

Arest watched it all, heart pounding madly. It wasn’t a fight. The creature might have posed a little danger to him, might have gotten in a few lucky shots, but against a monster as big as this one, it had no hope. The monster reached out and snatched the creature up, breaking it without bothering to first put it out of its misery.

It took its prize back to the shadows and the sounds of slurping, of feeding, echoed throughout the room. Blood coated the air and was thick in Arest’s throat.

He looked back down at the panel on the floor. Someone wanted him to press the button and lower the bars. Someone wanted him to fight the monster.

It was his only way out. The only problem was, he didn’t know if there was a way to survive.

He wasn’t a man. Or, well, a person . Gender assignment could get tricky when talking about alien races, but Stella wasn’t dealing with an alien at all. The thing in front of her was an android, a man-shaped robot. He looked almost human, except for that impossible skin which looked a little green under the harsh lights overhead. But he moved with mechanical grace, flowing rather than walking, and his speech was too stilted, as if he was busy translating code into words.

But she doubted that he’d been made on Earth. Or by humans. Her own people’s androids were much more effective than this, the only thing giving them away the embedded collars they were legally required to wear.

She didn’t know whether to be mad or glad that she wasn’t interfacing with a person. She could punch a person for locking her here and separating her and Arest. But if the android didn’t have protocols that forbid it, he might just give her the information that she needed to get her man back and get out of here.

“Where are we?” she asked. “What planet is this and what is this place?” You had to be specific with machines or you wouldn’t get the answers you really wanted. Their logic worked differently.

“This is a control room,” the android explained. “I am the Keeper, left to watch over this facility after the evacuation. We are on the planet of Prellys in the territory of Cyrmariun. Now please have a seat. I am instructed to see to your comfort.”

She studied him for several moments. But he was an android, and they didn’t have emotions, not like people did. Androids didn’t normally hurt people, so Stella decided to go along with him. For now. “What is this facility?” The control room around them had two computer stations, but only one was active, the lights blinking and the screen showing some sort of feed that Stella was too far away from to make out.

The Keeper’s eyes flicked, a silver sheen rolling over them momentarily. “This facility dealt in research for a planetary corporation.”

“And it was abandoned? When?” Stella didn’t try to push for more on the company, as she didn’t want to run into roadblocks in his programming. Androids could get… difficult if you pushed.

But the Keeper had no trouble answering this question. “Seven months ago. Our scientists are safe at a secondary location in Marad, the city over the next hill. Once this location is safe, they will return and continue their research.”

“Why isn’t it safe now?” Questions about Arest’s wellbeing got caught in her throat, but Stella kept them in. She needed to know as much as she could about this place, and if the android was talking, she needed to pursue the questions.

“The inner perimeter has yet to be breached, but as a precaution, all living personnel have been moved to safety.” That wasn’t an answer.

Stella pivoted again. “How will it be made safe again?” Though she already dreaded the answer.

“A beast to fight the beast.” The Keeper’s head snapped up and he glided to the other chair, sliding it into the functioning workstation and punching at the keyboard with swift fingers. Stella tried to figure out what he was doing, but he moved too fast for her eyes to follow.

Arest . He’d told her a little about his past, about his function. And he’d been brought here for the same reason, to destroy. “Did you cause the ship crash?” She would never ask a human like that, but androids didn’t know how to be offended.

The Keeper didn’t look up from his work when he spoke. “Of course not. It has brought far too much attention to the area. If it weren’t for the storm outside, Marad authorities would have insisted on entering the caves. Once the beast entered, the outer gates were sealed for added security. You have the deepest apologies from my operators for the trouble this has caused.”

“Where is Arest?” She couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Why did you separate us?”

The Keeper looked up, something like puzzlement on his too smooth face. “For your protection, of course. Only the beast is authorized to access the inner perimeter.”

“So I can leave?” She wouldn’t, not without Arest, but she had to ask.

The Keeper shook his head. “You must stay with me. My programming does not permit me to open the outer doors while security officers are so close, back at the crash site. I cannot request a countermanding order until the storm blows over and communications are clearer.” So until the snow cleared, she was as good as his prisoner. Great.

“Can you tell me your orders?”

“Yes.”

Damn androids. It was like being in school all over again. “ Will you tell me your orders?”

He hit a few more buttons on the keyboard and turned completely back to her. “I am to monitor the beast’s progress and see to it that he finds his target. If necessary, I am to render all assistance in seeing that he terminates the target. Once completed, I must contact his operator and my own and await further instruction. If necessary, I am permitted to subdue the beast so long as I do not cause lasting harm.”

“And you’ve been leading him,” and me , “to this… target?”

“Yes. Would you like to see him?”

Stella surged forward out of her chair and next to the android. “Where is he? Is he okay?” Her gaze snagged on the view screen and she saw Arest caught behind bars, crouching low and staring into a patch of darkness. “Why is he locked up? Let him out!”

The Keeper didn’t do anything. “I have no control over the viewing chamber bars. As a precaution, they can only be activated by the person standing in the chamber. Once the beast is ready, he will lower them and do his job.”

“The… whatever you want him to kill is in there with him?” Punching an android was sounding more and more satisfying by the moment.

“Not at the moment, no. But once the beast is ready, he will act. If not—” he cut himself off.

“What?”

“Authorization code required.”

Damn it! Stella rocked back in her chair. She watched the video feed and glanced back at the Keeper, who sat preternaturally still. Her mind played through the options of how that sentence could end. But she knew what he was forbidden from telling her. He’d already said it, even if he hadn’t used so many words.

The Keeper was to render all assistance to Arest. And if he needed motivation to lower those bars, the Keeper would make sure he had it. By making Stella bait.