Chapter 20

TWENTY

A distant explosion rumbled through the rock beneath their feet, almost throwing Zed out of the Zone. On a dim level of his mind, he knew that explosion had gone off early—unless he'd been fighting for a lot longer than he estimated—but he couldn't think about what that meant. The Zone wouldn't let him.

The woman he was fighting, one of the university crew, blinked and stumbled back. Her eyes lost the flatness of the Zone and a crease furrowed her brow almost instantly. Zed took advantage of her confusion. Stepping in, he grabbed her head and twisted. The crack of her neck would have made him ill at any other time.

"You fucker," Baby Face growled, limping forward. Dayne had slashed his leg before Baby Face had knocked her down.

Zed narrowed his eyes and flicked his gaze from Baby Face to the remaining two altered recruits. One was an ex-soldier, the other a station rat. Both deadly—and Baby Face could fight too.

"Stand down and I will let you leave," Zed said, his voice sounding flat even to his ears. Emotionless. Mission parameters stated he had to offer the non-altered soldier a way out—that was the only reason he'd dredged up words at all.

"Fuck you. Three to one. Maybe you should stand down," Baby Face sneered.

Zed didn't bother to respond. Digging deep into the Zone—something he knew he was going to regret—he darted forward. To Baby Face and the other two guys, with their inferior training, he'd be nothing more than a whirlwind. With fists and elbows.

They didn't have a chance. He registered each hit, each impact, and when he was sure his opponents had been terminated, he stopped.

The Zone fell away immediately. He staggered—only to have someone catch his elbow and hold him steady.

"Good fight," Dayne said. "Wanna go again?" She grinned despite the livid bruise covering her cheek from jaw to temple. Her eyes looked a little less than focused.

"Pass," Zed croaked, trying not to lean on Dayne.

"Have you neutralized all enemy combatants, Zander?" Qek clicked at the doorway.

"Yeah. All hostiles neutralized. Except for Preston." Zed squinted through the annoying ache in his temple as Elias stumbled around Qek's small, lithe form. "What the hell happened to you? Did you get Preston?"

"Fucking Preston," Elias muttered. "No."

"Dr. Preston was equipped with a personal shield," Qek said. That explained the tingle when Zed had touched her. "None of us expected her to employ that level of protection. We need your assistance, Zander."

Zed's brain caught up with current events. Elias had been chasing—and Qek had been?—

Where was Flick?

Horror cascaded through him. Qek clicked as she stepped forward. "Fixer and I intercepted her by accident and when she took me hostage, Fixer offered himself up instead."

"So now we've got to catch up to them." Elias tossed aside the rifle he'd picked up with a sound of disgust. The stock bore a distinctive bio-lock insignia. "Fix cut off the front entrance." That explained the explosion. Had the other recruits gotten out? Review later. "She's got to drag him toward the shuttle crater."

Nessa and Todd were supposed to collapse the entryway if any of Preston's people showed up. What would they do if Flick was with Preston?

Zed grabbed the Zone again. His mind didn't want to embrace the altered state of consciousness, but he needed it to dull the aches in his body and the worries in his head.

"Let's go," he said.

A short way from the lab area, they found Andy on the floor. Dayne dropped beside him, checking for a pulse, and Qek clicked apologetically. "Preston caught him up close with a stunner."

"Shit," Dayne murmured, tapping his cheek. "C'mon, man."

Andy didn't stir—but his brow furrowed slightly. A good sign, despite the wicked-looking blisters on his neck and head.

"You guys go ahead," Dayne said. "I'll get him out."

"You're not going to be able to carry him," Elias said. He glanced in the direction they needed to go, then back at Dayne. "Fuck. I've got him." He jerked his head at Zed and Qek as he bent down to lever Andy up. "Go."

Zed didn't hesitate. He bolted forward. Preston and Ingesson were the mission—Dayne and Andy were, in the larger scheme, unimportant. Buried deep beneath the Zone, his conscience gave a twinge, but it was easily ignored.

He caught up with Preston and Ingesson in the dozen meters before the shuttle crater exit. Behind them, Zed saw O'Brien—Nessa—and Todd hovering at the tunnel mouth, Todd's hand latched onto O'Brien's arm, preventing her from moving forward. Preston froze and turned toward Zed, her arm wrapped around Ingesson's neck and a stunner pressed to his temple. A shot at that close of a range would fry Ingesson's synapses.

Only the Zone kept Zed breathing evenly.

"We're getting on my ship, Zander."

Zed stared her down. Given their proximity to one of the sporadic tunnel lights, she'd easily be able to see the cold flatness of his eyes, a result of the depth of the Zone. "The Guardians won't let you leave orbit. They've signed your death warrant."

Preston's expression cracked. "They don't do that sort of thing."

"You felt the scan. You know they're here and if you've tried to contact the Blythe , you know they've already started." Zed took a small step forward, but halted when Preston jammed the stunner even harder against Ingesson's head, enough to tilt it sideways.

"The Blythe might just be late!"

So she had tried to contact them. No wonder she'd started panicking and packing.

"You're fucked, Carly," Ingesson said, his voice taunting.

Always poking the fucking bear. God, I love him. Zed blinked away the stray thought, shoving his emotions down deep. "Let him go," he ordered.

Preston smiled, then chuckled. The sound had a note of desperation to it, as though she was losing her hold on reality. "So I'm dead regardless?"

"I kill you, or they kill you, or they kill everyone."

"Well then." She looked at Ingesson—and her finger squeezed the trigger.

Time slowed down. Zed shouted a warning—maybe a word, maybe just a sound—and launched himself forward, fast. Faster than Preston. Faster than he'd ever moved before. Ingesson lifted his arm in slow motion, grabbing his fist in preparation to jam Preston in the gut with his elbow. The stunner fired?—

The heel of Zed's palm caught Preston in the forehead. The momentum and power behind the strike snapped her head back. Her skull caved under his hand. Eyes rolling back, she toppled away from Ingesson. And didn't move.

Zed waited, watching, looking for some sign that Preston wasn't dead, before taking his eyes off her and seeking out Ingesson—Flick. The Zone wavered and fled, leaving him feeling every one of his aches—including the pounding in his head. But the discomfort couldn't hide a smile when he saw Flick standing at one side of the tunnel with a scorched ear and a blackened swath of hair.

"That's a familiar look." During their first fight with a criminal cartel a year ago, Flick had had a close encounter with a stunner and left it with a few less strands of hair.

Flick lifted his fingers to investigate the damage. "Yeah, well?—"

A shout at the mouth of the tunnel jerked his attention to Nessa and Todd. A third figure loomed behind them?—

Time skipped. One minute, Zed was taking a step toward Ness, the next, he was flat on his back on the hard rock floor. Shouting surrounded him, voices all blending together. What the fuck was on a loop in his brain.

Flick knelt over Zed, his hands pressing against…his chest? The right side, so not his heart. Good. Zed tried to look, but Flick shook his head. "Stay still."

"What—" Oh, breathing was not easy. How had he not noticed that before?

Nessa skidded to a halt beside them, her wallet out. Consciousness started to get very nebulous, particularly when she lifted Flick's hands to see under them. Zed fought to keep his eyes open.

Flick's jaw flexed. "Is the asshole dead?"

"Todd shot him," Ness said, her voice tight. She must have seen the question in Zed's eyes, because she continued. "One of the guards we'd knocked unconscious earlier. We thought he was out for the count…"

"'S okay," Zed managed.

"Holy shit," Elias breathed as he approached. "Zed?"

"Shot," Flick said, the one-syllable word bitten off.

"Looks worse than it is," Nessa said, glancing up. "Trust me."

Zed tapped a finger against Flick's leg to get his attention. "Gotta finish."

Flick shook his head. "Not leaving you."

"Time's running out."

"You can tell the Guardians that the soldiers are dead. Preston's dead. We can blow this place anytime now."

"Can't…can't concentrate." Not enough to try to contact the Guardians with any sort of coherence.

"The shot missed his lung," Nessa reported. "But he's losing a lot of blood. I need to get him stabilized."

Flick made a strangled, frustrated noise. "Zed, just drag your brain cells together and call off the Guardians! Goddamn it, there's a perfectly functional medical wing here."

"How much time to sunrise?" Elias asked Nessa.

Zed couldn't see her, but he could imagine her expression. When it came to her patients, Ness didn't like risk. "Not long enough. And if there are complications…"

He didn't want his eyes to close, but they did anyway. "Finish."

"Qek can do it." Flick's voice sounded choked.

"The arming sequence is keyed to your bracelet." Qek clicked agitatedly.

"Fuck. Fuck ."

Elias started issuing orders. "Todd, check the other guard is still secure and help Dayne get Andy out into the crater. Qek, check out the shuttle they were loading and see if it's been locked down or not. Fix and I will head back and set the last charge."

Flick whimpered.

"Ness?" Elias prompted.

"I'll do what I can to get him stable, then we'll move him," Nessa said in her best trust me, I'm a doctor voice.

Zed liked that voice. It wasn't as good as Flick's, but he trusted it. Trusted her. She'd been the one to offer him sanctuary of a sort a year ago, when he'd first come aboard the Chaos —she'd always taken care of him, even when she didn't know what was wrong.

She'd do the same now.

With that thought, Zed let consciousness slip away.

The smell of burnt hair preceded Felix down the tunnel. "We should just let the Guardians level this place." His shortened breath chopped off each word.

"I've only been here for six hours and I never want to come back," Elias replied.

"You haven't even experienced the joys of high noon." Could you call it noon when there were two suns and they intersected somewhere before the middle of the day? Felix glanced over his shoulder. "We should have helped them get Zed to the shuttle."

"They'll be fine. Todd and Dayne seem like good sorts. They'll help. Qek will have wheels up by the time we get back and Nessa will have Zed all settled in."

"Don't bullshit me, Elias. I'm the fucking overlord of the bullshit kingdom. Neither of those shuttles will have much in the way of medical facilities." Felix stopped moving forward, but his legs twitched spastically so he felt as if he was jogging in place. "Fuck, fuck, fuck?—"

Elias clamped a hand around Felix's shoulder. "Fix! Take a deep breath. Do your counting thing."

"He wants to get married, Eli. I can't marry him if he's dead!"

"If we don't finish this, no one is marrying anyone."

"What if I blow this mountain and it falls on the settlement?"

"Now you're just stalling. Look, I watched you go over these calculations. You're the best bet this colony has of surviving. You said so yourself. Now let's get moving before time runs out."

He'd named himself the colony's best chance and everyone had listened? Christ, had Todd been putting some weird mushrooms in the coffee or something?

The sober reality of being the best and only chance of erasing all traces of Project Dreamweaver or Dreamcatcher or whatever the fuck Preston wanted to call it caught up with him on the next breath. If he and Zed were going to have any kind of future, he had to move. Now.

Felix continued running through the tunnels, using the holo map over his bracelet to make sure he didn't fall into one of the side branches that would lead him nowhere. When they passed the medical facility, his heart lurched up into his throat, becoming a lump he couldn't swallow down. "Shit." He checked the time stamp on his wallet. "Elias, this charge is going to go off in ten minutes."

"Can't you change it?"

"No! Once set, the timing sequences are locked. I can trigger them early, but that's it."

He'd wanted to keep the programming simple, and locking the sequences except for an early trigger had been another fail-safe. Preston's facility had to be destroyed, no matter what.

"Then we had better get a move on."

Thought fled behind his feet as Felix ran toward the training facility and Preston's office. Left turn, right turn. Pick up the bomb he'd left in the hallway. Left and right again. His chest ached and his head hurt so much he wondered if the charge from Preston's stunner had actually burned more than his hair. Maybe his brains were leaking out over?—

He caught the edge of the doorway into the training room with a sore palm and swung inside. Bodies littered the floor. Ignoring them, Felix swung the pack off his shoulders and set it on the floor. He didn't bother pulling the small generator out, he simply armed it in the bag. With trembling fingers he connected the detonator and synced it to his bracelet. He fumbled with the code twice.

"Triple fucking shit, I should have written a sequence for this." With a curse, Felix started again.

"Deep breaths."

"Stop telling me to breathe! And don't even think about telling me to count." Felix looked up. "You should go. Start back. Ping the others, tell them the medical facility is about to go and they should?—"

"Just set the fucking charge, Fix!"

Stilling his fingers, Felix sucked in a deep breath. Ten . One number—that was all he needed to find a space of calm. It would never work again, that single digit, but with everything hanging on one number, on one second—his life, his future, the lives of his crew and Zed—it was all he needed. He keyed the code and synced the detonator.

"Done. Let's go."

Felix stumbled as he rose to his feet. Elias grabbed him and hauled him upright. Together, they fled back along the tunnels toward the medical lab. Felix peeked at his wallet. They had two minutes until the generator there blew. His encounter with Preston and that bastard shooting Zed had delayed their exit strategy by more than fifteen minutes. He peeked at his wallet again. One minute, thirty seconds. He really should have taken the time to write an adjustable sequence. One minute. Fuck.

"We gotta get past the recovery rooms before the generator blows." Could they make it?

"Roger that." Elias put on more speed.

They rounded the last corner and pelted past the large window set into the rock. Felix didn't dare check his wallet. He'd stumble, he'd fall. He'd be getting to his feet when the blast rocked through the rooms and into the tunnel. He began counting in his head. Twenty seconds. They were up to the first recovery room. Ten seconds. Second recovery room. Nine, eight, seven?—

A roar punched out of the operating theater and into the hall. Heat slammed into Felix's back, lifting him from his feet and flinging him against the wall. A high-pitched whine took up residence between his ears, and a rain of rock and dust and soot pattered across his face.

Next to him, Elias lay in a crumpled heap. Felix pushed to his knees and hooked his crystalline arm around Elias's torso, locked the limb into a protective curl and pulled. Afraid of what he couldn't hear—the ceiling groaning, the floor cracking—he dragged Elias away from the choking dust and rubble. Around the first corner and along the next tunnel. Up to a door he didn't remember. The holo over his wrist wavered and popped, showing a distorted image of the maze beneath the mountain. An image that was now obsolete. They'd closed the front entrance and taken out the middle. They'd destroyed Preston's facility as directed. Would the destruction be enough to stay the Guardians' hand?

Did the Guardians have hands?

Felix continued pulling Elias along. The light from his holomap bounced off the walls, all but useless, but necessary in the dusty dark. "This is where I need to be your size and you need to be mine," he muttered, the words echoing thickly between his ears. Damn, he couldn't even hear himself. "But if I was your size, I probably wouldn't need to be with someone like Zed. I'd be my own hero, Eli. I'd be one of the good guys, not a runt from the bowels of Pontus Station."

He heaved Elias forward again.

"My voice sounds really weird in my head. I could be saying anything. I could be telling Zed I'd marry him and he'd have the words and I would have no clear record of what I said."

He managed another few dragging steps.

"You're really heavy. Why are you so fucking heavy? Has Ness been making you cookies?"

Ness made the best cookies.

Between thinking about cookies and the Chaos and Zed, Felix came to the conclusion he couldn't drag Elias all the way back to the shuttle landing pad. A tremble through the floor of the tunnel added to his doubts. He unlocked his arm and let go, then leaned over Elias and began slapping his cheeks. "Wake up, Eli." He slapped harder. "Get the fuck up and help me get out from under this mountain before it drops on our heads."

He was just drawing back for a harder slap—a punch, really—when Elias opened his eyes. "What the fuck?" The words mush, his tone very clear.

"Can you walk?"

"Maybe."

"Good, because we're going to be buried alive if you can't." Felix helped Elias stumble to his feet and they fell together in a leaning house of cards. If one of them collapsed, the other would too. "When I say go, step forward and for fuck's sake, do it at the same time as I do or we're just done."

The mountain groaned. The sound of creaking stone and falling gravel crept up behind them.

Felix pushed Elias forward. "Faster."

The ground bucked beneath them and split in two, the widening crack darker than the dusty shadows. Felix fell backward and Elias fell forward. The crack widened, nearly spilling Elias into the waiting chasm.

"Elias!"

Rocks began raining down from the ceiling. Elias crawled up over the lip of the dark crack and held out a hand to Felix. "Jump!"

Felix scooted back to make a run for it—and the ceiling came crashing down.

A rumble vibrated the ground beneath Zed, deep and angry. He blinked, mostly conscious again but definitely not all there. That hadn't been another explosion—no, it was something more insidious.

Ness's face paled. "I think that was a tremor."

"From what?" Zed demanded.

Any response she might have given was drowned out by another rumble—louder, stronger, a hell of a lot more scary.

"We need to get out of these tunnels," Nessa said, tucking something against something on his chest. He couldn't see what she'd done—but he suspected she'd made a bandage out of some material. Maybe someone had sacrificed their shirt to the cause while he was out of it. She peered at the mouth of the tunnel, looking for Todd or Dayne. After another rumble, she shook her head and crouched in front of Zed, hand extended. "I'm going to need you to lever yourself up with me, okay?"

Dust rained from the ceiling. Zed's brain struggled to understand what this all meant. "But Flick…Elias…"

"C'mon, up!" Nessa grabbed his left arm and tugged. Gray edged his vision and he wavered, his knees threatening to buckle. Ness tucked his arm around her shoulders, refusing to let him fall.

"One foot in front of the other," she ordered, directing him toward the tunnel exit.

It took a few steps for Zed's brain—his heart—to catch up. He stopped walking. "Ness, Flick?—"

Running footsteps and coughing sounded behind them. Relief making his heart light, Zed looked over his shoulder just as Elias reached them.

Only Elias.

"Tunnel came down. On—fuck." He bent over, coughing, hands braced on his knees. "On Fix."

No.

Ness guided Zed over to the wall and propped him against it. "Lean there. Don't move."

She jogged to Elias's side, wallet out. Zed watched, detached, as she scanned him. Shock and blood loss kept the entire scenario from feeling real .

Elias wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and swayed. Ness steadied him, then cast a glance at Zed. "I can't carry you both out of here."

Elias coughed again. "We need to go back. It's not far?—"

Another tremor cut off his words. Nessa was already shaking her head before it had stopped rumbling. "We need to get to safety."

"No, Ness, he might still?—"

"And he might not!"

Zed crumpled as though Nessa's words were scissors that cut through the strings holding him up. The rock wall scraped his back through his SFT as his knees gave out, but he barely felt it. Flick might be alive—but he might not. And there was every chance that the mountain would come down on all of them if they stayed.

So, solution—everyone else could get out.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, Zed pushed himself back up. "Go. I'll check."

"Like hell," Ness snapped.

"I can Zone—" Except the altered state of consciousness just wasn't there when he reached for it. Too injured, too scattered.

"What's taking y'all so long?" Todd demanded as he jogged up. "I felt the damn tremors out on the landing area. We need to go."

"Flick's…cave-in," Zed managed.

Elias gestured at Todd. "C'mon, you and me. Ness can take Zed to the shuttle and?—"

The tunnel shook hard. Palm-sized pieces of rock tumbled from the ceiling to crash between Nessa and Elias. Ness shied away with a startled squeal. Elias's deep, choking cough was like a bass counterpoint. Zed closed his eyes and turned his head to avoid the dust cloud, but he couldn't help inhaling some. He coughed—and pain stole his sight and hearing.

When it came back, Todd had him propped up and Ness was shouting at Elias.

"I need to look after the people in front of me! We need to get Zed to the shuttle."

"Then I'll go?—"

"No!" Nessa grabbed Elias's shirt. "Eli, I can't lose you."

Elias cast a look down the tunnel. Todd tugged on Zed's arm. "Think you can start walkin'?"

"I'm not leaving him," Zed rasped.

"Son, chances are?—"

"Not leaving him," Zed repeated, forming each word precisely.

Elias suddenly appeared on Zed's other side and draped Zed's arm over his shoulders. "No, Ness is right."

"Can't just give up."

"I'm not, but it's not safe." Elias's mouth was set into a tight, thin line. "We need to get you out of here."

Zed dug his heels into the floor. "No."

"C'mon, man. We've got to go."

"Eli—"

"He's gone!" Elias looked at Zed, eyes reddened with dust and pain. He adjusted Zed's arm across his shoulders, pulling him closer. "We can't?—"

Zed spun and slammed his palms into Elias's chest. Pure force of will kept him upright as Elias staggered back. "No! Fuck you, he's not dead!"

Rage burst through Zed with the destructiveness of a lava flow. Unstoppable. He screamed at Elias, unsure if he was even trying to form words. He couldn't hear anything beyond the blood pounding through his head, the reverberation of the noise he was making echoing in his skull. He screamed until he felt as if his throat would rupture—and even then, he wasn't sure if he'd stop.

At some point, he realized his screaming wasn't all external. His thoughts were spewing from him, a well of fury and pain, nonsensical but directed. God, he knew exactly who was to blame for this, and they sat above, puppeteers pulling strings without a care for anyone they manipulated.

"He's gone because of you! I lost him because of you!" He might have been shouting out loud or in his head—Zed wasn't sure. He'd lost any capacity to tell and he didn't fucking care.

"Zanderanatolius…"

Pain started to sink into his heart, battling the rage for supremacy. "We're done. No more. No more. He's gone and I'm…I'm…"

"We did not ? —"

Elias grabbed Zed's arm. "We need to go."

"It was not our intention ? —"

Zed jerked his arm out of Elias's grip and closed his eyes to focus on what he had to say to the Guardians—what he needed to say. "No, you were just playing God! Just like when you stepped in to end the war, or when you took me from Ashushk Prime."

"Those actions benefited you, Zanderanatolius."

They had, he wouldn't argue that, but that wasn't the point. "You talk about free will, about believing it's important that we make our own choices, but it's all bullshit."

"It is not."

"You come here, you destroy a ship ? —"

"You do not know ? —"

"You demand that I commit murder in your name." The Guardians were silent as Zed continued. "You don't care about us. Any of us. All you care about is your agenda—whatever the fuck that is."

"Zanderanatolius—"

"And that agenda…it cost me everything. Humans are our hearts," he shouted silently. "You told me that. And you've taken mine."

"Enough."

Zed barely registered the creeping sensation of a Guardian scan before the world disappeared.