Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

I drifted.

And I searched.

Though my body was still exhausted, my mind quested outward, somehow conscious. This had never happened to me before, but it felt like a natural extension of my powers—my mind existing separate from my body, as happened when I entered the nowhere during a hyperjump.

I once again tried to hyperjump, with no luck. I wasn’t completely “here,” so to speak. So instead I expanded my mind, searching, listening. I felt more confident with this part of my powers. Not only had I been able to hear the stars since my childhood, I’d recently managed to contact Chet using that ability.

I pushed myself. I needed a destination. A location. A link.

There.

I found someone…who was searching for me?

I felt an immediate panic. Was it Brade? Some servant of the delvers? At the same time, I knew that mind. It wasn’t Brade. It was…

I was suddenly inside the cockpit of a Defiant Defense Force starfighter, Poco model. I was awkwardly crammed in the rear storage area behind the pilot’s seat. The Poco darted through outer space, destructor fire flaring nearby.

Jorgen was flying it.

I wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotions that came from seeing him—longing, passion, worry. I reached to touch him, but my hand passed through the chair. I could feel the ship shake around me, hear him curse softly as he took a sharp turn, GravCaps barely compensating.

Was I actually here? Was this real?

His face reflected in the transparent canopy of the ship, lit from the glow of his console. There were a dozen tiny cuts on his face, and I wondered what could have caused that. The last time I’d seen him had been on that first day when I’d left Detritus for Starsight. While that had been only three weeks ago, it felt like an eternity. A part of me had worried I’d never see him again.

Now here he was. Serious as ever, almost too perfect to be real. His face a mask of concentration and sudden panic as he looked up and—

“Gah!” he shouted, jerking his ship to the side. He scrambled to look behind the seat. Though he stared straight at me, he didn’t seem to find anything.

He turned around and hesitantly squinted at the canopy glass. As if trying to make out…

A reflection. When I’d seen the eyes—the delvers—in the somewhere, it had usually happened in a reflection. Could he see me the same way? To test my theory, I waved.

“Spensa?” he said. “Are you… Oh, scud. Are you dead?”

Right. That was probably what this looked like. I tried to speak, but I didn’t have lungs here. So I tried another way, reaching out to him with my cytonic senses.

“No, I’m not dead,” I said, hoping he’d hear. Or sense. Or whatever. “Though I probably should be, all things considered.”

He cocked his head.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“I can…feel the meaning of your words. Where are you? What’s happening?”

“I’m in the nowhere,” I said. “The dimension where we go when we hyperjump. I…kind of fell in. On purpose. In my defense, I was being chased by half an army at the time.”

He grinned, and the lines around his eyes softened. I could literally feel the tension melt out of him. He’d been worried about me. I mean, I’d expected he would be, but feeling it made me choke up a little. I’d spent my life being the person most others tried to avoid.

That had changed. I had a place where I belonged. With him and the rest of my friends in Skyward Flight. How I longed to return to them. How I—

A flash of red destructor fire slammed into his ship’s shield, crackling. His low-shield alarm started throwing a fit on his dash.

“Jorgen!” I shouted. “Fly! You’re in the middle of a firefight, idiot!”

“I’m trying! It’s a little distracting to have your ship suddenly be haunted by the ghost of your not-dead girlfriend!” He steered the ship in a precise evasive pattern.

I melted a little. Girlfriend? Was that how he thought of me? I mean, we’d kissed. Once. But…I didn’t think it had been formalized or anything. I hadn’t even brought him any dead orc carcasses, which I was pretty sure was the way the stories said to show a guy you wanted to go official.

Apparently my feelings radiated, because Jorgen—still steering—continued. “Or…you know…whatever it is you are. To me. And I am, to you.”

“It works,” I said. “I’ll get you an orc later.”

“What?”

“It might look a lot like a rat. Fair warning.”

He grinned, diving away from the destructor fire. Judging by his proximity monitor, he’d lost his tail.

I wished I could touch him. He looked up and met my eyes in the reflection, and I knew he felt the same.

“Nothing can ever be normal for us, huh?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “My life was pretty normal about a year ago. Then something remarkable happened.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t go back for the world. Here, let me get us a little breathing room.”

He called in the flight to go on the defensive and give him time to reignite his shield. He flew his ship out of the main battle and some members of Skyward Flight stuck nearby, offering support and distracting enemies who drew too close.

I finally shook out of my stupor of meltiness. “Jorgen, what’s the sitrep? How long has it been?”

“A few days since you came here, then vanished,” he said.

Good. I’d spent a few days unconscious in a Superiority hospital, then one day in the nowhere. So it seemed that time passed at around the same speed in both the somewhere and the belt. Good to know.

“We’ve heard from your friend Cuna,” Jorgen added.

“Oh, Saints! They are alive? I’d worried.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’re safe, but trapped. We’re trying to figure out how to make the slugs work for hyperdrives.”

“Slugs?”

“You missed that part,” he said, diverting power from his boosters to the shield igniter. “We have a whole flock of them. Um, a herd? A pod? A bunch of slugs. They were in the caves.”

“What, really?” I asked. “How did you find them?”

“I…um…heard them,” he said. “As I’m hearing you.”

“You’re cytonic!” I said, pointing. “Your family feared it was in your bloodline! Ha! That must be why I could find you.”

“I’ve been training with Gran-Gran,” he said. “I’m…not very good at any of it.” He grew solemn. “Spensa, it’s bad. The war.”

“How bad?”

“The entire Superiority is mobilizing. I had no idea how many planets they controlled. And we’re isolated here. We’re trying to get the slugs to work, but we have so much to learn, and…” He again met my eyes in the glass. “And we need you. I need you. What can we do to get you out of there?”

I winced. Not because I didn’t appreciate the sentiment, but… Well, he had to know.

“Jorgen, I came to the nowhere by choice,” I said. “When I jumped through the portal, I realized I could come home, but I decided not to. Because…” Scud, how did I put this? “I have something I need to do here, Jorgen.”

He frowned, looking at me in the reflection.

“I can’t come back yet,” I explained. “Not until I’ve learned what this place can teach me. I’m sorry, but if I did return, I’d be just another fighter. I need to be something more.”

“You think they’ll use the delvers again,” he said, perhaps reading my emotions.

“I know they will,” I said. “Winzik won’t give up because of a single setback. And Jorgen, I need to be able to stop him. To do that, I have to understand what I am—and more importantly, what the delvers are. Does that make sense?”

“You think you can find these answers in the nowhere?”

“Yes. Jorgen, I’m on a quest.”

He grinned. “That might be the single most Spensa-like thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“I’m worried for you,” he said. “But if you’re right…if the delvers are still in play…”

I knew, from our research into the past, that this wasn’t the first time someone had sought to weaponize the delvers. Every attempt I knew of had ended in disaster, but people continued to try. Because if you could control the thing that ate planets, who would dare stand against you?

“I trust you,” Jorgen said, meeting my eyes reflected in the glass. “If you think this is important, then keep going. We will resist the Superiority until you return.”

His confidence in me felt wonderful; I could feel it like a warmth radiating from him.

Jorgen unbuckled himself, then turned around, his knees on the seat. He closed his eyes, and I felt his attention on me. He reached out his hand, and I swore I could feel it cupping my cheek. I reached out to him too, and could almost feel his skin.

“We’ll hold out, Spensa,” he promised. “Until you find what you need. Which you will. I’ve learned never to bet against you.” He smiled, his eyes closed. “After all, I might win the bet, but I’d still end up with a knife in my arm.”

“Quick tip,” I whispered. “Go for the thigh instead. Makes it harder for them to chase you down.” I leaned forward, wanting to be closer to him, even if we could barely feel each other. But I began to fade.

Scud, I suddenly felt exhausted. It had been only a few minutes, but I soon faded completely, and ended up drifting in blackness. Try as I might, I couldn’t find Jorgen again.

My mind began to fuzz. I knew I was heading toward true sleep, and started to relax…

A voice.

I pulled myself back to awareness. I knew that voice. “My, my,” it said.

Winzik.

The words pierced the darkness, reaching toward something else. Beings. Entities.

Delvers.

I could sense them now—as an infinite number of white lights. The voice I’d heard was speaking to them. “No need to be so brutal,” it continued. “So aggressive. I come to you with an offer! A trade. You have something I want, and I have something you want. They are not so different, are they?”

That voice…that wasn’t actually Winzik’s voice. It was Brade’s voice—though of course the word “voice” was an approximation. She must have been relaying Winzik’s words, like an interpreter.

I was overhearing them—listening in, spying, as I’d been trained for so long by Gran-Gran. My phantom sense to hear the stars.

You hurt us, the delvers said to Winzik. You are noise. You are not a person. You are pain.

“I am a noise that can end that pain,” Winzik promised through Brade. “I can round up every cytonic in the galaxy. I can make it so none of them ever bother you again. Never…corrupt you again.”

Oh, scud. They wanted that. I could feel it.

Speak, they said.

“I must be in control of my empire,” Winzik said. “Once I am, I will find and stop every cytonic. I can’t be in control, however, if you destroy my people when I summon you.”

Leave us alone, the delvers said. Stop yelling! Stop it all! Why hasn’t it stopped?

I sorted through the impressions, and kind of understood. To the delvers, all times and places were as one. But by interacting with us, they were forced to confine themselves to our way of existence.

That said, they couldn’t truly see the future. Rather, they existed in all times at once, and so couldn’t separate and distinguish future from past or present.

Yeah, it was tough to explain. Regardless, I felt their pain. That, it seemed, was universal across dimensions.

“My, my,” Winzik said. “No need to shout. I can make the pain stop. But if I lose this war… Well, would you like a repeat of what happened to the delver who was corrupted? The noise who did that is among the noises I fight against.”

It seemed he knew how I’d saved Starsight. I wanted to scream at the delvers, explain that I’d helped one of their number, not corrupted them. But suddenly I understood what they’d meant earlier, when chasing me. When they’d said “What did you do to the Us?” they’d been referring to the one I’d separated out.

We consider this trade, the delvers said to Winzik.

“Yes, take your time,” Winzik said. “As much as you need.”

We have no need of time. We hate it.

Yes, they did. But I could feel something more from them. Beyond their hatred of time and individuality, there was a hatred of something else. Something that was coming. Something they…feared? I pushed a little harder, to get more information.

They turned toward me. Scud.

I panicked and darted away, retreating toward my body. Thinking about the implications of what I’d heard would have to wait, for my mental fatigue seized control.

I found true sleep at last.