Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

Part 3

We appeared in a round room with screens all along a back wall. I vaguely recognized it; I’d seen Brade and Winzik in here once while spying on them from the nowhere. Then, it had been filled with officials and generals listening to Winzik; now it was empty save for the varvax himself.

Tall in his suit made of sandstone—a blocky and modern version of ancient knight’s armor—the real Winzik was the crablike creature floating in the liquid behind the helmet’s glass faceplate. The varvax had learned to craft a stronger shell material early in their technological development, which eventually was developed into this type of suit. Just as making steel had come early during human development.

Brade dropped me onto the floor in front of Winzik like a prized stag slain during the hunt. I flopped onto my back, drooling as she waved proudly toward me, an intolerable grin on her face.

“Done!” she said. “I told you I could manage it.”

“My, my,” Winzik said, waving his armored arms as he knelt down on one stone knee beside me. Varvax spoke with their hands as much as with their voices, which were projected from the front of their suits. “So careless with our guest, Brade. So brutal.”

“Yeah,” Brade said, “wait until she rips your face off with a mindblade.”

“I have ten different inhibitors in here,” Winzik said, gesturing in a way that felt indifferent. “I still think we should have waited to see if she’d come to you willingly to duel.”

“She wasn’t going to,” Brade said. “I could feel it. Better to strike when I sensed she was alone.”

I focused on her, and felt the unnatural sense of disconnect rising from me again. The trembling distortion. Loss and pain. This time I stoked those emotions, remembering M-Bot’s body torn apart, and the moment of panic I’d felt when thinking he was dead.

The room shook like a meteor had hit nearby. Screws began to rain down like chips of stone from a crumbling cavern ceiling. Hundreds of them, stolen from somewhere by my powers to tumble down through the room and rattle and click against the metal surfaces.

Winzik leaped to his feet and shied backward, waving sandstone hands anxiously. Whatever it was I’d become, I could rip through their inhibitor fields, just like I’d ripped a hole in ours. If Brade could sneak into Detritus to get me, then I could get right back out. As the air continued to undulate and warp around me, I reached out with my mind. My infirm body, still stunned, didn’t need to be—

Brade knelt beside me and rammed something into my neck. A syringe? I tried to snap at her fingers with my mouth, but only succeeded in blowing a few bubbles in my drool. She watched me, genuine worry on her face, until the warping subsided.

No! I thought, trying to focus on my pain, on the loss, the anguish. It was still there, but now it didn’t do anything. The room settled, a last spurt of bolts falling from the air before all grew still.

Chet? I thought at the delver in my soul.

No response.

Chet! M-Bot? Anyone?

Somehow, whatever they’d drugged me with had cut me off from them, and the nowhere, completely. It was as if I wasn’t even cytonic.

Brade exhaled in relief, then a confident smile reappeared on her lips and she became the lounging, cocky fighter she always seemed to be around Winzik. A completely different persona from the stoic, troubled loner she’d shown me and my flight at Starsight.

I was certain she’d been genuinely worried for a moment. She hadn’t known if that drug she’d given me would work or not. Unfortunately, it had. My cytonic senses were completely closed off. It didn’t feel the way an inhibitor did. That felt like pushing against a wall with my mind. Now it felt like there was nothing to push against. And I couldn’t generate any kind of force to try.

What had they done? What was that stuff they’d injected into me? It wouldn’t be permanent, would it?

“I warned you she would still be dangerous,” Brade said, stepping back as Winzik approached. “Kapling, store that slug with the others. The rest of you, outside.”

The soldiers who had arrived with her backed away, one with Doomslug still in his arms. I had a single bit of solace; they didn’t seem to know that Doomslug was my friend, not just a tool. Her panicked fluting broke my heart, but there was nothing I could do. I could barely twitch my head.

“My, my,” Winzik said, his voice low, gestures subdued. “It does work on humans. Good, good.”

I felt something deeper, more potent than my pain. Anger. Fury at this creature, boiling inside of me. That little monster behind the faceplate, always so prim and calculating. He was the one who had kept my people imprisoned on Detritus. He was responsible for my father’s death. The jail warden who had tried to exterminate my planet to prove he was tough. When his plot to use delvers as a weapon had failed, he’d blamed the disaster on us, and had used that fear of Detritus—of humans—to execute his coup.

Even now, he ruled because he had us as a boogeyman. So much death, so much destruction, so many lies. All so this thing could rise through the ranks. I’d almost have respected him if he were a warrior. But the sad, humiliating truth was that our world hadn’t been dominated for years by some ruthless warlord, but by a bureaucrat who knew how to manipulate public opinion.

That revelation about the workings of the universe, more than anything else, enraged me. I snarled softly, and Winzik waved his hands and looked to Brade.

“You didn’t stun her enough, Brade,” he said. “She should have been unconscious before you brought her here.”

“We needed her conscious to get back, Winzik,” Brade said. “And you needed to see what she’s capable of doing. There’s something’s very strange about her. That’s why the delvers are frightened of her. Not just because she’s a powerful cytonic. She’s moved beyond that somehow. She has powers like a delver…”

“Take her away!” Winzik said.

“I recommend against that,” Brade said. “We should talk to her. She’ll listen to me.”

“She’s too dangerous,” Winzik said. “My, my! I stood in the same room with her when she hid among us. She was unbound, undrugged. So discomforting to think about!”

“At least let me show the delvers we have her,” Brade said. “They’ll want to know.”

Scud. A piece of all this clicked into place. Their pact with the delvers required them to deal with me specifically. That was why Brade had tried to goad me into dueling her, why they’d grabbed me. They needed me as a bargaining chip.

My fears were validated as Brade turned to the side and her eyes unfocused. I felt a distant buzzing—she was reaching into the nowhere. If I hadn’t been drugged, I’d have felt this more powerfully. As it was, I hoped the buzzing meant that my abilities would eventually return—that they were merely deadened for the time being.

The air began warping, which made Winzik grow more agitated—though perhaps it was excitement. Brade reached down and hauled me up by the front of my jumpsuit. Being that close to her let me see better, sense better. Winzik’s round conference room faded somewhat, almost becoming incorporeal, and white spots opened all around me. The eyes. The delvers.

See, Brade said cytonically, projecting to them vigorously enough that I could hear it. Here is your proof.

“We have her,” Winzik said, and Brade relayed his words to the delvers. “As promised. You needn’t fear! My, my. It was always a given that we would deliver on our contract with you.”

I felt the delvers’ reactions as impressions. Fear. Anger. A latent pain that was thinly covered over—like a coat of paint trying to hide the old squadron insignia on the side of a starship. That was for me.

Unfortunately, they sent something else to Winzik. Pleasure. Agreement.

“We have made good on our side of the deal,” Winzik said. “Are you willing to move forward with yours?”

Maybe. Probably. I could feel their response.

“Maybe? Probably?” Winzik said. He could obviously feel it too. I got the sense that the reason I felt any of this was because anyone would have been able to. My cytonics deadened, I was no more sensitive than an ordinary person.

There are others like her, maybe? They could hurt us?

“There are none,” Winzik promised.

They withdrew. But not before indicating that they would consider. That they were willing. A contradiction that was hard to sort out, as their minds didn’t quite work the way a human would anticipate. They hated the somewhere. Even coming here to destroy us was painful, dangerous, something they only did when forced to. That was why attacks were so rare.

Still, as they vanished, I was left with an impression. As long as Winzik held me, he had power over them. They would eventually do as he wanted. Their hatred of the somewhere would be overcome by their fear of me, of what I’d become.

Brade stopped reaching into the nowhere, and my anger and dread turned to nausea. If my friends launched any attacks, they would be in danger of facing delvers. Yet here I was, not only unable to warn them, but unable to even roll over.

“Take her away,” Winzik said, calling to the guards outside of the room.

“But—” Brade said.

“No,” he said. “No talking to her. She’s too dangerous. She will only trick us as she did before. She has to be isolated, Brade. My, my. You must control your aggression. Please remember we will rule not by force but through cunning.”

Brade fell silent, dropping me painfully to the ground and folding her arms. A moment later, the guards dragged me away.

I was starting to get control of my body again—my fingers twitching—when they tossed me into a bleak cell. Then slammed the door shut with a discouraging thump.