Defiant (The Skyward Series Book 4)

The warmth and light spread through the delvers as, understanding what the slugs had done, they turned to help their fellows. Like a virus in a system—no, like an update patch being propagated—light forced back lines of darkness, spreading outward.

The magnitude of it daunted me. But most of all, I was awed by the willingness of the slugs to help. After years of abuse, they had come to the aid of even the delvers. Soothing their pain as they’d learned to do for one another.

A voice fluted in my mind.

“Doomslug!” I said. “Where are you?”

Another fluting. On Evensong, the large platform at the center of the system. Brez, the much smaller station I was on, was a good fifteen-minute flight from it. She’d managed to get free.

“How?” I asked.

Sneaky, she sent back, showing a flashing set of images. The longer I knew her, the easier this was to interpret, and the easier it was to make words from her impressions.

She’d…used her fluting to imitate human voices as they’d taken her? They’d been shocked, and brought her to be studied instead of locked up—so she’d been in a medical bay cage. In a room that inhibited cytonics, where slugs could be held in flimsier cages to be studied, with no worry that they’d teleport away.

In the chaos of the attack, the scientists had been watching screens in the next room, so she’d been able to rock back and forth and make her cage fall off the shelf, breaking the lock. After that, she’d snuck over to hide in a box by the door, and called out for help, imitating one of the scientists. They’d come running in, and she’d snuck out—free of the room’s interference—and had slipped into the ventilation system to get away.

Wow.

Sneaky, she repeated. Have become spy slug!

Spy slug! M-Bot repeated, imitating her fluting voice.

“Come to me,” I said.

Dangerous, she sent back. Hiding now. Spy slug. Very sneaky. Is it safe?

I wasn’t certain. I’d been paying little attention to my body in the somewhere. Why hadn’t they attacked me there? I peeked into the somewhere to find them trying. Chet was protecting me, it seemed. As a delver, he could cut through any inhibitors and was far more powerful than Brade.

I…I was no longer bonded to him. We were separating into two beings again as he helped facilitate the change in the delvers, showing them the path to healing.

As I contemplated this, I heard a screech of pain. One of the slugs who had been helping the delvers suddenly vanished.

Oh, scud.

Brade has realized what’s happening, Chet said. Strangely, his voice was becoming familiar again, turning into that of the man I’d traveled with in the nowhere. That…that felt so right. This was him, the him he’d decided to be.

I knew it was a persona, but what else were personalities? Ways for souls to interact with the world. Miss Nightshade, this is a singularly distressing turn of events.

Brade was exacting revenge the only way she could: on the defenseless. I controlled my building fury over that and contacted the taynix. You need to switch sides, I sent to the taynix. Not alone. Not one of you. Together. It’s time.

More of them started to die, fried by their own housings. They were terrified, but at the moment I didn’t have time to console them. You have to turn off your inhibitor fields and let us help!

A chaotic jumble of images and voices assaulted me. They’d acted together to support the delvers, but now they were frightened individuals—and getting them to focus was difficult. Some listened to me, and agreed it was time to try resisting. Those turned off their inhibition fields. But many more were afraid. Coordinating them would be like trying to get thousands of people in a room to exit safely during a bombardment and run for the lower caverns.

What is happening? A powerful set of voices assaulted me. I spun to find a hundred thousand delvers looking at me with piercing, burning white eyes.

Brade, I explained. The human you made a deal with. She’s realized the slugs were helping you.

What? the delvers said, their voices hitting me like a wave of force. What does this mean?

She’s executing them, Chet said. She’s killing them. Ending their existences in pain and fire.

The delvers took the briefest moment to process this. Then I was assaulted with words that had the power of mountains crashing together.

SHE IS HURTING THE LITTLE DELVERS?