CHAPTER 15 KORI #2
My armor peels away like scales. Clean air hitting the flesh of my face comes as a welcome relief.
The shower coughs ugly greenish-brown water when I first activate it, clearly not having had a dayfolk guest in generations.
The nearby toilet, too, has some old, unaddressed mold and unusual, deep-set discoloration from prolonged disuse.
Thankfully, after a moment, the shower water runs beautifully clear, which is when I step in.
And, oh, stars above, it feels incredible.
I turn the water up as hot as the mechanism allows.
I want to boil like the sea meat in that useless memory.
I want to burn away every trauma I’ve experienced since Charon’s crash.
Every splash sears my skin, reminds me I’m still alive.
The changing area contains a generic set of vaguely humanoid-proportioned clothing.
Despite having directly copied some other things, it seems the nightfolk never obtained dayfolk-made clothes for potential dayfolk visitors.
The legs and arms are still too long for any but the tallest, most muscular members of our species, so Aspect helps me tear the excess length away, resulting in awkward, jagged edges of frayed fabric.
Even so, the material is smooth, silken, and settles like cold water over my aching skin.
The comfort lulls me toward a tempting sleep, but I refuse to sit down on the bed and let it take me.
Adria thinks she’s captured a conditioned prisoner, born and raised in strict limits, accustomed to layers of armor and walls.
But I’ve only ever taken boundaries as a challenge, for better or for worse.
I could sit here and wait for the ransom payment, hoping the softer heart behind Adria’s glacial gaze prevails, but I may never have a better chance to offer Aspect a glimpse of another perspective entirely.
Just like in the Morpheus Market, I still don’t know exactly what I’m looking for. But if it’s something to be found amidst the nightfolk, this may be my only chance to obtain it.
Of course, while returning home with a sentient Aspect would be a total victory for me, it would set me up to appear as the ultimate criminal to my own people.
The list of offenses would be something to behold: Violating the trade rules of the Morpheus Market, communicating with nightfolk, trespassing into the Shadowlands, illegally experimenting with memory application into a fully synthetic being …
and how much worse if they could see Aspect was fully thinking, fully their own person now as a result of those experiments?
I would be a monster to the Daylands, with my own makeshift metal monster in tow.
Even my mother wouldn’t be able to protect me from whatever punishment Daylands society deemed necessary, not to mention the Morpheus Market’s Coalition.
So my purpose now is twofold. One: Find something nightfolk that’s capable of raising Aspect to sentience. Two: Find something nightfolk that holds value to the Daylands if I bring it home.
Right now, in the eyes of any other dayfolk, I’m a stubborn child who played with darkness just to prove I could.
But there remains a chance to become a bold explorer who delved fearlessly into the depths, emerging with buried nightfolk secrets that could maintain dayfolk security on Pagomènos for generations to come.
And Aspect has more tricks programmed into those tiny arms than Adria could even begin to guess at. Code breakers. Overrides.
Even for chambers designed to detect and punish unauthorized organics.
I refuse to separate from Aspect again, and Adria’s installed tracker will certainly notify her that we’ve wandered beyond our assigned space.
But she is a queen, after all. Surely she has other pressing matters to attend to.
By the time she notices our location, I could have my hands on exactly what I need to awaken Aspect.
What’s the worst Adria could do in retaliation then?
Kill me? If I’d stayed home, locked underground, ever obedient to my mother and my doctor and my government and the supposed limitations of science, too afraid to even try
instilling sentience in my closest friend, it would’ve been like waking death regardless.
I would rather die trying to awaken Aspect than live wondering if I missed my best chance. And I’m willing to bet that with a ransom on the table, Adria wouldn’t dare cut my life short or even risk permanent harm.
Lost in thought, I idly tap my fingers on the air lock control panel.
Aspect has been pacing the length of the chamber. They pause, angling their head like a curious child. “What is Kori—thinking?”
A smile curls across my lips. “Another terrible idea, probably.”
“Aspect—loves—terrible ideas.”
“And that,” I say, reluctantly retrieving my radiation suit again, “is why I love you.”
The nightfolk fortress twists and loops back in on itself like the bottomless gullet of an impossibly long sun serpent.
I don’t know with certainty how long Aspect’s hack will delay Adria from being notified that we broke containment.
I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re even looking for.
This entire endeavor may just be compounding the increasingly severe stack of mistakes that brought us here.
But I refuse to trade the cage of my life in the Daylands for a new one here in the darkness.
The halls are windowless, so they would be like an inkwell, all texture blotted out, but for periodic braziers of the same blue flame Adria conjured outside my cell.
They illuminate the rugged stone walls and floors, as well as staggered banners of blues and purples that I can’t help but call beautiful.
Presumably the torches should have attendants, and the hallways guards, but I don’t see any.
Almost as soon as I have the thought, frantic footsteps thunder from somewhere close.
My heart beating out of my chest, I seize Aspect and slam both of us flat against the wall, then yank us behind the nearest banner of deep indigo. It isn’t long before I can see nightfolk feet, their oblivious conversations also audible as they pass.
“Is the queen so useless that she can’t predict a single rebel attack?” says one nightfolk. “We could’ve intercepted them before they reached the gate, and this isn’t the first time. It’s obscene.”
The clicks of freezeshot weapons at the ready. The rush of wings opening, readying.
“A hell of a thing,” says a second nightfolk, “to take a kingdom by force, then cower upon being asked to crush further opposition.”
“It is her uncle, to be fair,” says a third voice.
“Spare me, Isek. Since when has family meant anything to the queen?”
A fourth voice interjects, booming, “Enough. There will be a time to critique the queen, but that time is not with rebel rifles on our doorstep.”
The first voice swears, with venom. “Worse than Russ. Must you always be the queen’s prized pet, Thaane? Is she tugging on your leash?”
A cacophony of movement. The slam of a body into, thank the stars above, the opposite wall and not us. The whole hall rattles, pebbles and gravel scattering from the ceiling. I swallow an involuntary cough.
The fourth voice—Thaane?—is terribly steady, but packed with power. A loaded gun, trigger tensed. A weapon is no less lethal for having a silencer; I fully believe that if the speaker cut loose, he would tear everything in his path apart in a rampage with his bare hands, with his teeth.
“Know full well, soldier,” says Thaane, “that if they find your body on the battlefield, slit from throat to thighs, everyone will report it was one of the rebels who did it.”
The third voice—Isek?—is tremulous. “Let him go, Thaane. It isn’t worth it.”
The crash of a body to the floor. Coughing, gasping.
“Azarii’s troops won’t make it inside, not with us at the ready,” Thaane continues, apathetic. “But should one slip through, let’s not make it easy for them to find their way about. You, soldier … do it.”
A clap of clawed hands. It feels like I’ve been flipped upside down, and then I’m nearly choking, trying not to gasp aloud, the sensation like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the hall.
Aspect reaches to steady me, and I push back hard, not wanting their shifting gait to make their peg leg squeak and alert the nearby soldiers.
Almost as soon as it began, it’s over. In a single flash, every single blue-flame brazier on the wall goes out.
We wait for the footsteps and voices to recede, then wait another long moment to be absolutely certain, before emerging from behind the banner.
The darkness is perfect and total now. I creep along the rugged stone hall with one open gloved hand on the wall, counting every perceptible turn in my head so I can retrace my steps before Adria finds my new chamber empty.
So help me, I wish I knew where I was trying to go.
I wish I knew what I was looking for. I wish I didn’t feel doubt wriggling in my gut that this was at all a good idea.
But, at the very least, Adria is certain to be distracted from us right now.
And the hall’s standard patrols have been called to the gate.
Clearly, the rebellion I glimpsed in Alpha’s memory is bloodthirsty and out in full force.
Beyond the fortress’s walls, freezeshot and bullets alike distantly ring out, split by battle cries on both sides.
“For the queen!”
“Down with the usurper!”
Aspect’s forehead contains a headlight, but since mechs were never intended for use beyond the Daylands, the darkest area they’d encounter would be a starship’s repair hatch—nothing compared to the boundless dark of the Shadowlands.
The illumination doesn’t carry far. Just a shivering, pale cone in our immediate vicinity.
Our combined stealth is also limited by Aspect’s new leg, which A) does not have a knee joint like Leg One, and B) announces every step of Leg Two with an enthusiastic squeak.