Chapter 16
Sixteen
During the course of her journey, Gus came across several more Tsavitee in the process of thawing. Luckily, after the first, she arrived in time to restart the hibernation protocol, saving her the trouble of having to kill each one.
No longer having the luxury of time, she picked up the pace.
Did this idiot really think a few piddly Tsavitee, just out of hibernation, were enough to take out someone of Kira’s caliber? To say nothing of the oshota her sister was bound to have at her back.
That was the thing about Gus’s youngest sister that most enemies didn’t realize.
Kira collected talented individuals the way other’s hoarded wealth.
People who were every bit as dangerous as her sister.
With their own stories to tell. Possessing the same kind of determination and ruthless stubbornness.
Gus may have had no way of knowing who’d tagged along with Kira, but whoever they were, they would be able to hold their own. She doubted even a Tsavitee war drone would do much more than irritate Kira and her companions.
Gus, on the other hand—she was one poorly-timed arrival away from getting to experience the pleasures of being ripped apart and feasted on while she was still alive.
A confused frown took over Gus’s face as she sensed a sudden shift in the seeds’ location. They’d changed direction again.
Down, this time.
Cursing internally, Gus jogged forward, arriving at the next chamber just in time to see the opening in the wall across from the entrance resealing, leaving behind a seamless surface.
“A hidden entrance.” Gus said, slowly approaching. “How unexpectedly Titan of them.”
She was beginning to feel right at home.
If, you know, a psychopathic monster wasn’t slumbering just a few feet away, Gus thought, glancing at the Tsavitee locked in stasis, its hibernation protocol untouched.
The Tuann must have not wanted to risk Kira’s group backtracking and finding his secret stairs by mistake.
Gus went back to her study of the wall. There had to be some kind of mechanism. One easy enough for an idiot like the one she was tailing to find.
Inspecting the surface closely, Gus found it wasn’t as smooth as it appeared from a distance. There were ripples radiating from a single point of origin that formed a rather pretty—if needlessly complex—design. Who wanted to bet that was it?
Gus reached for it but stopped short. Let’s think this through.
Haste makes waste as the saying went. There was a risk that if she didn’t play this right, she could get swept into the madness that followed Kira around like an over eager puppy.
Instead of gardening, she’d have to fend off assassins and arrogant Tuann with a bone to pick.
No more spade and pruning shears. She’d have to trade them in for a sword and rifle.
Kira’s world was dangerous. Anyone who stood too close had to be okay with the potential fallout.
Gus wasn’t. She’d never been. Her future lay in the direction of peace and quiet. Not warzones and madness.
For this to work, Kira had to do the heavy lifting. Otherwise, Gus risked being brought to the attention of the very unsavory characters she’d spent decades avoiding.
No, thank you.
This entrance hadn’t been easy to find. Gus wasn’t sure that without someone to follow she could have located it as easily. She couldn’t trust Kira and her companions to find their way here. Not in as timely a fashion as she needed.
It was possible Kira would find another entrance on this level. Or, much more likely, that she’d create her own. Likely in the loudest, most likely to draw attention, way possible.
Unless Gus changed that.
“I should give her some help, shouldn’t I?”
It was the sisterly thing to do.
Gus had never been a real sister, but that sounded about right.
“A clue then.”
A small one. Nothing too big that it would make Kira ask questions as to who had intervened. The last thing Gus wanted was for her sister to come looking for her later. Just a little something to draw attention exactly where Gus needed it to go.
Her gaze landed on the Tsavitee hibernating in the corner.
Slowly, she smirked. “I think I have an idea.”
Gus hurried down the stairs, moving as fast as she dared in the dimly lit space. She wanted to put as much distance as she could between herself and the impending chaos above.
Hopefully, Kira got her message. There was not much more she could do.
Gus slowed when she reached the next level, sensing her seeds now moving perpendicular to her current position rather than continuing on a downward trajectory.
It would have been nice, but objects imbued with her ki didn’t come with handy directions like “get off the stairs here” or “turn right there”. All she had to go off was a faint tug in her chest, leading her in a general direction.
Right now, that tug was saying this was her stop.
She made sure no one was standing guard on the other side before stepping out of the stairwell and letting the wall reform behind her.
Gus crept forward, alert for possible attack.
She didn’t know what these humans and Tuann had up their sleeves.
If they were smart, they would have seeded all the levels with traps, but she doubted this group possessed that kind of intelligence.
Otherwise, they never would have purposely drawn Kira’s attention.
The new deck she found herself on looked exactly like the last one.
Same hexagonal interlinked cells. Each one almost identical to the last. The only variation existed in size.
Every once in a while, Gus traveled through cells meant for something more.
The details of which she tried not to think too hard about.
A quarter hour into her trek, Gus stopped as the seeds reversed course and started moving faster. Much faster than earlier.
Gus fled back the way she’d come in search of a place to hide.
Arriving in a large hexagonal cell that had exits branching off it in multiple directions, she looped to her right before slowing to listen.
If she timed it right, she could slip up behind the Tuann and his companion once they passed to resume her stalking.
Unfortunately, fate intervened and the Tuann turned down the same branch Gus had sought shelter in.
Once again, Gus fled like a fox who’d been flushed out by a hunting hound. She blundered forward, doing her best to disguise the sound of her running footsteps.
No shouts of discovery came from behind her, so there was that.
Gus ran blindly, instinct guiding her until she entered a cell identical to all the ones that had come before. Except this one had a man, naked from the waist up, dangling by his wrists from the ceiling.
“Caius,” Gus whispered, taking in the bruised and battered body of Roake’s commander with a sense of horror. “What did they do to you?”
Stupid question. They’d tortured him.
She’d expected as much given the state he’d come to her in, but seeing it in person was different. Honestly, it was a little surprising he’d been left alive rather than just weakened through injury and pain. He must still serve some purpose for their plans.
Crossing the floor quickly, Gus reached up to unhook his wrists.
For her sake, it would be better to leave him hanging and flee before the Tuann arrived, but she already knew she wasn’t going to do that.
Gus was no saint, but she didn’t have it in her to leave him to die.
That’s exactly what his fate would be if he was still here when the Tuann behind her arrived.
Someone planned to “deal” with Caius. In Gus’s experience, that usually only meant one thing.
Death.
Gus stretched, her fingers exploring the edge of the metal cuffs as she checked on Caius’s state. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she found his eyes open and aimed squarely in her direction.
“Stop staring at me like you’re planning to kill me,” Gus instructed, projecting a bravado she didn’t feel.
Caius was like most injured animals. Dangerous to everyone around him, including himself. The pure hostility and violence radiating from him made alarm skitter up and down Gus’s spine. The sense that she was one second away from possible death making her even grumpier than usual.
Caius blinked, the bulk of his rage disappearing. “You came. I didn’t think you would.”
Hoping he wouldn’t try to attack her, Gus reached for his cuffs again. “I’m surprised too.”
A wry chuckle left Caius as he closed his eyes and sagged back into his cuffs.
“Don’t fall asleep. We don’t have a lot of time before they arrive,” Gus warned.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A couple of Tuann. I heard them talking.”
The flash of bloodthirst that came from Caius made Gus pause. “You’re not going to try to kill me, are you?”
Caius’s smirk still contained a charisma that Gus would have thought him too tired to bother with. “You’re safe from me, little false wanderer.”
“Oh, lovely. Another nickname.”
Caius mumbled something in Tuann that Gus didn’t catch, preoccupied as she was with managing his cuffs. They were proving much more difficult to remove than she’d expected.
The grains of time were quickly trickling through the hourglass.
Just when Gus thought she was on the cusp of success, seconds from opening the cuffs, Caius jerked his wrists away from her.
“What are you doing? Stop that,” Gus demanded.
“No.”
Taken aback, Gus scowled. “What do you mean no?”
“Traitor.” Caius’s words slurred slightly from the effort of speaking as his energy began to flag. “Have to know.”
Gus stared at the idiot in front of her. Did he not realize the condition he was in?
He was barely conscious and hanging on by a thread. Any information he hoped to glean would quickly follow him to the grave.
Because that was where he was heading if he stayed here. He lacked the strength to fight off a dust mite, let alone the oshota she expected to round the corner any second now.
Determined, Gus reached for his cuffs a second time. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”