Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
Turned out, he wasn’t a smart man after all.
The silent alert continued to pulse down the corridor. Defenders ran in both directions, heading to battle stations. Sawyer had taken a quick trip to the regeneration baths and found a spare on-duty uniform, but no weapon. Helmet engaged, he kept urgency in his steps like everyone else.
When a lone defender headed down the corridor toward him, Sawyer’s mind calculated the risks, the outcomes, in the space of a few seconds.
The odds of success weren’t in his favor with the security on this ship as it was, even with the distraction of the Calypson, but a growing part of him didn’t care.
He would deal with the scribe feeds later.
The moment the defender passed his peripheral vision, he grabbed hold of their nape and slammed them face first into the bulkhead.
There was a moment of confusion, of struggle, before Sawyer threw them to the deck. One more slam, and the person stopped moving.
Sawyer looked up and down the corridor. When it remained empty, he disengaged the defender’s helmet.
A pale man with blond hair lay prone beneath him, his jaw slack and eyes closed.
Sawyer took off the man’s PALM and swapped it with his own.
He needed to know what was going on—direct orders from the bridge.
Sawyer slid the man’s AL-22 free of its thigh holster and popped open the side panel. With a quick adjustment, he coded it to his own biometrics.
Standing, Sawyer initiated his helmet’s interface.
Information streamed in front of his eyes and across his PALM.
A target infiltrated the ship, their location unknown.
Conflicting reports rose side by side, along with mentions of where the Calypson traveled, and that he had help.
The feed flickered, went out, then reappeared with new information.
In short, everything was fucked, and the Calypson had already taken out the scribes across the ship. Lovely.
Sawyer left the unconscious defender where he lay and jogged to the nearest lift. It opened immediately, and he stepped inside. Red lights pulsed around him as the lift rose upward and seconds ticked away.
Getting off the ship should be his number one priority, but Sawyer’s mind raced with possibilities, circling back to the same thing over again: the only reason the Calypson would board the Corvus was to retrieve the good doctor.
And he didn’t know why he cared when he’d completed his mission.
He halted the lift with a swipe of his PALM. Another swipe, and he accessed the lift’s on-board terminal to hack into the ship’s schematics.
It took him a minute, but he found a void where crew quarters and ship’s systems should be, listed as unnamed rooms of undetermined sizes. Labs, he guessed.
The secrets the CORE tried to hide always screamed the loudest to be found.
The lift resumed for a few heartbeats, then the door opened. Sawyer stepped out onto deck seven and paused. A different feel existed on this level, the air expectant. The height and width of the doors were more like a hospital than a Guardian.
Sawyer skulked forward, down the hallway toward the lab with the strongest shielding. Red lights pulsed through the corridor, the deck itself eerily free of defenders. He passed one closed door, then another.
He paused at a corner, turned his head to the right, then froze.
A group of defenders blocked his path. Sawyer’s steady breaths jammed in his throat.
“Fuck me,” he breathed.
On any other day, he would have thought they were there to arrest him because he’d knocked out a defender, stolen weapons, and hacked the ship’s systems. But these defenders weren’t quite right.
They held too still, their weapons loose at their sides instead of angled defensively in front of them. And their helmets were no longer engaged.
He aimed his weapon and shouted, “Stand down.” They blocked exactly where he wanted to go.
The defenders didn’t acknowledge the order. Didn’t move. Didn’t twitch. Sawyer’s finger flexed on the trigger control.
A hand slapped down on his shoulder. He spun around. His gun flew from his fingers, knocked away with a force that stole his breath. The Calypson fucker stood there wearing a black flight-suit, his eyes glinting. More defenders gathered behind him, their helmets disengaged.
Sawyer reacted instinctively. The fucker deflected his first punch, and the second and third, then his kick. Sawyer stepped back, begrudgingly releasing a portion of ground.
His breaths shortened, and the power behind his strikes became frantic. The fucker was wearing his clothes, using his weapons, piloting his ship. Sawyer’s rage fueled him, but every attack was met with equal measure. He couldn’t get the upper hand and ceded another section of ground.
A sound whispered behind him, and he turned. The group he’d first encountered advanced.
He was about to be overwhelmed without a way to stop it. Desperate, he charged forward, knocking the fucker back. The others swallowed him in their mass.
The knife came out of nowhere.
He expected a jab to his torso and was caught off guard when it slid up his arm, slicing the sleeve of his stolen uniform. A warm hand met his skin a second later.
And that was all it took.
Sawyer’s limbs froze as something unseen strangled him. It was a splash of cold, then hot, almost like a regeneration bath, but so much more intense. He shouted, then dropped to his knees. Fire scorched his skin, burned over his arms and shoulders and head.
Euphoria followed.
It swept through him on a fundamental level, this pleasure-pain that defied science, logic, morals. His identity blurred, and a collective will took its place.
No. Part of him rebelled against this change even as his mind boiled with new truths, facts, faces.
He understood so much now.
Yes. He was not sure if it was his thought or another’s.
He heard questions and felt desires. An inexplicable calm, an emotionless resolve, replaced passion, loyalty, and anger.
We need to find her.
His curiosity combined with a singular purpose, a need so great that he wouldn’t have fought it even if he could.
They were so close.
His feet moved without a thought, and he stood. Power rippled through his arms, and legs, and skin. He clenched his fists, relishing in this new invincibility. It felt right, like everything up to this point was destined.
His eyes connected with the man in front of him. A wealth of memories passed between them. Volatile emotions evaporated into structured purpose, an intentional path, both into the future and from the past. Everything connected perfectly for him to exist in the here and now.
He left the gun where it lay and turned around. The group of defenders parted for him. He knew their names. Their hopes. Their dreams. Their hidden, horrible secrets, some so similar to his own. Some so much worse.
But none of that mattered as he strode down the corridor to the medical lab.
They needed to retrieve the doctor and take her home.