Epilogue
Location Unknown
Pain. So much pain. It came from everywhere, inside and out, a scream in his head, in his gut, in his soul.
Sawyer knew pain. He trained for years, from the time he was a child to when he became a man, and pain tolerance was a favorite lesson of the scientists who conditioned CORE agents.
But this? This was nothing like he’d ever experienced.
It felt like all the blood left his body at once, through his pores, his eyes, his mouth, his hair.
His insides turned out, and his outsides turned in.
The skin on his face curled off his bones, rolled down his chest and abdomen, then scraped down his legs to settle at his feet.
His muscles melted, boiled, and evaporated.
A breath was torture, and so was a whisper.
Then, all at once, the pain stopped.
Sawyer inhaled deeply and sat up like a shot. White light shone from everywhere, piercing his eyes. He closed them to stop the ache in his temples and rubbed at an itch on his jaw.
The pain had been a memory—a distant one, if he could believe the growth of hair on his face—the agony of emptying, of returning to his human form.
He braced his hands beside his hips, and a padded floor squished beneath his palms.
He opened his eyes to find a blank white wall in front of him. What the fuck? He turned his head and examined the space he’d been stuck in. There was nothing here but white walls.
The memory of saving the good doctor from a box surfaced. We destroyed it. It must not have been the only one on board the Corvus.
Unease swirled in his empty stomach. He hadn’t known what they’d done to her. She’d been in one piece when she’d exited the box, though she’d appeared haggard and distraught.
Couldn’t be worse than that pain.
Other memories surfaced, ones that came after.
Of boots coming toward him, defenders in full battle gear and scientists decked out in bio-suits.
Hands grabbed and dragged him, lifting him onto a hover bed to take him to a lab.
He remembered the hum of a decontamination chamber and the buzz of a laser scalpel.
Sawyer ran his hands over his body, trying to figure out what they’d done to him, but he didn’t hurt anywhere except for the ache in his head from the bright white. He wore some scratchy medical garb, the same as the good doctor, and it crinkled as he shifted to his knees to scan behind him.
He was alone. That might be the most disturbing thing of all.
Just a breath ago, he’d heard them all in his head, all the people the Calypson fucker had transformed. He would have taken the whole damn ship if she hadn’t stopped him. Sawyer remembered their names, their desires, their hidden secrets.
And that meant they would remember his.
Coalesced. The word bounced around in his head. Every person they crossed, he’d had the urge to coalesce with them as well. To become more complete.
Except the good doctor. She’d been untouchable, but important.
He knew so much more about her now, but an acute frustration rose at not knowing everything.
When he’d joined the others, he’d never felt so whole, so complete, so strong, in his life. They’d worked together, indestructible, powered by one thought, one motivation, and he’d reveled in it. The synchronism. The purpose.
Now he was weak. Alone.
A fiery surge of anger followed the thought, and he fisted his hands against the padded floor.
He’d had no will of his own. He’d been a puppet, even more so than being an agent for the CORE.
If the Calypson had told him to lift his arm, he would have, believing the idea was his own while he accomplished the task.
If the fucker had told him jumping out of an airlock would have benefited the group, Sawyer would have done that, too.
A crawling sensation prickled over his skin. He’d been used, forced to act, but while changed he hadn’t wanted to lose the power he’d gained.
The dichotomy of it warred inside his head, making his heart race.
None of that.
Taking a deep breath, he opened his fists and placed his hands flat against the floor, grounding himself.
What happened to the others? Those who had experienced the same pain?
He took another deep breath and tried to stretch his mind outward. When nothing immediately happened, he scoffed at his own stupidity, and shook his head. Of course he couldn’t reach them. The Calypson fucker had reversed everything, emptying them all.
But that didn’t explain why Sawyer’s mind was playing tricks on him, how a strange murmur in the back of his head told him General Cazin stood close by.
Sawyer lifted his head and narrowed his eyes at the white wall. It rippled, and he gritted his teeth against the need to react while his heart beat a hard rhythm in his chest. The rippling increased until it settled into a live image—like he would see on a viewer.
General Cazin took up the center of the feed, standing at a terminal in a lab with two scientists. The space looked exactly as it had when they’d saved the good doctor. Either he was still on the Corvus, or a different Guardian with the same equipment.
Or this is a remote image. They could have put him anywhere and spoken to him through the comm.
But the itch in the back of his brain told him the general was close by.
A mild scowl marred Cazin’s brow while Sawyer stared at him, his body braced for a fight, and his mind searching for exits. He remembered how they’d gotten the doctor out, how it lifted like a cage without a door. Could he force the edge of the wall up if he had to?
His fingers twitched to try, but he remained as he was, not even standing at attention for the general since the box lacked height.
“We’ve lifted the ship’s quarantine,” General Cazin said, his voice loud in the confines of the box.
Of course they’d been quarantined. A Calypson on a Guardian? Defenders changed against their will, then released from that mental prison? It came as more of a surprise that another Guardian hadn’t come and reduced the Corvus to space rubble just to be safe.
Sawyer forced himself to relax and wiped his hand along the thick hair on his jaw. “How long has it been?” His throat strained with disuse.
The general pursed his lips. “Twenty-nine days.”
That explained the beard and his empty stomach.
Sawyer stared at Cazin, the questions in his head stacked a kilometer high. What could he get away with? What would see him sent out an airlock?
He settled for simple curiosities. “How many others were affected?”
He knew. He remembered everything, but wanted to see what the general would tell him.
Cazin tipped his chin. “Thirty-five people were attacked, changed, then reverted, including yourself.”
The names of those defenders and scientists moved through his mind, their childhoods, their aspirations. It was too much and not enough at the same time. Sawyer forced his breaths to regulate.
“What do you remember of that time?” Cazin asked, his expression bland.
So much. It kept racing through his head. What he’d seen. What he’d heard in his mind. Thoughts skewed with visuals, making it a muddle. Memories that were not his tangled with his own.
“Not a lot.” Sawyer cleared his scratchy throat. “It’s a haze, really.”
The general’s eyes narrowed. “That’s what most of you said.”
“Most?”
“Some won’t speak at all.”
Sawyer had the sudden urge to see the ones who wouldn’t talk, to find out if they were all right. Had their reversion been too much to handle? Or the pain?
His hatred for the Calypson increased tenfold.
The general stared at him, eyes assessing, and Sawyer rifled through the most appropriate responses to his last statement, but could only come up with, “Where are the other thirty-four now?”
He winced internally as Cazin continued to stare at him. “Twenty-four,” he said finally.
“What happened to the ten?” Stupid question. It gave away too much.
The general didn’t answer.
Experiments. Testing. Just shot out an airlock for fun. Sawyer wouldn’t put any of that past the CORE government.
Cazin tipped his head, and a certain promise lived in his eyes while a threat hung in the silence: co-operate or end up like them.
“Let’s move on to the second portion of your testing,” the general said right before his image disappeared, and Sawyer was kneeling alone in a white box.
Hot rage bubbled up inside him, wanting to spew forth. He’d given his whole life to these fuckers, and when he needed them the most, they locked him up for experiments.
As quickly as the rage surfaced, it disappeared again, replaced by a cool resolve that felt like it infused his bones, as invasive as coalescing. Sawyer embraced that resolve, funneled everything he had into it, while he tried to access the general’s mind.
There. If he pulled on the murmur, another thought followed, then another.
When he opened his eyes again, all four white walls rippled.
“Let’s begin.” The mechanical voice came from all around him. “State your name and ID number.”