Chapter 134

A dull ringing brought Connor around. The world had gone blurry and dim, and the ringing grew more intense and demanding.

Ancient, dry dust filled his mouth and nose, choking off his breathing.

He groaned and rolled onto his side, hacking and spitting to clear his throat, but the grit and stench wouldn’t go away. And now, there was the coppery taste of blood.

And the dull ringing drowned out everything else.

Connor tested his arms, which seemed tender and sore to the bone.

They still work, he told himself. That was more than he had a right to expect.

What was it Elise had said before touching the symbols? A warning?

Of course it had been a warning: Don’t touch me, I’m a bomb!

Had that been Selen’s work? The imprisoned alien? The K’tuula?

He tried to blink away whatever was fogging his vision, and when that didn’t work rubbed his eyes.

That hurt, and it didn’t help at all.

And neither did the ringing.

Where was Elise? She’d been closer to the blast.

He pushed up with some effort, and the blurriness was worsened by dizziness.

Then he fell back, and his mind drifted.

“Learn to see with more than your eyes.”

That had been his father’s message years ago, when Connor had lost his first fight in the ring.

Just a boy—a child of ten…scrawny and petulant.

And now he had a bruise on his cheek from the kick that had dropped him.

The old man had been more disappointed than angry, head lowered in shame. “The eyes can only see so much, Connor. Each opponent is a combination of strengths and weaknesses. Feel them. Hear them. Be truly aware.”

A youthful, sour Connor had brushed off what he’d considered a mysticism-laced scolding.

He’d decided right then that what he needed was a better trainer.

It wasn’t until serving under Zacharias Wentz that the message had sunk in.

The philosopher and political leader had sat Connor down just after the Directorate’s Obsidian Troopers had pulled back.

Their job was done. It was all elementary at that point. Wentz had held off the Talon Sector’s greatest military element with a force of outclassed but determined rebels.

But the stronghold at Valas was spent, broken.

Rebels and worse—the innocent supporters in the nearby city—were starving to death, dehydrating.

Wentz had been wounded during the fighting—possibly worse than Connor—but had refused medical care. Yet the leader of the revolt had taken the time to visit his young officer. “You know what’s out there—in the dark? What you can’t see?”

Connor had heard the clanking of robotic equipment for hours, the sloshing of tracks and wheels in the muck-covered Directorate position downhill from the stronghold.

He’d known the meaning of the sound. “Tanks.”

“Worse. The true power behind the Directorate: the Unity.” Wentz had nodded. “Automated weapons platforms. Inhuman killing devices. Robots.”

“We have explosives. We can set up mines.”

“Think with your head, not your heart. The fight has to go beyond Valas, beyond Nyango. You have to be the survivor.”

“But they’re terrified of us.”

“Machines don’t know terror, Connor. The evil they represent has to be seen with something other than eyes. Don’t look at the metal and gears. It’s not the inhuman processors that kill humans. It’s the people who conceive of machines as something better than us.”

That had been what motivated Connor all those years ago: The horror of government considering anything more important than the human populace.

And Wentz had slowly pressed the same lesson as Connor’s father.

Someone shook Connor, and he opened his eyes.

It was still blurry, the ringing still a dull sound.

Mosiah’s face was a hazy shape: white whiskers and bright red skin. He was shouting from far away. “…stand?”

Connor nodded and held out a hand, in case the old man was offering to help.

And when Mosiah pulled on that hand, the real struggle began.

Nausea shot through Connor’s gut and turned his legs into jelly.

He reached out, and the old man guided him to a wall.

“Support.” That’s what Mosiah said. Lean on the wall for support.

The words were actually discernible through the ringing.

And the taste of blood wasn’t so overpowering now. Connor cleared his throat. “Elise?”

“Best we leave her here.”

It must have been that the ringing was worse than Connor realized, because he imagined the old man’s tone was like that of a doctor beside a deathbed. “She’s alive?”

“Injured. Worse than either of us. I’ve bandaged her, but her hands are shattered.”

Shattered. “The doorway.”

“I’ve cleared the rubble.”

Connor nodded. “Help me lift her.”

“She should stay here. Neither you nor I are in shape—”

“I can’t give up on her.”

The old man sighed. “Then I’ll carry her.”

That was absurd. She weighed as much as the relics.

But Mosiah leaned in and pressed the hilts of Connor’s swords into his palms. “I should take on her weight. If you truly believe in redemption, this act belongs to me. It’s not far. I remember this place.”

Except for the exploding symbols, Connor imagined.

A moment later, the old man stepped away, returning with a loud huffing and gasping. Elise was a vague shape resting over one of his shoulders to balance the mesh bags on the other.

Connor followed the old man into darkness that was barely revealed by the armor’s lights.

Several steps took them across the depth of the room, then Mosiah stopped.

A green glow filled the chamber, and a soft outline of what might be one of the aliens drew Connor’s attention.

Mosiah grunted. “This lizard fellow was here years ago, when my acquaintances and I arrived. Never could understand him.”

But Connor could, thanks to the amulet. The alien voice spoke clearly in his ear. “It says we’ve come to a sealed door.”

“We have. Well, open now, but it was sealed before.”

“And it’s warning that beyond it, there’s a chamber.”

“Exactly as I told you: We’re close.”

“The chamber holds devices used to imprison an existential threat, something that wants to destroy all life.”

The old man sighed. “Through the actions of greedy fools, all life is imperiled.”

As far as Connor could tell, it always been that way in human history. “Is the door still sealed?”

“It would seem your captain has left it open for us.”

The pressure coming from the other chamber, the scent of Selen’s corruption, the distant pulsing of something terrible—like a dark, malignant heart: Connor could sense it all now.

This was what awaited them, their ill fortune.

He squared his shoulders. “Then we shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Without hesitation, he strode toward the waiting threat.