Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (33 page)

In the midst of the showdown, though her eyes were locked onto Nagogg’s, Svetlana’s mind found itself in a prayer.
I am here because You put me here. If you will me to die today, I will die.

Pointing his jagged finger Svetlana’s direction, Nagogg barked out an order as the Ithini connection was lost. Striding past him, Gabralthaar and Ka`vesh approached the bound medic. Pressing her against the wall, they unlatched her chains and took hold of her. As she was jostled violently toward the chamber door, she cast a look back at Tauthin. He seemed so far away. Just as their eyes met, Svetlana was shoved into the hallway hard, her body slamming against the metal wall of the Noboat’s interior. Behind her, the metal door
whooshed
close.

In the brief moment that Svetlana had to observe the hallway under her own free will, she saw two other beings present—Ed, the Ithini that Nagogg was using for communication, and a remarkably fit Bakma. Both were standing at a distance in apparent observation. Before she could focus farther, the abusive hands of Gabralthaar and Ka`vesh took hold of her, yanking her to her feet by her blond roots and shoving her ahead. Svetlana held back a yelp, though the pull of her hair made her eyes water.

The air was cold against her skin, though at the moment it was the least of her concerns. Where was she being led? What was next?

This is the direction of the bridge.

As Svetlana neared the corner at the end of the corridor—the turn that led to the antechamber with the Noboat’s side exit ramp—her gaze was able to focus more on the two by the door. She knew Ed. She’d seen the Ithini and felt his presence in her mind numerous times. It was the Bakma beside Ed—the one in peak physical condition—that caught her attention. The alien had no eyes. Vacant sockets stared at Svetlana as she marched, looking directly at her while simultaneously looking at nothing.
This is why Nagogg took my nose. They all suffered the same way.
Billions of miles away, the impact of General Thoor was still being felt. His torture of his captives had come full circle on her.

Just as Gabralthaar shoved her forward toward the corner, another Bakma unexpectedly emerged from around it. She and the alien collided, stumbling back as they—for the most fleeting of moments—made eye contact. A moment was all it took, as Svetlana’s eyes widened in recognition.

Wuteel. The Bakma she’d treated on a ground mission. Cared for. He was among her tormenters.

The alien’s eyes shied away immediately, and he hurried past her to walk down the hall. Svetlana’s head turned to follow him, but another hard shove from Gabralthaar cut the motion short. In the next instant, she was around the corner, and Wuteel was out of view.

She felt like someone had kicked her in the gut. The betrayal was almost worse than losing her nose. Before her thoughts could develop further, she was pushed through the antechamber and toward the bridge.

It wasn’t until the door to the bridge slid open and she was thrust inside that the shame of Svetlana’s scarce clothing hit her. This wasn’t a narrow hallway—this was an open, circular room. She could be viewed from every angle. She felt completely lacking in dignity.

There were two other Bakma in the room—one sitting in the pilot’s chair at the front of the vessel, and the other standing at a console on the far wall. But though she registered them, they weren’t the source of her most intense focus. That belonged to the canrassi. The brown-furred beast was sitting subserviently beside the captain’s chair, its oversized mouth gaping, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The canrassi’s two spider eyes turned to Svetlana as Gabralthaar forced her toward it.

Svetlana’s heart pounded.
No…no!
Her knees locked as she tried to push back, but she was powerless against the massive Gabralthaar.

She was about to be eaten alive.

The canrassi released a shrill-like scream as it rose almost completely upright. As Svetlana was shoved nearer, she too screamed in panic. Behind her, Nagogg shouted in Bakmanese, though the lack of a connection kept his meaning lost. Gabralthaar grabbed the back of her hair, thrusting her down to her knees.

“Stop it! Please! I…” The word
submit
formed at the tip of her tongue. “I…”

She was violently thrust forward, her head forced downward as if bowing to the massive beast, which lumbered closer.

There was nothing she could do. There was nowhere she could run. She was at the mercy of captors who knew nothing of the concept. The canrassi roared savagely. She saw its shadow rear upright before her. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

Everything went silent.

Ever so slowly, Svetlana opened her eyes. The canrassi was gone. Blinking, she looked across the Noboat’s bridge. The consoles were still there, beeping and pulsing as they had been when she’d entered, but there were no Bakma manning them. There was no Gabralthaar, no Ka`vesh. No Nagogg. Every single one of them had vanished. She was alone on the bridge.

Looking down at herself, Svetlana gasped and took a step back, holding out her hands so that she might see herself more fully. She was clothed. From head to toe, she was back in her silver and blue EDEN uniform. It was perfectly pressed and clean. Reaching up, she touched the tip of her nose—a nose that was very much intact.

From the corridor beyond the bridge entrance, a woman screamed. Flinching, Svetlana whipped her head to the sound. It was a terrified, panicked wailing. Like a woman being tortured.

“Kill him.”

It was her own voice that addressed her, though nothing had come from her mouth. On the contrary, the voice seemed to come from every direction, as if both audible and in her mind. Slowly, Svetlana’s head tilted down to look at her right hand, which seconds earlier had been empty, but now most certainly was not.

She was holding Nagogg’s spear.

“Kill him.”

A glow emanated from her hand where the spear was grasped, and from the glow, an intense, fervent heat. It traveled through her veins and up her spine. It burned like fury. Her head raising again as the glow faded, she stepped forward in what felt like slow motion.

The screaming, which she recognized now as her own, continued from down the hall. Walking through the antechamber, she exhaled a breath of premeditated calmness. Deep inside her, a sensation swelled, prompting her to open her mouth and suck in, very faintly, through delicately parted lips.

“He is waiting for you.”

With every step Svetlana took, the feelings grew fiercer. By the time she reached the door to the room where the screaming was coming from, it had completely taken over. Rounding the corner, she looked into the room.

She saw herself lying on a table, her face soaked with blood, her mouth frozen open in horror. Standing above her, holding her sliced-off nose in his hand, was Nagogg. The lipless rider looked up to regard her standing in the door.

All emotion went cold. All anger, all fervency. Svetlana’s blue eyes hardened as she walked Nagogg’s way. She paid no mind to the agonized wails that came from her body on the table. She was not in that body anymore.

Svetlana’s mouth opened wide—twice as far as should have been possible—as she let loose a rage-filled scream at her tormentor. Thrusting forward with the spear, she stabbed it into Nagogg’s belly, as her other hand reached across his face. Her claws dug into him; his face began to cave. Blood pouring from his body, Nagogg gurgled and screamed.

The room went empty. Svetlana was once again alone. There was no other her on the table, no Nagogg in her grasp. Everything was clean. Lowering her gaze downward, she saw a white bucket sitting on the floor, filled to the brim with dark, red blood.

It was Nagogg’s.

There was no voice that needed to prompt her, no sign to indicate what she was to do. She knew what came next on her own. Sinking down to the floor, she picked up the bucket with both hands. Lifting the bucket over her head, her breathing intensified. With eyes closed and mouth open, she tilted it back.

With the warmth of the liquid came the rush of emotion. As it poured down her throat, she felt her tension release. Turning her head to the side and down, she embraced the flow like a lover.

Svetlana’s eyes shot open. She inhaled a sharp breath. She was staring at the floor.

“What…?” she whispered, the word
happened
never forming. Lifting her head to look, she gasped. Directly in front of her were the massive hind legs of the canrassi. Instinct took over as she tried to squirm away, only to realize in the effort that she was once again restrained by the magnetic clasps, except not on the wall as she had been with Tauthin, but on the floor itself. They were clasped at her wrists, forcing her into a bowed position in front of the beast. Turning her head to the left, she saw the bottom of Nagogg’s captain’s chair.

She was back in the bridge. A chill came over her, indicating that she was again stripped down to her undergarments. Her nose once again throbbed with the pain of the amputation. All around her, the Bakma were at their stations. A look up indicated that Nagogg was seated in his chair. No one was watching her.

How long have I been like this?
She remembered nothing. The last thing she’d registered before her bizarre shift in reality was being thrust toward the canrassi as if being offered to it. Now, she was clasped in a bowing position at its feet. She registered a sliminess to her hair, and for a moment, the word
blood
came to mind. But it wasn’t blood. It was saliva. The canrassi was perched atop her like a dog over its prize. Its gaping jaws must have been drooling from directly above her.

It was the second instance of missing time she’d experienced in as many traumatizing moments. She found herself once again thrust from Point A to Point C, with no memory of what happened in the space between. And those images she’d seen…those feelings she’d felt…

What was that? Who am I to conjure something like that?

It was the second time in a short succession that such a dream had come to her. What was happening? Those images and feelings were
not
Svetlana Voronova. They were something else, something sick and horrible. Whether a coping mechanism or the beginning stages of insanity, it most certainly couldn’t be something good.

Lifting her head parallel to the floor, the highest angle her neck could crane, she took in the canrassi’s colossal back legs and underbelly. That was the extent of anything she could see—the rest of the beast was towering over her. For all practical purposes, she’d been given a permanent view of the animal’s midsection. She could feel its drool plopping unceremoniously atop her head and sliding down the sides of her hair. Her eyes fixed on the floor beneath her as a pool of thick saliva began to form. In that moment, another smell came to her—something that burned her nasal cavities like acid. It was a musky, horrible stench, as if she’d walked into a room where a cat had…

…had urinated.

Wincing painfully, she clenched her lips. She’d been marked. Like property for an animal. It must have happened while she was out, which was for the best, she thought. There was no benefit to being awake for such an experience, or to knowing where on her body it had happened or to what extent. It was better to pretend all of the wetness was saliva.

She was now their completed piece of artwork, sprawled out and vulnerable on the floor, bowing to a beast that was salivating on her head as if the two of them were part of a living sculpture—one the predator, one being continually christened as its prey. One the master, one the slave.

The feeling that swelled in the pit of Svetlana’s stomach was unlike anything she’d felt before. This was the utter depths of humiliation. Demeaning beyond comprehension. Had Ignatius van Thoor been there himself, she would have clung to his legs and begged him to save her. She could sense her sanity seeping away.

You are being used as an example.

The words in her mind came unexpectedly, as the familiar click of an Ithini connection accompanied them. Ed had connected her to someone. Flinching, Svetlana lifted her head from the floor, shaking it momentarily to sling away drool as it slid down from her forehead. She angled her head to the bridge entrance, one of the few places in view.

There he was. The Bakma she had seen in the hallway—the one with gouged eyes. Despite the alien’s blindness, he stared straight at her from his perch out of traffic. She swallowed, then glanced around to see if anyone else took notice. At least as far as her limited vision could see, they were all preoccupied with the ship. Her focus returned to the Bakma.
Why are you talking to me?

The Bakma stood motionless, like a statue.
To explain what has not been explained.

To explain? Had he been instructed to do that? Before she could ask for clarification, the Bakma continued.

My name is—

—Kraash-nagun,
she interrupted before he could finish.

Kraash-nagun’s head tilted strangely.
How did you know?

She didn’t know the answer to that one herself. His name had just come to her. The dreams, the screaming in Bakmanese, knowing the crew’s names…what was happening? Twitching her head in a futile effort to whip her hair from her eyes, she cleared her throat habitually.
I am…Setana.

Your name is known.

How can you see me?

Kraash-nagun angled his head slightly.
One does not need eyes to see.

Looking away as to not draw too much attention to her staring at the blinded Bakma, Svetlana’s gaze settled on the canrassi briefly before she turned her head around as far as her neck would allow—just far enough to catch sight of the view screen at the front of the bridge. They were still in space. The gravity she was feeling was indeed artificial.
Where are we?

At the edge of what we call the Crossing.

It was habit to glance back at the one who was addressing her, but she stopped herself before it became obvious. Her eyes settled once more on the view screen.
Did someone tell you to speak to me?
She knew the answer to that question already.