Honour's Knight (43 page)

Maat actually laughed at that, a jittery, mad sound.
If Maat could make you bloom, she would have done it hours ago.

“So if you’re not making this stuff spread, what’s all this for?” I demanded, jerking my head at the glowing patterns.

Maat shot up on her tiptoes, getting in my face despite being almost a foot shorter than I was in my suit.
Maat and Reaper made a bargain
, she said, eyes dancing.
The xith’cal dare not get near you as you are now. A very poor weapon, very unstable. But even in your tiny plasmex, Stoneclaw’s virus is kindling.
She reached out, resting her fingers just above my elbow, right on the very edge of the pins and needles.
See how far it’s spread.

I jerked away, but Maat just laughed.
When the blackness covers you completely, you will die. But Maat, clever spider, made a web.
She looked up at the plasmex patterns.
Maat will catch your death as it kills you and finish what Stoneclaw couldn’t. Maat will give Reaper the weapon he seeks, and when it is done, we’ll both be free, Deviana.

“We’ll both be dead!” I shouted.

Maat turned back to me with a soft smile.
Exactly.

I opened my mouth to tell her she was crazy, but Maat beat me to the punch by proving it.
Do you know how long I’ve waited for death?
she whispered, folding her ghostly arms over her chest.
Maat doesn’t even know anymore how long she’s been alive. Their lives, my daughters, they tangle inside me. I see my father killed in front of me, and though I know it’s not my father, I remember.
Her eyes filled with tears again.
Oh, Papa.

The words shot through me, because when Maat said them, her voice in my head went breathy and broken, exactly like Ren’s.

Maat can’t even remember which of those faces is her real father anymore
, she murmured.
But it doesn’t matter. They’re all dead. The Eyes take them all away and tell Maat she makes a great sacrifice. But no one ever asked Maat if she wanted to sacrifice, and I’m so tired.

Her tiny voice just about broke my heart, but as much as I felt for her right then, I couldn’t let her do this. “I know we’ve done you wrong,” I said, trying my best to ignore the pins and needles that were now creeping up toward my shoulders. “I want to make things right, Maat. Read my mind and see for yourself. But it can’t end like this. Reaper is our enemy. If you finish Stoneclaw’s virus for him, he’ll use it to enslave everyone.”

Maat’s hands clenched to fists.
Do not tell me what I can and can’t do
, she hissed.
Maat and her daughters have sacrificed a thousand lifetimes to save humanity, now humanity will sacrifice to save us.

She stepped away, staring at me with so much hate I could feel it on my skin, sharp and jagged as a serrated knife.
You will all suffer
, she hissed.
And Maat will not care, because Maat will be dead. Maat will not hurt, not anymore. I will be free, just like you promised, and there is nothing you can do about it.

“I won’t let you!” I shouted.

Let me?
Maat sneered.
What can you do? You can’t even control yourself enough to slow the spread of the corruption.
She shook her head.
You’re already dead, Deviana Morris, you’re just too stubborn to know it.

My answer to that was to swing at her head, but my fist passed through her without even a tingle, and Maat laughed.
Bye bye, rabbit.

I roared, a mindless bellow of rage, but it was too late. Maat was gone, leaving only the glowing web she’d woven to catch my virus. The virus that was now up over my shoulders and spreading across my chest with alarming speed.

I dropped to my knees with a curse. All around me, the phantoms that had followed Maat were starting to back away, and for once, I knew why. My whole body was on fire with the virus, my skin crawling wherever the black stuff spread. The plasmex web was already starting to glow, and I realized this was it. I was going to die.

The thought hit me like a slap in the face, and I gritted my teeth. No. I had not survived this long and fought this hard to go out like a chump now, dying on my knees to a virus. Maat had taunted me that I couldn’t control myself enough to stop the spread of the corruption, but that implied a way existed. I just had to find it.

Panting against the needles crawling down my chest, I forced myself to ignore my body and focus. What made it spread? I thought back to all the other times it had appeared, looking for a common thread, but the only thing I could remember was that I’d been upset each time before the black stuff appeared.

That couldn’t be it, though. If the virus spread every time I got mad, I’d have been dead days ago. Now that I thought about it, though, I hadn’t just been mad when the virus appeared. I’d been furious, the kind of superhot rage I really had to work up to, just like I’d worked myself up over being locked in this box right before the stain had appeared on my fingers …

My eyes went wide. That was it. The virus fed on my
rage
. And with that realization, I slammed my eyes shut and focused on calming down.

Taming my anger isn’t exactly a skill I’ve spent much time developing. Back when I was a recruit, my commanders used to lecture us constantly about the danger of rage, but I’d never really bought their warnings. In my experience, anger made me stronger, not weaker. Now, though, for the first time in years, I went back to my training and clamped down, forcing my mind to be still.

I didn’t do very well. Even when I added in the stupid breathing exercises, I was just too mad. Mad at Maat for selling out all of humanity to Reaper just so she could escape, mad at being trapped, mad at the stupid black bullshit I could now feel spreading over my stomach. I was also scared, and not just of the death I could feel breathing down my neck. If I failed here, Maat would die, too. Caldswell hadn’t explained why that was so terrible, but he’d been willing to let me shoot myself rather than even talk about freeing her, so I was pretty sure it was bad on an epic scale. There was also the part where Reaper would be in possession of Stoneclaw’s completed virus, which was a catastrophe I didn’t even want to think about.

So failure was not an option, but I still couldn’t seem to calm down. And the more I failed, the more upset I got, and the more impossible my task became.

When the virus had eaten half my body, I decided it was time to switch tactics. Clearly, I needed to work on my anger management, but there was no time for learning curves. So I gave up on trying to stomp down my rage and focused on harnessing it instead.

This went much better. I’d always considered my anger an ally, after all, so it was no surprise that once I stopped fighting it, we got along great. I started with Maat’s claim that I couldn’t do anything. That my lack of control was letting the virus eat me alive, letting her win. That thought fanned my anger even hotter, but instead of letting it burn, I focused it into the useful, pointed fury of my battle rage.

All at once, my mind stilled. The fear vanished, and everything grew very clear. I was no longer an angry, terrified woman trapped in a box. I was a weapon, a soldier, an avenging fury who was going to smash this whole place to bits, and as the battle rage settled over me, the pins and needles began to fade.

With my armor on, I couldn’t check to make sure if the black stuff was receding, but when the last of the tingling vanished from my fingers, I didn’t feel sick anymore. I felt focused, ready for the fight as I turned to face the bulletproof wall of my cell and dropped my visor. I couldn’t see the plasmex patterns through my cameras, but that didn’t matter. I knew they were there, and that knowledge was all I needed as I launched Elsie from her sheath.

Trapped, was I? Nothing I could do, eh? We’d see about that. It was time I taught Maat and her lizards exactly how destructive a Paradoxian could be.

Smiling a deadly smile, I brought my fist back, firing Elsie’s thermite as I did. The blinding light filled the chamber as I shifted all of my suit’s power to my arm. And then, when we were both primed and burning, I punched forward, slamming my white-hot blade into the glass as hard as I could.

CHAPTER 14

E
lsie hit with a crash I felt to my boots, but even with her thermite burning full tilt, the wall didn’t crack. I wrenched my arm back and hit it again, using my targeting system to slam Elsie’s point right back into the tiny nick I’d gouged the first time. The boom of my burning blade against the glass was deafening, and by my third hit, I could hear the xith’cal females shrieking on the other side of the air lock.

I ignored them, focusing on the glass. My fifth hit opened a tiny hole, and when I landed my seventh, I was rewarded with a loud crack as Elsie’s blade finally punched through.

Stop!

With my visor down and cameras on, I couldn’t see Maat, but I could feel her clawing hand in my mind.
You’ll ruin everything
, she hissed.
Stop this!

“Try and make me,” I growled as I wedged Elsie against the bottom of the hole I’d punched and leaned on it, using my weight to force her blade down.

Slicing the wall proved easier than piercing it, but it was still slow going, and I’d lost a lot of time. Whatever this glass was made of, it took all my suit’s strength to cut through it. But my thermite was roaring now, and every inch felt easier than the last.

The racket on the other side of the air lock was getting louder. Maat was yelling, too, banging on my mind. I could even feel her hand on my spine, but for some reason her pulling wasn’t working. Maybe I was doing whatever I’d done when I’d resisted Brenton’s girl, or maybe her link through Enna was too weak to maintain the web she’d spun and throw me around at the same time.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t care. As soon as I’d figured out Maat couldn’t hurt me, I stopped worrying about her. I ignored the xith’cal, too, focusing only on the cut, because if I couldn’t finish that, everything else was for nothing.

I’d managed nearly a full circle by the time my thermite finally burned out. I scraped the brittle, burned crust of the spent thermite off Elsie’s edge and retracted her, stepping back at the same time. Then, bracing one foot against my cage, I kicked off, launched myself at the hole I’d almost finished cutting.

My suit hit the glass so hard I felt the blow through my stabilizers, but the wall didn’t crack. It bowed, though, and I raced back across my cell to kick off again, slamming my shoulder into the side I’d loosened. This time, the impact pushed the half-cut hole out far enough for me to get a foot through, and I braced, using my leverage to crack the glass the rest of the way. The final inches broke with a sharp snap, and I tumbled forward, my suit rolling me to my feet in the middle of the observation room just as the xith’cal warriors began pouring through the door.

As soon as they saw me, though, I knew something was wrong. I’ve faced down a lot of xith’cal in my day, and these males weren’t acting like the ones I was used to. Normally, xith’cal are chargers, trusting their superior size and weight to bowl over opponents, but these were hanging back, watching me with wary yellow eyes.

They were afraid of me, I realized with a start. I was the plague bearer, and I was out of my protective box. Even the females shrieking orders from the back were keeping well away, and I felt my face break into a feral grin. This was going to be
good
.

With a battle cry that would have made my drill sergeant proud, I launched myself at the xith’cal. I didn’t bother drawing my gun, I couldn’t have shot them all anyway. Instead, I relied on surprise and their own terror, and the result was better than I could have hoped.

The xith’cal dove shrieking out of my way. I bowled past them, kicking anything that got in front of me. But though I was feet shorter and half their weight, none of the big males tried to grab me as I shot out the door, knocking over the females in the process.

The door led into a room much like the one they’d brought me through earlier. The ceiling here was much higher, though, and there were weapons against the walls as well as sterile storage. A mixed-gender room. More important, one that had two exits, a big freight dock, and a smaller door that opened into a long hall.

The smaller exit was closer, so that was the one I picked, sprinting across the room as fast as my suit could go. There were several females in my way, but they were in an even bigger hurry to get away from me than the males had been. Even so, it was only a matter of time before one of the lizards finally got over its fear of the plague and made a grab for me, so I pushed my suit harder, darting between tables covered in heavy, complicated-looking scientific equipment as I raced toward freedom.

I made it almost halfway before my luck gave out.

I was ducking under a machine that looked like a giant centrifuge when I spotted the Highest Guide standing in the freight door holding another of those cursed white balls. Like hell was I getting hit with that again, and by the time she’d raised her arm to hurl it at me, Mia was already in my hands. My fully charged plasma shotgun whistled to life with a beautiful sound, and when it hit its highest pitch, I ducked out from behind my cover and fired a white-hot burst straight into the Highest Guide’s chest.

Hyrek had said that females weren’t warriors, but the Highest Guide was still a xith’cal, and she jumped out of the way of my blast with admirable skill. Still, Mia isn’t a precision weapon, and fast as she’d jumped, it wasn’t enough to avoid getting hit completely. The burning plasma struck the Highest Guide across her side, and she went down screaming as the white fire engulfed her. The flames went out a second later, probably smothered by plasmex I couldn’t see through my cameras, but the damage was done. The ball she’d been prepping to throw at me was lying on the ground in a gooey melted heap, and I was running again, legs pumping as I shot toward the little door.