Horizon (33 page)

Aluna groaned and clutched her chest. Something inside her body felt wrong. She needed to keep Strand talking to give herself time to recover.

“Sarah Jennings cared about you,” Aluna said. Her voice came out weak. She tried again. “Sarah Jennings never stopped loving you!”

“Lies!” Strand’s heads roared. “She never thought about anyone but herself and her precious, pathetic Kampii. I could have given her eternal life, and she refused. Is that respect? Is that love? Is that common sense?”

Only six of his heads still functioned, and the two in the middle still swayed dully on their stalks while the others spewed evil words. Aluna would never be able to destroy all of them before Strand killed her. Taking the first one down had left her bleeding and broken. And Hoku — poor Hoku — only writhed and whimpered somewhere behind her, his voice in her ears a painful echo of her own.

Were her sister and brother outside, facing the same fate? She could picture Fathom’s octopus tentacles wrapped around Daphine, squeezing the life out of her while Anadar watched, helpless and wild with grief.

Calli was off somewhere with the Aviars, probably fighting for her life in the middle of the battlefield if she wasn’t already dead. How would that smiling girl survive? She was never meant to be a warrior.

“There is a place for everyone in my new world,” Strand said, his voices growing louder, “but there will never be a place for the Kampii. I will destroy every last one of Sarah’s beloved people, and she will finally be gone forever.”

Vachir. Dash.
Aluna didn’t want to think about Dash especially, but his face floated before her, dark eyes grim, his black hair long as a horse’s tail. At least she would not live to see his disappointment.

“You look like her,” Strand said, and three of his heads finally stopped talking and attacked.

D
ASH WATCHED
Odd slide to the ground, a shadow of dark red expanding around him. Dash wanted to scream, but his throat was raw and broken. He had done too much of it lately.

Calli had pressed a spear into his hand, and he was relieved to find that his fingers had enough strength to grip it. Its weight reminded him that he was alive, that the horror of the past few days was over. He would do anything to ensure that his fate did not befall his friends as well.

Scorch stood a few meters away, leering down at Odd.
Mocking
him, even as the man died. Dash expected no honor from her, but her unbelievable cruelty awoke a new energy inside him. A fresh anger. It coursed through his body, replenishing him like a long drink of water after days spent in the desert.

Dash lunged forward and drove the spear through Scorch’s back while she laughed at her fallen prey. The sound died in her throat. She twisted to face him, her body still impaled by the spear. A bubble of red appeared at the corner of her mouth. She raised her arm and aimed the tip of her sword blade at his heart.

He could not move out of the way. The act of thrusting the spear, of seeing it pierce Scorch’s body, had emptied him of vigor. Scorch spoke, her twisted mouth betraying her sentiment. Her words came to him softly and muffled, as if he were hearing them over a great distance.

Pocket leaped up and grabbed Scorch’s arm, attempting to slow her blade. Calli was there, too, and Nathif — Nathif! — was pulling Scorch away from him and yelling at him to move.

He did not. He could not. He could only watch as Vachir bolted into view, reared up on her hind legs, and brought her two front hooves smashing down. Scorch’s eyes fluttered and rolled to white. Her neck twisted. She fell to the ground at an odd angle, the butt of Dash’s spear still protruding from her back.

Calli’s arms were around him. And then Nathif’s. And then Pocket’s. Dash tried to smile and to hug them back. His arms, as heavy as horses, would not budge. Vachir huffed in his face and he reveled in the warmth of her breath on his cheek.

A path cleared to Odd. Dash stumbled forward and fell to his knees by his side. He wished Odd had not chosen to wear goggles, for he dearly wanted to look into the man’s eyes.

Odd was so close to death that Dash imagined his spirit halfway to the Sunshine Lands.

“Brought your swords,” Odd said, fumbling at his waist with one meaty hand. And that was all. His body gave up its fight and fell slack while Dash was still summoning the strength to say thank you. He wanted more time. He had so much he wished still to say.

“Me and Pocket, we stay with Odd,” Mags said. She sat down cross-legged on the floor, and Dash saw the bruise blooming on her face and the way her left arm hung oddly from her shoulder. “Don’t forget us when you’re done.”

“I will stay with you,” Nathif said. “I will see to your injuries.”

“Cuts and scrapes will still be here when you’re done,” Mags said. “Run off, now, and fix this. Fix it all.”

“Swords,” croaked Dash. Odd wanted him to have them, and right now, he could think of no better way to honor the fallen hero. “Help?”

It took their combined strength to roll Odd off the swords. Calli and Pocket cleaned them while Nathif and Vachir helped Dash to his feet.

“You are looking particularly handsome today, Dashiyn,” Nathif said, smoothing the hair away from Dash’s face. “You simply must share your secrets with me.”

Dash blinked, the closest thing he could do to laughing, and was rewarded with Nathif’s relieved smile.

With Blaze and Shatter once again sheathed at his side, Dash began to feel like himself again. Or, at least, like a shadow of himself. It was a far better feeling than he had had in days. He gripped Vachir’s mane to steady himself and felt his strength slowly returning.

“Aluna. Hoku. Safe?” he asked.

Calli raised one eyebrow. “Did you really just ask if Aluna was safe? Maybe you’re not recovering as fast as we thought.”

Vachir whinnied at the joke, and the sound lightened Dash’s heart. Vachir had been through as much as he had during their days of captivity. He would not have survived without her.

“We do not know where they are, brother,” Nathif said. “But if you are feeling well enough, we will go find them.”

Dash looked at Pocket and Mags, sitting on either side of Odd’s body. He winced, but managed to lift his hand and touch two fingers to his heart.

H
OKU’S WORLD WAS ENDLESS FIRE
and searing pain and no hope of escape. He writhed on the ground, clutching his face and expending all of his will to stop his fingers from clawing out his eyes. Each moment felt impossibly long. He was sure he could never survive another, but then, miraculously, he did.

When the pain ended suddenly, it felt like a trick. Hoku stayed on the ground, wrapped tight against himself, and waited for it to begin again. That sort of cruelty would suit Karl Strand.

Or . . . Strand had been distracted. Hoku could hear Aluna’s ragged breath in his ear, her grunts, her yelps, the effort in her every move. Something she’d done had made Strand angry enough to forget about him. He might only have a few moments before Strand remembered.

Despite the respite from pain, Hoku’s vision stayed dark and blurry. A shiver crabbed down his spine. He was almost entirely blind.

Fur grazed Hoku’s hand. He picked up Zorro and clutched the animal to his chest. “Be my eyes,” he said, issuing the commands to his Datastreamers. Their surroundings were projected inside Hoku’s eyes, but from Zorro’s perspective instead of his own. The effect disoriented him, so he stayed on the ground and assessed the fight.

Aluna had taken out one of Strand’s heads and wounded another, but the monster showed no signs of slowing down or surrendering. His heads snapped and snarled, fangs flashing. Aluna didn’t have long.

Hoku poked around with his Datastreamers, looking for new holes in Strand’s security. He found them immediately. When Strand had forgotten about Hoku, he’d apparently also forgotten to close the connection between them. Hoku had only to follow it back in order to access whatever computer system Strand was using inside his creation.

He used his tech to swim through Strand’s network, being careful not to trip any of the alarms. It only took a flash of a tail before he uncovered the secret behind Strand’s two dormant heads.

They weren’t sleeping at all; they were working! Messages flowed into the heads from Strand’s generals. The two serpent brains ran scenarios, calculated victory rates, and sent orders back to the front lines. He had discovered Strand’s war room!

Hoku saw a message arrive from Fathom asking for more reinforcements. His stomach clenched. Fathom, that horrible octopus thing, was still alive. He watched Strand process the information and inform Fathom that more troops were on their way.

But when Strand sent the message to activate more Deepfell slave soldiers, Hoku snagged it. He let Strand think the message had been sent, but he deleted it instead. Strand didn’t seem to notice.
For Daphine
, Hoku thought.

If he could do that, what else could he do?

He dug around in the data, pulling up names, and found messages from a General Gator stationed at the war front. Hoku wrote a fake message from Gator informing Strand of a surprise attack from the south by a huge force of Aviars and Equians, and asked for orders. Strand’s brains crunched the fake numbers and sent back elaborate orders for Gator to split his force in half, hold his position with the smaller force, and await the arrival of another army.

Hoku deleted the orders to that second army, too. No reinforcements for Gator, and now half his troops would be marching off to attack nothing, leaving the real Aviars and Equians to fight a vastly reduced army to the east.

It wasn’t enough — stealing a few messages here and there, moving troops, causing chaos. As soon as Strand figured out what had happened, he’d issue new orders and fix everything. Hoku needed to take the serpent heads out for good.

Strand’s multiple voices echoed through the cave. “You are pathetic,” he said. “If
she
saw you . . . you, whom she sacrificed everything to create, she would regret everything. She would regret leaving me.”

Hoku remembered the letters he’d found in Seahorse Alpha. “She” was probably Sarah Jennings, Strand’s long-ago partner and the mother of their only child.

Hoku reached into his satchel and pulled out the water safe. He told Zorro to input the combination and open it while his Datastreamers pulled up every scrap of correspondence he could find between Sarah Jennings and Karl Strand.

When Zorro had the water safe open, Hoku used the raccoon’s eyes to find the small carved-wood dolphin. Hundreds of years ago, Karl Strand had made the toy for his son, Tomias, and then given it to Sarah Jennings after their son had died.

He put the dolphin on the ground and told Zorro to scan it. Hoku’s vision flickered green as Zorro obeyed. Hoku added the image to the hundreds of electronic text and voice messages his tech had dug up from the Seahorse Alpha records.

Hoku ran his hand down Zorro’s back. “Ready, boy?” The answer flashed before his eyes:
Yes, yes, yes.

Hoku gathered all the files and sent them like one long harpoon, straight into Karl Strand’s brains. He told the image of the dolphin to get inside and multiply as fast as it could. He wanted Strand to see it everywhere, no matter which of his brains he was using.

For a long moment, Hoku wondered if his plan had worked. The hydra continued to attack Aluna. She valiantly bashed aside its heads and stabbed them with her knife. Even through Zorro’s eyes, Hoku could see the scrapes and bloody puncture wounds covering her body.

He should have disconnected himself from Strand. He should have put up some sort of shield, or tried to hide his mind. But he needed to know if his plan worked. If it didn’t, he might not be able to open the connection again to try something else. Strand was the one who had made it so deep in the first place.

But then, all at once, Strand stopped battling Aluna. All six of the remaining heads reared back and roared.

“Tomias!” the hydra screamed in a chorus of tortured voices. “My son!”

“Now!” Hoku shouted, hoping Aluna could still hear him inside her ears. “Go now!”