Hybrid (14 page)

She doesn’t even hear the door close before she falls asleep.

Sai opens her eyes and feels refreshed for the first time since her accident. Her connections are smooth and only spread a dull ache through her body, and her head doesn’t hurt. In fact, she feels as good as new, perhaps better. That weird presence is gone. Perhaps it was just her fatigue.

Making it out into the living room was probably a mistake. As much as Aishke acts grown up, she wasn’t raised in an environment where she had to pick up after herself, and after almost two days of being left to her own devices, it shows.

Sai groans. In a way she’s happy to be brought back down to reality right now. Otherwise she might start to cry when she realizes they’re all probably going to die harsh, grisly deaths. The next several days are going to bring nothing but blood, sweat, and tears.

“And eight hours sleep a night,” she reminds herself as she tosses clothes into the hamper and dishes into the sink.

“Oh, you’re awake?” Aishke emerges from the second bedroom, rubbing her eyes, still dressed in a pink nightshirt with teddy bears all over it.

Sai suppresses a giggle. “The disarray of the house was calling out to me and giving me nightmares.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny. Not.” Aishke glares at her briefly before the expression softens and she asks, “Are you feeling okay? No headaches? No normal aches?”

“No aches at all. I feel surprisingly refreshed.” Sai smiles and holds out the last two cups for Aishke to take off her hands. After all, the ache in her legs is nothing compared to what it usually was. “I would, however, like to pull on some clothes.”

It doesn’t take long to get dressed, but loose pants feel odd over her legs all of a sudden and she ends up opting for form-fitting leggings. They’re a soft and breathable sports material, and considering adrium needs some sort of air around it, it’s probably a good idea for them. Besides, sometimes it just feels like she could walk around with nothing covering them.

“I’m going to grab breakfast and go for a slow jog around the perimeter,” she calls out to Aishke, who is clattering around in the kitchen. “Want to join me?”

For an answer, she hears the bedroom door slam shut hurriedly and smiles to herself.

Aishke is finished just as Sai pops the last bite of food into her mouth. “Ah, ready I see.” The girl nods, and they head out on their run.

Sai concentrates on placing her feet correctly, on the connections with her legs and her body, on making sure her form and posture are perfect. Every few feet, she sends small shots of energy through her body, keeping it whole, working the connections. It’s hard to constantly think about something that used to come so easily to her. Three laps is enough for a start.

Mason is waiting for them when they get back to the apartment. He glances at Aishke and frowns. “You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry. I’ll be at my lab in twenty minutes. We’ll work on section C of the exercises Bastian sent for you.”

She grabs food from the cupboard and ducks out of the apartment, yelling her goodbyes.

“And you—” Mason points a finger at Sai “—James is waiting for you or will be in about twenty minutes. He wants to start the formation drills he’s come up with. At our best guess, we think we have another eight days before our scouting mission will be necessary.”

“What if they find us before?”

“Then we’re just going to have to adapt, aren’t we?”

Sai fidgets. She can’t seem to keep her hands at her sides. Everything smells too good, seems too bright. Her senses are heightened and her anxiety is off the charts. And the shadow lingers around the edges of her awareness again, making her second-guess her fitness levels.

She checks her body armor for the eightieth time and is equally relieved to find it all in place. This is important. Scouting to pre-empt being found might be risky, but if all they do is sit and wait they’ll be found in a matter of days anyway. Mason places a hand on her shoulder, and she yelps a little. Not having been ready for physical contact of any kind, she sidles out from it.

“Damn it.” She breathes out and in, trying to calm herself.

“We’re going to be fine, Sai.”

She nods, not believing a word he says. From his appearance, neither does he.

“In about twenty minutes, we’re going to load into our transporter and scout.”

Again, Sai nods, not trusting herself to speak. If she opens her mouth, she’ll probably start laughing hysterically, because right now, she feels a little hysterical. Well, that’s a lie—she feels a lot hysterical.

“We’re going to stick together and scout from our different stations to see if we can see what’s coming. You scout in your way and tell us if you find a spot where there isn’t something that shouldn’t be.”

The odd form of explanation makes Sai laugh, and it feels good to get out a bit of the pent-up tension. “Thanks,” she mumbles. “I needed that. I’m wound so tight I think I’ll break if I’m not careful.”

Mason looks at her gravely, his blue eyes a shade darker than usual. “I’m afraid you’ll break anyway.” He pats her shoulder again briefly.

“I’ll be fine.” And she will be because he made her say it. It was like someone having faith in her multiplied her chances of survival. She glances around at the other eight members of the team. There are ten of them in total, and she’s worried they won’t be enough. Against five Damascus and a Hound? With no domino ready to go with them yet? Who on earth thought this was a good idea? But she knows the answer, because she put the idea in their heads herself.

Their plan is to separate each member of the unit and take them out that way. They’re stronger unified than they are separately. It’s like they multiply in strength when they travel as a pack.

“It’s going to be crowded in that transport.” She wishes the dominos were ready, but they’re not. Not by a long shot. Mathur tried, but his best guesstimate is about another two weeks. They’re going to have to hold out that long, no matter what.

“You ready, Sai?” Mason asks quietly.

She wants to answer something like
I was born ready
, but the words stick in her throat, so she just nods instead.

“Excellent. Then let’s be on our way.”

It truly is crowded in the transport. She knew she was right but hadn’t thought she’d be quite this right. Luckily, her station is up in the passenger seat next to the pilot. Gives her the great advantage of not being stuck like sardines in a can with the eight hulking, brutish guys selected to be the brawn of the operation. And probably follow her to certain death, but in some scenarios, that’s the better way to go out in this encounter.

No one speaks. They’re all too busy manning their binoculars, trying to focus through the glass and sand beyond to see what’s out there. Perhaps a dust cloud, perhaps some other sort of movement under moonlight—she’s not entirely sure. All she knows is unless they’re close to them, they’ll never see them in this barren land of dust storms and tumbleweeds.

But maybe she can feel them. For hours and hours they drive, barely clearing the ground as they hover their way through the deserts of the UC. It’s dark outside, and night vision only lends so much aid. While their transport shields them from the sun, traveling during the day depletes reserve energy too quickly, so they wait the hottest moments out in their tin can. It makes her wonder how the Damascus travel. Do they have a vehicle? Will that vehicle also register as a black hole with her psionics?

So far, there’s no trace of anything suspicious. It’s not until the end of the second day that something untoward pops up.

She sits up suddenly and signals for Mason to stop the transport. After a minute or so of concentration, she points off to her left. “They’re that way. About a seven miles out.” The silence in the transport shifts to anticipation for everyone except Sai. The unease in her stomach flitters all the way up to her chest, making it constrict. She has to force herself to breathe evenly instead of gasp, and suddenly she’s afraid for her life.

Mason powers the engines down so that they’re gliding more than traveling. The constant dust rising off the surrounding plains can be tricky to navigate through. This part of the terrain used to be Kansas farmland, so there aren’t many pitfalls or mountains they can run into, just ruins of old turbines, some left over wood that’s almost dust, and the occasional nocturnal scavenger trying to uncover something from the sunburned landscape.

A few miles later they stop, and Mason adjusts his goggle settings and points directly in front of them. “There—see that?”

Sai squints a little, trying to adjust her own goggles, and gasps when they finally click. It feels like she can reach out and touch them, even though she’s fully aware they’re still a couple of miles distant. They’re sitting around in a camp-style formation, an odd parody of humans. One of them stands and the others follow suit, doing a strange stretch of solid metallic limbs as they start to pack up their belongings.

It makes sense they’d do their traveling by night and need to seek shelter during the worst hours of the day. The setting sun casts strange shadows behind them as they move.

“If we’re fast, we can surprise them before they pack up and come for us.” She squeezes the words out, still trying to get past their appearance. For some reason, she’d expected them to look like Dom—or, at least, similar to him since they were the first leg of the project.

But they’re nothing like him. Where Dom attempts to appear and pass for human, it’s like the Damascus revel in their differences. They have to be at least seven feet tall, adrium intricately woven around parody of a human exoskeleton, there’s something inherently end-of-the-world robotic about them.

Some still have remnants of the experimental human elements used in their construction—a glimpse of dried skin here and there, a tuft of hair—but that’s where any human semblance ceases. Their eyes are bright mechanical orange pinpricks in the night, and though they don’t seem to verbally communicate, their actions speak of some sort of inherent hierarchy and plan.

“This is bad. Mason, this is bad.” She watches the Hound as it sticks to its master’s shadow in perfect synchronicity. The lieutenant is formidable—the same as the rest but somehow stockier, built to last. The others are the fodder that strays in front of him. He’s the last stand.

Sai feels panic rise in her, a gut feeling she’s not sure they should ignore. “We need to turn and run now. We don’t have a hope against them, Mason.” She turns to him, trying to make her fears known.

He glances back into the main cabin, at the eight men they have with them, weapons and all. His brow furrows, and he looks back at her, tired bags hanging like hammocks under his eyes. “What makes you say that? These guys have been training their whole lives for something like this.”

She blinks. “You can’t see them? You can’t feel that power? There is nothing human left in them. They’re machines—all they want is to fulfill their orders and gain autonomy. We want to keep the lieutenant’s head intact. All they want to do is rip us apart.” She takes a deep breath and focuses, scanning.

The patrol stops its strange ritual of packing, and their heads move as one in her general direction. Slowly, their bodies maneuver to join their gazes. And Sai knows.

“They know we’re here,” she whispers, terrified. “We’re not going to have the slightest element of surprise...” Her voice trails off and she feels numb.

“It’s okay, Sai. We’re not all psionics, and we have weapons.” The transport stops and the men in the back move, quickly gathering up the pieces they’ll need. One of them walks over to the front. The name on his badge says
Draylin
.

He smiles at Sai and salutes her. “It’ll be fine, miss. James has been training us for years for something like this. Just do what you can, if you can do anything.”

“Just the Hound,” Sai mumbles. “I can only help with the Hound. The others can’t hear me.” The shadow leaks over her vision for a second, and she pushes at it, unable to afford it any thought right now. Her stomach clenches, and a sudden wave of nausea threatens to overwhelm her. Something about this is terribly wrong.