The World Forgot (16 page)

Bok Choy exchanges a look with Chloe, who nods in agreement to something that he hasn't actually said out loud. The Devastator comes into view, spinning its head around on its massive neck to spot us. Bok Choy and Chloe open fire immediately, but the blasters leave only harmless-looking scorch marks on the creature's armor and exposed exoskeleton. The Devastator swings upward with its two upper arms, knocking the guns out of Bok Choy's and Chloe's hands, and then it kicks outward with its two heavier middle limbs, ramming Bok Choy and Chloe in their chests and sending them sprawling. The creeper looks up and spots me surrounded by the Brittas—which, I suddenly realize, makes me look a lot more like a valuable target than if an army of clones
weren't
creating a human shield around me.

“Gargle, gargle, kim chee!” it growls. Or something close to that. I left my universal translator in my Comic-Con swag bag.

Even if I don't speak monster, I'm picking up on the Devastator's body language just fine. It pulls yet another nasty pointy sword thing from its side (seriously, how many swords does a giant six-limbed death monster
need
?) and starts plodding toward me. That's when Cole decides to get heroically stupid and leaps with all his Almiri might right for the thing's arm—inadvertently pulling an impressive parallel bars maneuver and flipping right past his attacker into a heap of hurt on the floor.

I'm going to assume that wasn't the plan.

The Devastator clocks Cole with a nasty kick, and Cole is officially down for the count.

“Coooooooole!” the Brittas screech in unison. They all make to run toward their dashing leading man—I swear I hear one sob, “Is his butt okay?”—but then they seem to think better of it (because, one can only assume, of the scary-ass Devastator standing between said hunk and themselves). Together they whirl around and disperse down the length of the hall like cowardly little chicken shits, squealing in terror all the way.

Well, to be fair, some of them faint.

So my protective Britta-barrier has completely crumbled, and now the Devastator looms over me, ready for another shish-kebab-ing. But before I get the pointy end, Bok Choy leaps into the path of the blade.

It impales him, awkwardly, right in the side.

“No!” Chloe screams as Bok Choy cries out in pain. My heart constricts in my chest at the sound of Chloe's wail. She scoops up her blaster and fires at the Devastator.

I feel a tug on my arm and realize that Ducky is pulling me out of the way. As Ducky, Marnie (still unconscious, lucky dog), Original Britta, and I huddle behind a protective pile of rubble the Jin'Kai so thoughtfully left for us during their previous firefight, we can only watch helplessly as the scene in front of us seems to play out in slow motion.

Chloe runs straight at the Devastator, clutching her ineffectual pistol in her fist more like you would a rock than a firearm.

“Chloe!” I scream at my only child. My throat is hot, burning, as I watch her charge headfirst into danger. Britta has to physically restrain me to keep me from leaping after my daughter. (She gets an elbow to the gut for her efforts, but she doesn't let go.)

Chloe literally throws herself at the Devastator, and the creature opens its arms up wide, as if to catch her midleap. She crashes into his chest, and I can practically see the impact rippling through her. The monster's gargantuan arms wrap around my daughter and squeeze. I watch her grimace in pain as the grip around her tightens. The creature opens its massive maw, the strange, jointed teeth flexing in and out on the exposed mouth tendons, and I realize with unavoidable certainty that this beast means to bite my child's head off.

“Smile, you son of a bitch!” Chloe screams. After wiggling her arm free, she reels back and thrusts her fist deep into the Devastator's open mouth, still clutching her gun. The creature chokes and staggers back. Then Chloe flattens her arms against her body, goes limp, and manages to slide out of her assailant's grasp, rolling away as she hits the floor, shielding her face.

And then the Devastator's head explodes.

The headless body collapses to the floor. Without missing a beat, Chloe has flown to Bok Choy's side and cradles him in her lap. He winces in pain when she touches his side. Chloe, meanwhile, doesn't even seem to notice that I'm checking her all over like a prize pig at the fair. “If you ever do something that reckless again, I'll— You're
bleeding
!”

Long jagged gashes snake up Chloe's arm all the way to her elbow, bloody reminders that it can be hazardous to jam your entire arm down a space monster's throat. I fumble in my tunic, for what feels like an eternity, until I am finally able to pull out the ratty cloth Marnie purchased for me. I wrap it around Chloe's arm—the world's least hygienic bandage.

But Chloe will have none of it.

“Get off me. I'm fine.” She yanks the rag off her arm and uses it instead to put pressure on Bok Choy's side. He's not looking good. He manages to sit up, but it obviously pains him. “We have to keep moving,” he tells Chloe through gritted teeth. “There will be more of them any minute.”

“He's right.”

To my surprise this voice of reason belongs to none other than Original Britta. Even more surprising, she's busy looting the Devastator's body for weapons.

“What?” she says when she sees my look. “Some of this shit could come in handy.”

Uh, who is this chick, and why didn't she take over Britta's body sixteen years ago?

“Hand me one of those knives,” I tell Britta, reluctantly leaving my daughter's side. I look around and see that Cole has, thankfully, roused himself, although Marnie is still unconscious. “Cole,” I say, “round up the Brittas.” Cole aye-ayes and runs off immediately.

“Donald, was it?” Britta says to Ducky.

He gulps. I can't blame him—he went to school with Britta for twelve years, and this is the first she's deigned to speak to him.

“How much can you carry?” she asks him. Then, without waiting for an answer, she proceeds to drape him in supplies from both the dead Devastator and the Jin'Kai guards, making him look like a cosplay enthusiast with no sense of scale.

“I have a question,” Ducky says as Cole returns with his flock of Brittas and scoops up Marnie. Britta shoves a blaster into Ducky's hands, and he tries his best not to hold it like you would a dead cockroach. “That Devastator's head just totally exploded.”

“Yeah,” I say. I'm scooping up my own share of weapons, whatever I can shove safely down the front of my jacket. “We were there, remember? And that wasn't a question.”

“True,” Ducky replies. “But, um, how, exactly, did that happen?”

“I overloaded the power cell on the blaster,” Chloe says, still tending to Bok Choy.

“How'd you know how to do that?” Ducky asks. “Is that part of your training? Evil Alien Weaponry 101?”

“No,” Chloe answers. “I just figured it might work.”

Ducky smiles broadly at me. “I'd like to think of a clever way to say ‘the apple doesn't fall far from the tree,'” he says, “but I think I'm too jacked up on adrenaline and unadulterated fear to be witty.”

“Speaking of which,” I say, stooping down next to Bok Choy. “If you can move, now'd be the time to show us some of that genetically superior Jin'Kai stamina.”

Wincing, Bok Choy allows Chloe to lift him off the floor. “Can do,” he says.

We use the sound of gunfire and screaming as an indication of which directions
not
to travel as we make our way through the installation and back to the main ozone plant. Scoring from blaster fire marks the walls our entire way, and whatever security may have been in place before has been completely blown to hell. It seems Marsden wasn't exaggerating about how much the Jin'Kai command would disapprove of his secret genetic tinkering. The ozone plant's backup lights are flickering and fading, and it's clear that whatever forces hit the station, they hit it hard and fast.

We clomp along the high suspended catwalks until we reach a segment that's completely collapsed in what appears to have been a very one-sided firefight.

“Now what?” Ducky asks.

“I could jump down,” Cole offers. “Catch you one at a time.”

“It's too high,” I tell him. “Even for you.” I look around, and then my eyes rest on perhaps the worst idea I have had in a long time. Which is really saying something.

“The power's down,” I say. “Machinery is offline. These compressors have conduits that lead straight to the loading bay in the hangar, right?”

“You're bat shit,” Chloe says. “You want to crawl
through the compressors
?”

“You have a better idea?” I ask.

“Isn't any idea better than going through machinery that houses highly explosive and completely unbreathable gas?” she counters. “Like, literally any idea?”

“The ozone in the conduits is in brick form,” I say. “We should be able to climb through without too much trouble.”

“Assuming that the bricks are stable,” Chloe says. “The temperature is probably already rising with the power off. If the bricks break down, we blow up.”

“That sounds bad,” Ducky puts in helpfully.

“Look,” I argue, “our way is blocked, and there's an army of two-and-a-half-meter-tall space monsters swarming everywhere, just waiting for another chance to cut us to bits. This is the fastest way out. And if the temperatures really are rising, then it's in our best interest to get the flip out of here before the whole place explodes, don't you think?”

“I'm with Elvie.”

And spank my tooshie and call me a cab, it's none other than Britta who says it.

“If Elvie says it'll work,” she continues while I stare at her, mouth agape, “I believe it. She totally saved all of us on the
Echidna
. Well,
most
of us, anyway.”

“Uh, thanks?” I say.

Finding a panel weak enough to jimmy open without using one of the blasters takes a little while, but after we've pried it open with one of the Devastator swords, climbing inside is relatively easy. At least Marnie has the good sense to wake up in time for the trek. I was having visions of tugging her behind us by her shoelaces. To her credit, as soon as ­Marnie hears that we'll all be crawling through a series of narrow ducts filled with highly unstable explosives, she simply nods and says, “Somethin' fer the songs, yeah?”

The metal ducts that house the conveyors are narrow, but I'm able to squeeze through by keeping my elbows tucked tightly under my chest.

“Hey, Elvie,” Ducky calls from behind me. “Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.”

“A what?” Marnie asks from behind Ducky.

“Come to outer space,” I join in. “We'll get together, have a few laughs.”

Ducky starts chuckling, and I crack a smile myself.

“What in the hell are you two talking about?” Chloe shouts. She's taken the lead, followed immediately by Bok Choy and then myself.

“Don't worry about it,” comes Cole's echoey voice. He's holding up the rear, in an effort to herd all of the Brittas as quickly as possible. “You'll get used to those two eventually. They have their own language.”

The acrid ozone smell stings my nose, and I squeeze my eyes shut to push the tears away.

“When we're out of here, Chloe,” I grunt, squeezing around a difficult bend, “back on Earth, I'm going to have to educate you on the rich dramatic oeuvre of the genre-­redefining thespian Bruce Willis.”

“If you exercised your tub of an ass as much as you talked, you wouldn't be holding us up back here,” says a familiar catty voice. But I can't tell if it belongs to one of the Brigade or to Original Britta.

As we continue—and I do my best to block out the incessant jabbering of the Brittas quizzing Cole about his hair ­products—I begin to notice something wet beneath me.

“What is this sticky stuff?” I ask. “It's not ozone, is it?”

“I thought if the bricks broke down, we'd go boom,” Ducky says.

“Want to get the lead out in front there?” Cole calls. “I'm not super-excited about the ‘going boom' part.”

“Keep your pants on!” Chloe shouts back to her father. “Some of us are injured.”

Ahead of me, Bok Choy says not a word. I can hear him grunting quietly as he moves.

The wetness underneath me is starting to soak through my tunic now, and I'm getting a very bad feeling in my gut. Sure enough, as we pass over a grated portion of the duct, a dim light shimmers through, and I see that the viscous liquid running down my fingers is bright red. Instantly I feel nauseous.

Bok Choy's breathing is slow and labored. With some difficulty I manage to push my arm forward to grab his calf and give it a squeeze. Bok Choy simply pauses for a second. I can see his head dip slightly as a quiet sigh escapes him. He flexes his calf under my hand. I know immediately to stay quiet. Tears are welling in my eyes suddenly, and I realize that they're not for Bok Choy, as sad as his condition makes me. They're for the girl who's in love with him, crawling just ahead of him, totally unaware that he is bleeding out. The girl, I realize with a mixture of guilt and fear, who is helping us all only so that I'll help him.

The last portion of our crawl through the chlorine-­smelling pipeline is a sharp vertical drop. Without any real room to maneuver otherwise, we're forced to wiggle headfirst down the tube and slide the rest of the way. After Chloe and Bok Choy lower themselves, it's my turn. I make my way to the edge and look down. Below I watch as Bok Choy lands on a gelatinous receptacle pad no doubt designed to absorb the impact of the ozone bricks sliding through. Chloe swims through the goo to cradle him, and I can tell from the way her face darkens that he's doing even worse than I feared.