“Don’t you see? Sheridan sacrificed—what, a dozen?—Nisaar to render Layanna impotent.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Sheridan said.
“You don’t deny it.”
“Cunt!” Hildra said. “I’ll fucking gut you.”
One of the soldiers struck her across the face, the only part of her exposed in the armor, and she sank to her knees. Janx lunged at the soldier but received a shock prod in the side, in a chink of the armor, for his trouble. The big man dropped to the ground beside Hildra, twitching.
The sound of the battle was growing out of the control in the near distance—and coming nearer. The roar of the fire increased. The whole palisade wall must be on fire now. Perhaps breached. The smell of smoke thickened on the air, bringing tears to Avery’s eyes.
“Let’s see her,” Sheridan snapped, and one of the soldiers tore off Layanna’s helmet, exposing her face.
“Search him,” she directed another soldier, indicating Avery. “He’ll have a certain knife on him. Bring it to me.” It didn’t take much searching; Avery carried the weapon in a satchel outside his armor. He always wanted it at hand, just in case. Sheridan admired the blade, turning it over in her hands. “The weapon that can kill a god,” she murmured. “The aide was right, after all.” Then, eyes on Layanna: “Hold her.”
Soldiers seized Layanna’s arms and shoved her to her knees.
“Don’t do this,” Avery said. He started to position himself between the two women, but soldiers dragged him backward, and something sharp flashed before his eyes.
Sounds of the battle increased in volume. Thumping and crashing from the jungle. A scream came from nearby—not just of pain, but utter, stark horror. It was the same cry that Xarris had made as the maggots wriggled into him.
“I won’t waste time on speeches,” Sheridan said, halving the distance that remained between her and Layanna. She brought up the knife. “You’ve been a spirited antagonist, but—” She reached Layanna, grabbed a fistful of blond hair in one hand, jerking Layanna’s head back to expose her throat, and shoved the knife against her jugular with the other. She didn’t even finish her sentence but started to press down, when suddenly figures shambled from the undergrowth, arms raised and maggots wriggling.
The soldiers spun to fire at the new threat, but even though their shots landed the maggot-men and –women lurched forward, squirming shapes sprouting from their jellied eyes and wasted flesh, bursting from their fingertips like flowers in a magician’s trick. Even Sheridan let out a gasp and jumped behind the line of soldiers, a hand reaching for her gun.
Avery grabbed Layanna’s arm. “Run!”
On the ground, Hildra was helping Janx to his feet. While the soldiers were distracted, they followed as Avery and Layanna beat their way through the jungle, not even pursuing a path, just pelting, putting as much distance between themselves and Sheridan’s group as they could. Gunfire rattled behind them. Screams rang out. Avery’s heart beat wildly, barely contained by his ribs.
Layanna glanced back, and he saw the fear in her face, her eyes wide, face flushed with exertion but set like stone, hair whipping about her, and for some reason he was surprised, even unnerved. He’d never seen her look so utterly human before. So vulnerable. So scared. She was without ability to call on her other-self, adrift and practically defenseless in a hostile jungle, a second away from death in any direction.
Gunfire sounded behind them. Closer. Sheridan hadn’t given up.
Janx and Hildra were lagging. The whaler hadn’t quite recovered from being electrocuted.
“Hurry!” Avery told them.
He didn’t look to see if they obeyed but continued blundering off, using his own armored body as a blunt instrument to smash his way through the jungle. What he wouldn’t give for a machete! Undergrowth pressed at him, raked at him, and he sweated for every inch. The stench of seaweed filled his nose and he realized he was smashing his way through rotting seaweed strands that came away in ragged streamers, catching on the sharp points on his armor and trailing ridiculously behind him. Seaweed caught in Layanna’s hair and she had to spit the strands out from between her teeth. Fury shone in her eyes—a goddess, reduced to this!
Behind them, a gun cracked, then another. Looking back, Avery saw Janx and Hildra right behind him. Having to smash his way through the jungle had allowed them to catch up to him … which meant Sheridan could, too.
Avery plunged through the last strands of seaweed vines and into a more open area, almost colliding with a sharpened point. Around him rose beautiful but strange tree-like shapes; though they towered majestically overhead like trees, their bark, if it could be called that, was made of something like a conch shell, whirled and pointed at various instances along their lengths. Roots suspiciously like crab legs thrust into the ground. Avery thought he saw one move.
He and the others ran through the shell-trees, having to navigate around the encroaching coral bushes, great colorful reefs aswarm with activity that thrust up in mounds twenty feet high all around. Once Avery and Layanna were forced to scramble over one, and he marveled at the war taking place right beneath him, around him, of two competing corals at mortal combat with each other. The reef tore at his gauntlets, and he was glad his hands were protected from the razor sharp juts and thrusts. Animals, all mutated, swarmed the reef, feeding on the coral itself, fleeing from pursuers or hunting those who fled. Most gave Avery and Layanna in their armor a wide berth, but once something like a furred eel lunged out, clamped onto Avery’s leg, broke several teeth and slipped back into a crevice.
Avery and the others plunged back into the undergrowth, and just in time. Shots echoed off the shell-trees behind them. Avery couldn’t see ahead, the jungle was so thick, but he could feel the land rising under him. They were going up a hill.
Suddenly, the land fell away. He threw his hand out, reaching to Layanna for support, but he was too slow and she was behind.
He slipped and tumbled down an incline. Rocks and branches slapped at him, but his armor saved him from serious injury. He was sliding down a slope that sprouted trees—huge, glistening, ammonia-reeking trees, with limbs that dripped down like the tentacles of a jellyfish ...
Avery caught himself on a rock, gasping, and glanced up to Layanna, Janx and Hildra at the top of the slope. Layanna stared down at him, frightened and frustrated in equal measure.
“Come back up, Francis! Quickly!”
“They’re coming!” Hildra added.
“I—can’t,” he said. With the weight of the armor dragging at him, he doubted he could even hold onto the rock for much longer. Not only that, but the reek of ammonia and venom was making him light-headed. “Come down to me. We’ll—”
“I can’t.” Layanna gestured at the dangling tentacle branches oozing venom, then touched her unprotected face. “I lost my helmet.”
He swore. “Fine. Janx and Hildra, stay with her. Go around. We’ll—meet later—”
The ammonia reek burned his eyes and nostrils, filled his mouth and lungs. The world started to blur. With one hand, he released the rock and adjusted his helmet so that his mouth could clamp down on the respirator and breathe in the rich oxygen mixture of the tank. Without both hands, he couldn’t support himself and lost hold of the rock.
Above, Layanna screamed his name, and then she and the others were gone.
He tumbled and bounced, striking root and rock, trying to arrest his slide by digging his armored fingers into the soil. If he survived this, he’d be a mass of bruises tomorrow. The jellyfish trees scrolled by overhead, their long tentacles plucking harmlessly at his armor, leaving only sticky trails. Rocks caromed into him. Once a creature with bright spines scuttled out of his way, hissing at him in annoyance.
When the slope and the jellyfish trees ended, he rolled to a stop. Removing the respirator, he gasped for breath, the world spinning around him. For a moment he thought he would throw up, so he removed his helmet, but the spell passed and he shoved it back on. Checking himself for broken bones, he found that he seemed to be more or less intact. He looked around, hoping to recognize something from one of the maps he’d studied, really hoping that somehow Layanna, Janx or Hildra might have arrived before him, but of course they hadn’t. He was alone, except for the jungle. He was in some sort of valley, overgrown with riotous flora—and fauna. The two looked so alike at times, coral (an animal) blending with flowers, shrubs, trees and vines, with all sorts of mutants in between, that it was hard to tell which was which.
He climbed to his feet and marched through a sea of beautiful orange anemone grass high as his hip, only gradually becoming aware that clownfish-like animals shared the grass with him, and that some might not be friendly. He found the first broken-off coral piece he could and used it as an ill-shaped staff to ward off unwanted guests. He didn’t know if the anemones here were poisonous and didn’t endeavor to find out, but he suspected that once again his armor had saved him.
The sun beat down. Sweating ridiculously, he wished the suit had some sort of ventilating system. After hours of picking his way through the jungle, night fell, leaving him in relative darkness. He still had the stars, though, two of the moons when they weren’t hiding behind clouds, and some of the surrounding flora that glowed with bioluminescence. This was fortunate, as he didn’t even have a flashlight.
His belly growled, and he was exhausted more than he’d normally be by hauling the armor around all day. Periodically he would call out for Layanna or the others (cringing at the necessity, fearful to draw attention to himself), but no one answered. He wasn’t even sure he was going in the right direction.
Should he stop for the night? He hated the idea of sleeping in the armor, but he couldn’t risk removing it, either. But what if the others had ventured ahead, and he fell behind and never caught them? He was certain they would be making better time than he.
Something glowed in the jungle ahead.
He couldn’t remember if any of the others had brought a light with them. In the mad scramble to leave camp, anything was possible. Hildra, at least, had grabbed the Starfish samples. Cautiously, Avery moved toward the illumination, navigating around the bulks of huge dark trees whose bark showed what looked like circular patches of fungus but turned out, upon closer inspection, to be octopus-like suckers complete with teeth. The light seemed to come from a small clearing, and Avery paused on the edge of it, looking toward the source of the light but unable to make anything out. Warily, holding his coral club before him, he stepped into the clearing—
His feet left the ground, and he moved through the air screaming. He swung the club. Something knocked it away. He struck some surface, bounced. Stuck. Some large shape descended over him, blocking out the stars, and he saw many legs, multi-jointed and crab-like. Desperate, Avery yanked at what must be some sort of web.
The creature pounced on him, driving out his breath. Gaping, tooth-lined jaws latched onto his shoulder. Squeezed. Metal dented with a screech. The creature growled and studied Avery more closely, looking for a weak spot. His visor had been thrown open at the impact, and it wasn’t long before the creature noticed the tender flesh of his face.
It rotated its gargantuan bulk, bringing its grouper-like maw toward his head. The stench of poison and rotting flesh filled Avery’s nose. Razor sharp teeth snapped right above him. He struggled, trying to strike at the thing, but he was bound fast.
The creature bore down on him—
A gun cracked.
The thing wheeled about, facing the new threat, the glow-light over its great head bobbing.
The gun fired again, then again, and blood burst from the creature’s flank. It screamed, shot out a strand of webbing into the high shadows of an overhead tree and disappeared into the darkness above.
Panting, Avery stared at a figure holding a gun. At first he couldn’t make it out, but then the shape moved forward, into a stripe of moonlight, and he saw Sheridan, her armor dented and stained, bits of vegetation caught in one of the chinks. He’d known it was her before she raised the visor of her helm, but, perhaps out of courtesy, she did so, and he saw the weariness in her face. A small cut on her brow had bled into her right eyebrow and was scabbing over.
