Page 157

The guards shout at me to get moving. I wash out the shampoo and reach for the spigot nodule when I hear a thin shriek. But I didn’t twist the nodule yet…

The sound becomes a high-pitched frequency that makes my ears ache. Then it stops before beginning again. I turn off the shower and creep through the steam toward the noise. Maybe a broken air filter? The sound grows more intense as I reach the far wall.

I lean closer, looking for the source, and a burning sensation makes a thin line down the side of my head. I lurch back as if bitten.

There’s nothing there.

Just a metal bulkhead. Something hot drips down my neck. I touch it and my hand comes back wet with blood. I trace the left side of my head and find a razor-thin gash running from skull to earlobe.

What the…

I couldn’t see it from the straight-on angle, but now I see it from the side—a blade emerging from the wall, so thin it is almost invisible. Viewed from the side, it is as flat as a butcher’s cleaver. Small teeth blur as they vibrate on the bottom. The blade disappears back into the wall.

Steam seeps through the thin cuts in the metal. Three cuts, together making a triangle. There’s a clunk and I barely scramble back to grab hold of the shower station when the triangle in the wall becomes a tunnel four meters long as a section of the bulkhead disappears backward into space.

I brace myself for the decompression.

It never comes. No alarm wail. I turn to look.

Steam swirls into the triangular hole. On the far end of the tunnel a viscous membrane seals the tunnel’s exit. When I see it growing on the inner aperture, I backpedal and call for Fig.

She comes around the corner irritated until she stops dead in her tracks, eyes on the hole. The membrane has grown fast, now covering the hole like the head of a drum. Dark red veins slither through the fleshy substance.

Something happens to Fig. A pulse goes through her that makes my hairs stand on end. The white lines on her skin throb and her flesh ripples, and then subdivides to thicken until it looks like the scales of a lizard.

Her slender pistol appears in her hand.

I hear wet thumps behind me and turn to see dark shapes emerge from the membrane. They fall on the floor dripping with viscera like stillborn babies.

But they aren’t babies. And they aren’t dead.

If anything, they look like they are sleeping.

SOON THE ROOM IS filled with armored men and heavy weapons as Fig summons our escort of Sol Guards. Human faces become metal screaming suns as their helmets slither closed. I only just remember I’m naked. I shove on the clothes and shoes Paxton set out and let the guards push me over to Volga. She stands dripping. The guards didn’t undo the cuffs or take her out of her jumpsuit for her shower.

Figment approaches the sleeping intruders as the Sol Guards fan around them.

“Backup inbound,” a Sol Guard growls to Fig.

“Are they dead?” Paxton asks.

“Zilch on thermal except respiratory exhaust. They’re barely breathing.”

“Obsidian?”

“That one’s too small. It’s like a baboon. And look at the size of their heads.”

Six long men and one powerfully built, but shorter even than me, lie on the floor completely naked, with long, pale leather packs strapped onto their backs.

No, not men.

There’s something wrong with them. The dark, earth-red skin that covers them looks more like hide. White scars make intricate lines over it. Amphibian-like folds cover their eyes, ears, and nostrils. Their heads are unnaturally large and shaved except for long black tails of coarse hair. Grease from the membrane shimmers on their skin.

The small one shows the first signs of movement.

He looks up at us through the steam with a flat human face, though his passive black eyes are as big as eggs. There’s a soft crack and he begins to chew. Blood pours out his thin-lipped mouth. Bits of glass tinkle on the floor. He shudders in ecstasy.

“Shoot it if it moves,” the lead grunt barks.