How—after being stabbed through the chest with the warrior’s blade—had he survived?
Karr had always thought that one would be able to decipher what happened in the afterlife. That some part of him, hidden beneath the stupor of disbelief in the impossible, would reveal to him what had occurred in the moments he’d stood in that strange otherworld.
But he came up empty every time.
He knew only one thing for certain. It was a place evenly split between darkness and light, and hehadn’tchosen a side.
Just as he hadn’t chosen a side with Cade’s plan.
Karr stood on the landing dock of theStarfalland leaned against the silver railing, feeling sick as he stared out at the world.
All around him, the peaks of red and purple mountains stretched into the sky above the valley,jagged and unforgiving. To his left, the strange monumental towers of rock protruded from the valley below.
It had been beautiful when they arrived at the Gathering, only days ago.
Had it been justdays?
Karr gripped the railing tightly, his palms sweaty beneath his S2 gloves. So much had already changed.
He closed his eyes to right himself, but the call of the wind made him feel uprooted. His damned helmet felt like it was pressing in against him.
The audio transmitter picked up on a strange melodic cry of an alien bird. It echoed across the valley, bounding off the mountains like a mournful song.
Far off in the atmosphere, the planet’s rings shone in the night sky; pastels that seemed to dance with life. He’d always loved ringed planets, as if some great artist had painted them across the sky or taken extra time to mold and shape them. Karr knew he should wish to capture the sight of the rings now, sketch their smooth arches and spread the images across the top of his bunk.
But the magic of the scene was broken by the truth.
For each time the wind blew, it carried the sound of a drill driving into the mountainside. It was a constant, ever-present reminder that signified Cade’s horrific choice.
He’d started a war, and it was one that Karr wished, desperately, he had no part in.
The wind sighed. It was acrid and hot, and Karr breathed deep inside his S2, feeling the strange absence of pain in his chest where a sword wound should have been.
He felt sick. When he looked down below, inside the electromagnetic walls set up beneath the hoveringStarfall,he saw the prisoners.
So many Dohrsarans who’d welcomed them to their planet. Who’d been willing to exist, side by side, with armored creatures from another world. And Cade had taken them all captive.
He’d joined with the Dohrsaran king, the monstrous warrior whose one eye glittered darkly as if he were always waiting for a chance to strike. How long had Geisinger been in talks with the king? And how long had Cade held the truth of what he would do when they arrived here?
“Hiding out again, little brother?”
Karr did not turn at the sound of Cade’s voice. He simply sank deeper into his stance as he leaned over the railing.
Cade’s crew-turned-army, so helpfully run by Rohtt, stood guard around the clock, their weapons ready to fire should the prisoners revolt again. But it didn’t matter.
Karr now understood the true meaning of the blueprint he’d seen in Cade’s room. He wished he’d dug a bit deeper, had had time to discover the hundreds of mites hiding in the cargo hold.
He’d never seen ones like this before in person; hadn’t known the tech was fully completed, though there had been talks of weaponry such as this on the horizon.
Each mite was like a tiny droid soldier, whose mechanical “bite” reacted with the cerebral cortex of the imprisoned host body.
If a host revolted or acted out of turn, it sent a signal to the mites, which sent waves of pain throughout every host, firing against every nerve. He’d seen Cade signal those mites with a button on the wrist of his S2.But Karr knew it wasn’t that simple.
There had to be something in control of them all. A power source somewhere on the ship that was continually running. Perhaps it was the ship itself. Karr knew his way around tech, but nothing such as this—nothing that could run both the mitesandthe electromagnetic wall he’d trapped everyone in, used to keep prisoners inside, and to keep enemiesout.
It was all sickening.
The crew: Jameson and Doerty, Rivers and Stacya and Balu. They were his family, the ones that had stuck around the longest. They’d shared laughter and drinks and meals during what seemed like endless interstellar travels. They’d explored new places together, sang stupid songs and gotten so drunk they couldn’t tell their right feet from their left.
