Page 55 of Godslayer
“Oh, that explains all the explosions!” I wheeze these words out.
“I guess there’s a gang of them? They run this territory and we were passin’ through it.”
“How did they know we were on the train?”
Tyse thinks for a minute. Then he huffs. “It was the workers. The bots at the last station. They must be hacked. Those augments must have access to their vision sensors.”
“That’s why they looked at us funny.”
Tyse nods. “Yeah. I suppose.”
“Well, what do we do?” My breathing is mostly back under control now, but I let out a long sigh just to steady myself one last time.
“We’ll try and get past them in this dimension?” he says. Seeing my confusion, he clarifies. “I hopped us into the first frequency I saw, but it was… I dunno. Somethin’ wrong with it. Ya couldn’t breathe.”
“That’s why I was choking. Wait. Couldyoubreathe?”
Tyse nods. “Yeah, I was fine. But… I’m not human, remember? So I hopped us into this one.” He exhales loudly, raising his gaze to look around.
I look around as well. There’s no train here. No train tracks, but luckily, there is a tunnel. A terrible thought occurs to me. “What if there was no tunnel here?”
Tyse meets my gaze, wincing. “Yeah. We’d be dead. I wasverycareless. It won’t happen again. It’s just… new. And I needed to get us out of there before you got hit. Every single one of ‘em had a Versi.”
My eyes drop to his weapon, then rise back up to watch his expression. “So… what are we up against? And what do we do?”
“Up against,” he sighs. Looking away. “I’d say… a small army?” He looks back at me. “But it’s OK. We’re gonna stay here, in this dimension, and make our way down the train line until we get past them.”
“What if they control the whole line? What if they’re the terrorists?”
“They’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“Just… they’re not. I know. It’s not them. So we just need to get past them and?—”
But his words trail off. He doesn’t stop talking—his mouth is still moving—it’s just… I can’t hear him anymore.
It’s different than the underwater sound too. Everything just begins to…fade.
Then, I’m gasping again. Tyse is holding me in his arms, looking down at me, panicking. “Clara! Clara!” He’s practically yelling. And he’s very close, so this is loud and makes me wince. “Can you hear me?”
I nod, choking again, but it’s different this time. I can breathe, but I don’t feel well. I can barely open my eyes and?—
The next thing I know, spark is flowing through me like a river. It’s filling me up and everything is warm, and good, and I’m smiling up at a very worried-looking Tyse.
“I feel… amazing!” All these words come out as a giggle. “What’s happening?” Again, I’m laughing. But I’m also looking at Tyse, and he’snotlaughing. He looks… scared. His face is completely white. Like all the blood has drained from him. His eyes glowing a bright blue. And when I glance at his neck, I see pulsating light inside him. Like…stringsof lights. Like threads, running in lines, up and down his neck.
For some reason he reminds me of those workers. Of those bots.
The blackness comes back, quickly overtaking me, but just as quickly, it recedes again. This time we’re in a cave. I see spark-colored crystals—giant, massive, tower-sized spark crystals rising up from the cave walls. The drunk feeling is gone, the choking, gone, and I feel quite good.
I blink, staring at a petrified Tyse, who is kneeling down next to me. Then I push up, propping myself up onto my elbows to get a better look. “Where are we?”
Tyse laughs, blowing out a breath. It’s one of those relieved laughs. “I have no fuckin’ idea. But it took me ten tries to wake you up this time, and?—”
“Thistime?”
“Clara, we were hopping worlds for over two hours.” He twists his wrist to show me his watch, but it just confuses me more.
