Page 56 of Godslayer
“What?” I push some hair out of my eyes and get to my feet, noticing that there’s a sleeping bag spread out on the ground, and my shoes are off. As if we’ve been here for a while. Tyse stands up as well. “Two hours? But…” I look back at Tyse. “It felt like seconds.”
“That’s because you were unconscious. I brought you here because…” He waves a hand at the crystals. “Well, I can’t say for sure, but I’m thinking this might be where spark comes from. It’s the only place where you actually looked better rather than worse when we arrived. You do feel better, right?”
“Yeah. I feel fine. I remember choking, but…” I shrug. “I can’t really remember anything else.”
“We were attacked by augments on the 702 train line, do ya remember that?”
I think back. Some of it, I do. The explosions. But then I see that man’s glowing blue eyes in my head and shiver. “Yeah,” I tell Tyse. “I remember.”
He lets out a breath. Like he just came through a very stressful time. “Well, we’re gonna stay here in this world for a while. So you can recover.”
“OK.” It’s confusing that Ineedto recover, so I take a moment to think. Clearly, this dimension hopping isn’t something I’m particularly adapted to, and he’s trying to be polite about this. Still, I need to ask. “Am I… in the way?”
“What?”
“You know. The mission? My weakness? I mean, I’m not like you, Tyse. I wasn’t really built for this. It’s possible that I’m more of a… a liability than a weapon.”
His smile is lazy and his eyes are bright. “Woman, ya couldn’t be a liability if ya tried. It’s not you. It’s just… people, right. Hoppin’ through spark dimensions is…” he exhales loudly. “Ya know, challenging.”
I reciprocate his smile, but deep down I can’t help but read between the lines of his concern. People. He said it like he’snotpeople. Because this world hopping stuff doesn’t seem to be challenging tohimat all. In fact, he looks rather… robust after his challenge.
“Anyway,” he says. As if reading between the lines of my silence. “I’m callin’ it a day. We’re makin’ camp here. At least one night, but maybe more, if we need it. I mean—” His effort to smile here is commendable. It’s just not… reassuring. “It’s not like we’re actually huntin’ that terrorist anymore, right? We’re just… leaving the Alphas. Right?”
“You’re asking me?” I point to myself.
“You don’t sound sure. I thought we had agreed. Take the train down the line and find ourselves a good world. Well. Maybe this world right here is the good one? Maybe we don’t even need to go back? Maybe this is our happily ever after?”
For the first time I take a good look around at the cave. It’s pretty, I’ll give it that. The crystals are glowing a soothing cyan blue. Like the canal back in my Tau City. They are very big, about a dozen in number, and light the place up. Setting a very soothing atmosphere.
The cave is massive. Easily as tall as a tower. Maybe not as tall as the God’s Tower. But looking up, the distance from the ground to the ceiling could be the same height as the Maiden tower, which was twelve floors tall in total, including the ground floor and the very tippy top where the communal dining room was.
It’s a wide cave as well. Easily spanning the same distance across the canal from Maiden tower to Extraction Tower. But there are little nooks here and there. Built into the walls of the cave or part of the bigger outcroppings. Almost as if the designer of the Little Sister dorm used this cave as inspiration. In fact, now that I think about it, there’s even a canal.
Well, a small stream. Probably a few dozen of them, actually. More like flowing puddles, but the point is, they’ve got a glow to them. It’s interesting. Especially this newfound resemblance to the dorm. I like it. There’s just… there’s this little nagging feeling in the back of my brain that’s flashing red at me. Trying to tellme something. Or remind me of something, I’m just not sure what.
It doesn’t matter. The real point of all this introspection is that, aside from all this natural beauty and interesting coincidence, there’s nothing here but rocks, the crystals, and us. I glance back at Tyse, who seems to be watching me very closely as he patiently waits for me to come to a conclusion about his question. “It doesn’t really look anything like how I pictured a happily ever after.”
He forces a smile. “What does your happily ever after look like?”
I shrug. “I’m… kind of a city girl.”
He laughs, which makes me let out a breath, feeling better because his laugh is real. “Oh, I get it. You need boutiques to resupply yourself with cheeky underwear.”
He’s not wrong about that. Boutiques are definitely part of my dream. But that’s not it. “I need…people, Tyse. I’m not a loner. I’m a social butterfly.” I look around the cave again, picturing myself being stuck here forever, not a single friend in site. Not even Anneeta. I shake my head at Tyse. “I don’t see it.”
He is clearly not giving up on this because his smile just grows bigger. “Well, that’s because we haven’t explored yet. There’s a tunnel. It just… doesn’t have a train in it. As far as I know, but maybe it does? We could follow that tunnel. Instead of going back to an ambush.”
I must be frowning because he quickly continues. “It’s just a suggestion. We could find another world, if that’s what you want.”
“Another world where I can’tbreathe? Sounds tempting.”
Again, his smile is forced.
“OK,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. “What the hell is going on?”
“What? What do ya mean?”
“You. This place and your new-found obsession with it. I understand that there’s danger back in our world on the train line, but… there’s a way around those…”Monsters. “Men,” is what I really say. Because they are augments. And so is Tyse. And he’s not a monster.
