Page 25 of Defiant

“I think I’d rather use that power to squash you,” I snapped. “You betrayed me, Brade.”

“Andyoubetrayed the Superiority,” she replied. “I merely tried to turn you in for it. But that’s meaningless.” She stepped even closer to me. “Thank you for showing me our potential.”

Then she vanished.

Scud, scud,scud.I collapsed into the chair by the wall, huddled up on myself, and couldn’t control it any longer. For the next hour, I let things vanish and appear around me, increasingly eclectic and bizarre, as my soul went aflame and my self—what was left of it—hid in the recesses of my mind.

Terrified.

Part Two

9

By the next morning, I had a handle on myself again. I knew I couldn’t continue on as before—so I made a decision.

I was a weapon. I’d started on that path by going to the nowhere, and then by allowing a delver’s soul to combine with mine. My purpose was to free my people.

Nothing else mattered. My emotions didn’t matter. The damage to my soul and my psyche? Just part of the payment. I could do this. I was a soldier. It was what I’d signed up for. I could survive long enough to bring down the Superiority. Afterward, who cared?

Making this decision was liberating. Not because I was freed from emotions. But, like a surgical strike, this let me control the worst of them. Fear, anxiety, uncertainty. It took them out, leaving me with the manageable ones. Sadness. Regret. Loss.

Those were emotions I knew; they’d been my companions long before I discovered M-Bot and Doomslug.

I rose, enjoyed the luxury of an actual shower—not just a cleanser—and found a note on my schedule from Jorgen, requesting a meeting.

Jorgen. What would I do about Jorgen? I knew what I wanted: tolove him. That wasn’t an emotion I wanted to be free of, and wasn’t one I could ignore.

At the same time, I wasn’t human anymore. Iwouldhelp bring down the Superiority, and find a way to protect our reality from the delvers. I would find a way, but I was increasingly certain that way would break me.

When that happened, I had to somehow protect Jorgen from the shrapnel. I didn’t want to think about it though. First, to test my newfound control, I needed to try a baby step: something I’d been avoiding the last few days—breakfast.

Doomslug clinging to my shoulder, we made our way to the mess hall—then froze in the doorway. Inside, long rows of metal tables offered up the latest chef’s delights. Algae mostly, prepared in a variety of ways. But amazingly, our recent collaborations with other species had given us access to more. Alanik’s and Hesho’s worlds contained grains in abundance. Fruits. Meats thatweren’trat. Delivered to us in thanks for our aid in protecting their planets.

Our cooks seemed to be enjoying the variety. If you could prepare algae in a hundred different ways, imagine what you could do withrice.Sure, we’d had some of these luxuries in the past—grown in specialized caverns in very small amounts for the wealthy. For that reason, I’d always felt guilty partaking. But this new style of dining—a feast of flavors in every meal—was the way thingsshouldbe. If we succeeded, this was whateveryonewould eat.

It wasn’t the food itself that stopped me in the doorway. It was the sheer cacophony. Dozens of pilots chattering. And slugs. There were several varieties, though some of the newest ones we’d discovered were still being studied, and hadn’t been authorized for active duty yet. Of those at breakfast, the bulk were yellow and blue like Doomslug. Those were hyperslugs, who could help us teleport. Almost as common were the purple-and-orange slugs, who let us communicate via cytonics.

Surprisingly, there were more than a few red-and-black slugs, capable of releasing blasts of cytonic energy. We had started callingthem boomslugs. Most rare were the blue-and-green slugs, capable of inhibiting cytonics, letting only friends and allies use their powers. I steeled myself against the guilt of allowing one to be killed at the facility. At least I’d rescued the other one.

Besides, I was a weapon. Weapons didn’t cry over the things they killed.

Doomslug fluted softly on my shoulder. She felt…as intimidated as I did. She didn’t want to go into the room either. Because…well, scud. She wasshy.

I’d always assumed she had been with M-Bot because she’d gotten lost, or maybe she’d been the descendant of his original hyperdrive. But recently I was getting the feeling that she was the slug equivalent of an introvert. She hadn’t wanted to be completely alone, which was why she’d sought out M-Bot and his dormant cytonic processor. But she wasn’t the type who enjoyed hanging out in a cavern full of fluting slugs.

I tried to send her a sense of peace as we collected food from the counter—a sandwich made with…was thatpeanut butter? I’d read about that. Wow. And a real slice of some kind of orange fruit. Maybe, well, an orange. Evershore and Earth shared some ecology from their years of trading together in the distant past, and much of the food we had been able to get from them had its roots in Earth flora.

I was feeling pretty good as I settled down at a table near the right side of the room. The real test was still to come though, as my friends gathered around, each one wearing a red piece of felt behind their flight pins. A symbol of remembrance, worn each time we lost someone. Today they wore them for the two soldiers we’d lost, and the two slugs—comrades in arms.

Each one was an indictment of me. I could have saved those people. Who was I to hold this power?

“Hey!” Arturo said. “You came to breakfast, Spensa! Finally starting to feel like yourself, eh?”

“Yeah,” I said, glancing at him. “Nedd…?”

“Awake,” Arturo said, “and ordering me to do things for him, since with one arm, he ‘can’t possibly do it himself.’ ”

I released a long breath. If Nedd was joking already, that was a good sign. That eased my guilt a smidge.

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