Page 75 of Defiant

One of the others was holding a limp Doomslug in their arms. I tried to struggle, froth bubbling at my lips. If they’d hurt her…

Brade looked up as the air warped again. Something crashed to the ground nearby, and pieces of the table vanished. Then, oddly, she smiled.

“Leave the note,” she said to one of the soldiers. “You, squeeze that slug.”

He squeezed Doomslug, and I panicked further. The air warped again, and only then did I realize what Brade was doing. When I broke the air apart in my wave of panic, it had opened a path through our inhibitors—which had let her slip in. And not just in my mind this time. She was physically here. And by hurting Doomslug, they were making me panic more—which opened a pathway for them to escape.

I tried to clamp down on it, but I was too slow. Brade hauled me up and over her shoulder, then the other soldiers each put a hand on her arm.

A second later we hyperjumped away—and I felt a sudden spike of dread. Not just because I was now in enemy hands, but because I knew what everyone was going to think.

They’d assume that I had gone off on my own again. I wasn’t merely in serious danger—I’d likely just broken the hearts of Jorgen and my other friends yet again.

Part Three

23

We appeared in a round room with screens all along a back wall. I vaguely recognized it; I’d seen Brade and Winzik in here once while spying on them from the nowhere. Then, it had been filled with officials and generals listening to Winzik; now it was empty save for the varvax himself.

Tall in his suit made of sandstone—a blocky and modern version of ancient knight’s armor—therealWinzik was the crablike creature floating in the liquid behind the helmet’s glass faceplate. The varvax had learned to craft a stronger shell material early in their technological development, which eventually was developed into this type of suit. Just as making steel had come early during human development.

Brade dropped me onto the floor in front of Winzik like a prized stag slain during the hunt. I flopped onto my back, drooling as she waved proudly toward me, an intolerable grin on her face.

“Done!” she said. “I told you I could manage it.”

“My, my,” Winzik said, waving his armored arms as he knelt down on one stone knee beside me. Varvax spoke with their hands as much as with their voices, which were projected from the front of their suits. “So careless with our guest, Brade. So brutal.”

“Yeah,” Brade said, “wait until she rips your face off with a mindblade.”

“I have ten different inhibitors in here,” Winzik said, gesturing in a way that felt indifferent. “I still think we should have waited to see if she’d come to you willingly to duel.”

“She wasn’t going to,” Brade said. “I could feel it. Better to strike when I sensed she was alone.”

I focused on her, and felt the unnatural sense of disconnect rising from me again. The trembling distortion. Loss and pain. This time I stoked those emotions, remembering M-Bot’s body torn apart, and the moment of panic I’d felt when thinking he was dead.

The room shook like a meteor had hit nearby.Screwsbegan to rain down like chips of stone from a crumbling cavern ceiling. Hundreds of them, stolen from somewhere by my powers to tumble down through the room and rattle and click against the metal surfaces.

Winzik leaped to his feet and shied backward, waving sandstone hands anxiously. Whatever it was I’d become, I could rip through their inhibitor fields, just like I’d ripped a hole in ours. If Brade could sneak into Detritus to get me, then I could get right back out. As the air continued to undulate and warp around me, I reached out with my mind. My infirm body, still stunned, didn’t need to be—

Brade knelt beside me and rammed something into my neck. A syringe? I tried to snap at her fingers with my mouth, but only succeeded in blowing a few bubbles in my drool. She watched me, genuine worry on her face, until the warping subsided.

No!I thought, trying to focus on my pain, on the loss, the anguish. It was still there, but now it didn’tdoanything. The room settled, a last spurt of bolts falling from the air before all grew still.

Chet?I thought at the delver in my soul.

No response.

Chet! M-Bot? Anyone?

Somehow, whatever they’d drugged me with had cut me offfrom them, and the nowhere, completely. It was as if I wasn’t even cytonic.

Brade exhaled in relief, then a confident smile reappeared on her lips and she became the lounging, cocky fighter she always seemed to be around Winzik. A completely different persona from the stoic, troubled loner she’d shown me and my flight at Starsight.

I wascertainshe’d been genuinely worried for a moment. She hadn’t known if that drug she’d given me would work or not. Unfortunately, it had. My cytonic senses were completely closed off. It didn’t feel the way an inhibitor did. That felt like pushing against a wall with my mind. Now it felt like there was nothing to push against. And I couldn’t generate any kind of force to try.

What had they done? Whatwasthat stuff they’d injected into me? It wouldn’t be permanent, would it?

“I warned you she would still be dangerous,” Brade said, stepping back as Winzik approached. “Kapling, store that slug with the others. The rest of you, outside.”

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