Page 46 of Tears of Tungsten
“I suppose that’s true.”
As Pollux landed, Brendan took a few more moments to give us our final instructions. “All right. Put on your best masks. We’re going to need to pretend this went well. As far as we know, Selene is still with her mother. We’ll have to look put out by the delay, maybe even grumble about it in public. I’ll report to my father and then try to look up the best coordinates to enter the Quasar. They might have changed since the last time we were there, and we don’t know what garrisons the apsids have in the area.”
“And what do we do after that?” Knox asked. “Do we just abandon everything and leave?”
“I don’t think we have any other option,” Brendan replied. “There’s no real time for subterfuge. We’ll try to be discreet so no one attempts to stop us, but our priority is to get to the Quasar.”
That wasn’t really a plan, since from there, we’d still have to find a method to free Selene. The apsids would hardly hand her over because we asked nicely. But I trusted Brendan to come up with something that would at least give us a chance. In the meantime, I’d play along and act as thrilled as I should have been.
Truth be told, this role was easier for me to play than it was for the others. When I got off the shuttle, the only thing I had to do was make a beeline for Charybdis. I greeted Lord Welton politely, but after that, Charybdis pulled me aside.
Her behavior didn’t surprise anyone, since chimeras were known to act oddly whenever they woke up from a dormant state. Our situation was also unique and complex, so Lord Welton wouldn’t deem Charybdis’s actions odd. I didn’t want to abandon my friends and lovers to a horrible conversation with him, but Brendan could handle it. He’d done crazier things and the news that Selene was still alive gave us all the incentive we needed to keep a cool head.
“Can you say the same about yourself?”Charybdis asked me softly when I returned to her cockpit.“Will you be able to handle this battle, August?”
I clutched the controls of my chimera and watched as my veins lit up with fire. It almost looked like I didn’t have blood rushing through my body at all, but lava.
I’d seen this sort of thing before, an hour or so ago. I hadn’t gotten a great look at the apsid, but his physical form had been humanoid and his veins had glowed from within, just like mine.
“Charybdis, what the hell is wrong with me?”
Was this some kind of effect of the radiation poisoning I’d suffered? Was that why I had so much trouble controlling my tachyon manipulation skills? I didn’t know and honestly, it scared me. It was the worst possible time in the world for me to drop the ball. Selene and the others needed me, damn it.
“I have my suspicions about the cause of your condition, August,”Charybdis replied. “But… This won’t be something easy to hear, and I think it’s best that we discuss it with everyone at the same time.”
I fully intended to push her, to ask her to tell me more. Brendan and the others were still talking to Welton and I didn’t have the patience to retreat to some place more private.
I never got the chance to speak. The coms chirped with the sound of an incoming transmission. “What is it now?” I asked, exasperated.
“I’m not sure,”Charybdis replied, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant,“but I think you should take this call.”
I had no desire to talk to anyone except my friends, but I trusted Charybdis’s assessment, so I obeyed. The moment I activated the coms, I froze at the sight of the person who appeared on my display screen.
“Oh, thank Tartarus,” the woman in question sobbed. “I’d almost lost all hope that I’d be able to reach anyone.”
It was Penelope Welton. Her usually immaculate hair was all over the place and she looked paler than Brendan had been when he’d thought Selene was dead. Her dress was askew and her jewelry missing.
I’d never interacted that much with Brendan’s former fiancée. She didn’t like me, because she saw me as an obstacle in her path. But she reserved most of her hatred for Knox, who’d been the one to keep Brendan from her before Pollux and I had ever entered the picture. She hadn’t displayed any disdain for my Terran background, though, and in return, I’d made no real derisive comments, choosing to let Brendan handle his own affairs as he saw fit.
I couldn’t come up with a single reason why she’d contact me of all people, but something was obviously very wrong.
“Lady Welton, what can I do for you? Are you hurt? Under attack?”
She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears. “No, that’s not it. This isn’t about me. I tried to reach Prince Brendan, but he must have blocked my com-link or something similar. Flight Lieutenant Cavallero, there’s something horrible going on.”
“Something horrible?” I repeated, alarm bells starting to ring in my head. “What do you mean?” Was she just referring to the recent attack on Gaia’s Haven? No, it couldn’t be. I doubted she’d consider that sort of thing important enough to warrant such a desperate call. At most, she’d deem it distasteful, but it wouldn’t upset her so much.
“I found a folder in my father’s files,” she said. “It contained… It contained some secret notes. They’re on human experimentation. Flight Lieutenant Cavallero, Stella Donadieu’s name was listed in the folder and so was yours. I’m at least ninety percent sure that they want to use you as chimera fuel because you’re part-apsid.”
