Ouroboros 2: Before (3 page)

She regarded him silently, then she rolled her eyes. ‘You really do think I’m the worst recruit in 1000 years, don’t you? I’ve already accessed images of them; that’s how I know what they wear. And as for their physical appearance, thankfully they’re about the same build as we are, but . . .’ she trailed off.

‘
But,’ he repeated challengingly.

‘
They have white hair, black eyes, blue spots, and ridges over their bodies.’

‘
How about I look that up for myself,’ Carson mumbled under his breath as he manipulated the scanner.

She’d had just about enough of the rude, defensive Carson, and she cleared her throat properly. ‘Are you always this cranky after you wake up? Or is this just because I said you snuffle while you sleep? Because you do. But what’s wrong with that? It was adorable.’

Oh no, that had been the wrong word.

Carson looked appalled. ‘Adorable?’

‘
Cute?’ she tried instead.

‘
Cute?’
he challenged in a far more menacing tone.

‘
Attractive?’ She finally chanced upon.

But that was an even worse word, because the look Carson shot her sent her stomach careening through the floor.

He didn’t look angry anymore; his expression was a muddle of surprise and something else.

Clearing her throat and shaking her head, she tapped her hand on her implant. ‘Look, just forget what I said. Can we get back to, oh, I don’t know, saving the universe?’ It was a trite and somewhat silly thing to say considering how much trouble they were now in, but at least it shifted his attention.

With a grumbled yes, he kept playing with the scanner.

In fact, he considered it with focused attention for several minutes until finally he sighed.

‘
What?’ she asked when he didn't volunteer anything further. ‘What's the matter?’

He sunk his fingers into his brow and pressed the nails hard into the flesh. He still looked tired. Of course he did. He'd had all of several hours sleep, and that was not nearly enough to pay back the debt using the device had amassed.

‘
We can't really, seriously consider going out there,’ he finally explained.

‘
What?’

He looked up at her, and though at first his expression was almost withering, with another sigh, he went back to being the sweet, well-behaved Carson she was starting to get used to. ‘Look, I'm sorry, I'm just . . . tired. But seriously, though, we can't actually consider going out there,’ he gestured with his hand towards the wall.

She wasn't dumb enough to think he meant the yard. They'd already been in the yard, and it hadn’t been that bad. No, he meant amongst the populace of this planet.

An alien race they still knew next to nothing about.

‘
We might have a functioning language model, but it's going to be damn hard to use it discreetly. And what's more, frankly, though you occasionally glow blue, you don't have spots. And I don't have neck ridges. And we know nothing about the culture of this planet. They could be murderers, there could be ritual sacrifices, we could walk down the street, fail to wave at the right person, and commit a crime punishable by death. We can't go out there,’ he said one last time, his voice growing weak.

She just looked at him, her lips parting open gently. Then she had to shake her head. And for a moment she wondered whether it was her doing the shaking, or whether the entity had woken up just enough to force the move. ‘No,’ she said in a firm tone that wasn't entirely her own. ‘We have to.’

Though Carson had appeared ready to overrule her, he stopped. ‘Nida?’ he asked carefully.

She patted her implant, feeling the minute influence the entity had wielded over her dwindle. She nodded her head. ‘It's still me,’ she said. Then she took a pointed breath. ‘And we have to go out there. How else will we find the dimensional bridge? And how else will we get back to our own time? We need to find another time gate.’

‘
We have one here,’ Carson pointed to the floor. ‘Somewhere,’ he mumbled again. ‘I think.’

‘
This isn't the time gate,’ Nida said, unsure of how she knew that fact. ‘I think it's just a random point in space where the gate dropped us.’

Carson looked at her skeptically, then, after she appeared to pass some test, he swore bitterly, massaging his brow with his fingernails once more. He was leaving little half-moon, red marks etched in his skin. And they were a clear testament to how stressed and tired he was.

He let out a long, beleaguered sigh. ‘We will find one. But you have to understand what I'm saying. We can't go out there and meet the people of this world. We know next to nothing about their culture, their morals, their laws. It will be suicide. And I don't know if you've noticed, but we've got technology from the future,’ he gestured to the scanner, ‘that would be crippling to this world's timeline if they were to get their hands on it. My armor,’ he patted a flat hand on his chest, the movement a clanging one. ‘My gun,’ he gestured to the handgun in his magnetic holster. ‘And this,’ he finally brought up his right hand, and considered the device with an expression that was part filled with awe and part filled with suspicion.

Finally, he looked up at her.

She swallowed.

He was right. Absolutely everything he had said made sense. But the trouble was, she couldn't see a way around going out there. Because none of what they needed was in this house.

She tried to stand up straighter.

Carson shook his head immediately. ‘This is nonnegotiable, Cadet; it is in order,’ he tried.

There would have been a time when a statement like that would have terrified her. Back at the Academy, she had done nothing but get in trouble. She'd never been a rebel or a particularly bad egg. She’d just been awkward and clumsy and unsure of herself.

Well right now, she was sure of herself. And that fact alone made the look in Carson's eyes and the challenging note to his voice simply ineffective.

‘
Carson,’ she said softly, ‘you know we have to go out there,’ she said simply. It hadn’t been what she was intending to say, but at the last moment, she had switched her words. Or maybe the entity had.

Again Carson got that careful edge to his gaze as he surveyed her. He swallowed loudly. ‘I'm going to need more than that. It's far too dangerous,’ he began.

She brought her hand up in a stiff, stopping movement. ‘We don't have the benefit of wasting time. The longer I remain here, the more I corrupt. I must find a bridge.’ The entity spoke through her. But its once sure voice now shook badly. As it manipulated her body, she felt how weak it was. The strong presence that had once filled her mind and supported her with its reassuring power was now a shadow of its former self.

That fact scared her. Deeply. And once the entity stopped speaking through her, Nida gasped.

‘
What is it?’ Immediately Carson closed the distance between them, and lightly grabbed her shoulder, looking into her eyes with a penetrating gaze.

She blinked languidly, then shook her head. ‘I think it's . . . weak,’ she managed, choking over the statement. ‘Opening the time gate took a lot of energy,’ she continued, still shaking.

‘
Is it okay? Will it . . . live?’ Carson asked, his words coming out slowly and with pressured, staccato breath as he clearly tried to frame his question in a way that made sense.

‘
It's weak,’ she concluded simply. ‘I think it just needs to rest.’

‘
Then rest,’ he commanded, and she wasn't sure whether he was talking to her or the entity.

But one thing was for sure: he didn't loosen his gentle grip on her shoulder. And that fact gladdened her.

He was strangely supportive if she let him be.

In a way, that was completely different to the legendary Carson Blake she'd thought she had once known.

The real Carson had a memorable tenderness to him, and it made him seem all the more human. He wasn't completely fragile or anything; he had taken on an entire team of Barbarians on his own, after all. But there was just this look of uncertainty in his eyes that made Nida realize he wasn't perfect and he knew it. Yet that didn't stop him from trying to do whatever he could. For every fault he had, he had a bucket of determination to compensate for it.

Suddenly she smiled.

The corners of his lips pricked up at the move. ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded. ‘I'm fine, and I'm sure the entity will be too. But it's right. We need to hurry. We don't have the luxury of staying in this building and playing it safe. We have to see if there is a dimensional bridge in this time, and if there isn't, we need to find another time gate and travel to another point in history.’

He opened his mouth to protest. She could see it flickering in his eyes. He didn't want to run the risk, and fair enough, because it was a huge risk. Everything he had listed was a possibility. Knowing nothing about the culture and laws of this time was a perilous combination. If you added to that the fact they were harboring technology light years beyond anything this planet currently had, and that they were both aliens, then you had a lethal combination.

If either Carson or Nida were found out, they could completely alter this planet's timeline.

It was such a terrible fact to think about, and yet, she knew the entity was right.

If it stayed in this realm much longer, it would corrupt. Maybe it had several hours, or several days, or several months, but it didn't matter, at some point it would lose all control, and then . . . it would unleash destruction on an unimaginable scale.

She shuddered to think about it.

Carson still had his hand pressed softly into her shoulder, and now he pushed his fingers harder into her arm, holding her in place. ‘What's the matter?’ he asked quickly, his words so snapped, all of the syllables ran together.

‘
We just need to hurry,’ Nida managed as she patted her hand to her throat, feeling the implant underneath the fabric and taking comfort from it.

Carson appeared to consider her for a long moment, then he stood back, his hand dropping to his side. ‘Fine, but this is going to be . . .’ he trailed off.

‘
Dangerous?’ she tried to hold his gaze. ‘But at least we've got each other, right?’ She wasn't entirely sure why she added the last part; it was a particularly embarrassing thing to say, and sounded ridiculously sappy once the words were out.

But to her surprise, he smiled. ‘Yes, we do, and I'm rapidly finding out that you aren't the worst recruit in 1000 years.’

‘
You know, that’s possibly the nicest thing someone has ever said to me,’ she grinned around her words.

‘
Well, there you go,’ he began, then he opened his mouth, readying to add something else. But he stopped. Instead, he cleared his throat. ‘Right, now it's your turn to get some rest.’

She started to protest.

He put up a hand and stopped her mid-sentence. ‘This is not negotiable. And I'm not going to put up with any of your protests. I had my chance to sleep, and now it's time you get yours. Plus, there are quite a few things I'm going to need to organize before we go out on the town,’ his voice became indecisive at the end.

She looked up sharply. ‘You mean you agree we have to go out there?’

He nodded his head. It was a tense move, and it was clear he would rather be shaking it. ‘There's no other way,’ he clapped a hand over his face and smoothed down one of his eyebrows in a rough move that spoke of stress and tension and the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘
Then I should help you,’ she began.

‘
No,’ he snapped harshly. In a slow move he pointed behind him into the room he had slept in. ‘You are going to get some rest.’

‘
In a chair? Can't I go to one of the rooms upstairs?’

‘
Nope, you are going to sleep right in front of me so I can keep my eyes on you . . . which sounds creepy, but it isn't,’ he mumbled quickly.

She raised both her eyebrows. ‘You know, I can sleep on my own without tripping over and dying. I don't need somebody checking on me every couple of minutes like a newborn baby.’

He simply replied with a stony stare. ‘Go and get some rest,
now
.’

She tried to protest, but he simply shouted her down, and Carson Blake had an impressive set of lungs on him. He also had a very commanding tone that was hard to ignore.

Eventually she conceded, and walked back into what she assumed was the lounge room.

Pulling the cushion off the chair, she threw it on the floor and lay down next to it, bunching it up under her head.

‘
You're going to sleep on the floor?’ he questioned as he walked in behind her.

‘
I have a delicate neck,’ she pointed out roughly. ‘Now get to work.’

He laughed, but didn't pull her up for being rude. Instead, he mumbled a simple ‘good night,’ even though it was the middle of the day.