Survivor (13 page)

"You'd never be able to pronounce my real
name. For our short time together you may call me Tobius. It means
torturer in your most primitive language."

"How can I understand you now? I couldn't
before."

"We updated your mind-chip. Primitive
technology."

"How about—"

"Enough!"

Tobius lunged across the room and slammed
his armoured hand into Nova's cheek. Her head snapped sideways, her
body sprawling onto the floor.

Pain tore through her face like fire,
engulfing her cheek and temple. The stinging agony brought tears to
her eyes.

"How far have the humans spread?"

"Fuck you," Nova said.

She pushed herself upright, her arms and
legs shaking.

"I'd like to see you try."

Tobius took three long steps forward and
snatched Nova's neck in his hand. His fingers wrapped around her
throat and squeezed.

Nova's heart roared into overdrive. She
couldn't breathe and blood pounded in her temples.

"How far have you spread?" Tobius said in a
venomous whisper.

Nova clenched her teeth and refused to
answer. Even so, her mind's eye was filled with mental maps of the
solar systems. She couldn't help thinking of the outer planets. It
was just like the time Tanguin had told her not to think of a pink
elephant.

Damned elephant.

"You're a long way from home."

Nova refused to respond, even though her
traitorous mind immediately went to thoughts of her childhood on
Tabryn. She hadn't thought of Tabryn as home for a very long time,
not since she'd found The Jagged Maw.

"The Jagged Maw," Tobius said, plucking more
information from her head. "What is it? A military base?"

Tobius's grip tightened around her
throat.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Stars danced at
the edges of her vision as she struggled to stay conscious. She
couldn't listen to him, couldn't let him win. She focused on an
image of a cloud. The fluffy white form floated in a blue sky. Nova
floated next to it, both of them blown along on a warm summer's
day. Tobius spoke but his voice was carried away by the wind.

"I don't have time for your games," Tobius's
voice was a thin whisper.

His grip loosened about her throat and she
drew in a great gasp of air. She relished in the sudden burst of
oxygen, until pain exploded inside her head. She screamed and her
eyes flew open.

Tobius had the gun aimed at her head. It
felt as if every neuron in her brain had simultaneously exploded.
Every part of her was on fire. She wanted to tear out her hair so
that she could get to her skull and rip it open. Anything to
release the agony.

Something writhed inside her head. It was as
if worms convulsed between her ears; each of them burrowed through
her skull and pushed against her head. Her brain was alive, it was
a living pulsating thing and it felt like it was trying to get free
of her skull.

She clutched her head with both hands. She
screamed but she couldn't hear it. Stars flashed in front of her
eyes, the rest was darkness and pain. Her body collapsed to the
ground, she writhed and kicked, completely losing control of her
limbs. Her fingers scraped at her head and left bloody
claw-marks.

That was when she saw them. Thousands of
spiders poured out of the walls and crawled out of the floor. They
were the size of gulf balls and they scurried on hairy legs. They
came straight for her. They swarmed across the ground like a living
wave.

She rolled away from them but they kept
coming. She cast around for anything she could use; her gun was no
good against a swarm of spiders. There was nothing. She struggled
to her knees; if she could just get to her feet she could stomp
them to death.

It was too late; they were already on her.
They latched onto her arms and legs and climbed. Their hairy legs
brushed over her as more of them clamboured up her limbs. Her legs
had become writhing masses of brown bodies and they were climbing
higher.

She flicked her arms, sending a handful of
spiders flying through the air. She brushed at her body but as two
spiders went flying, four more climbed onto her. Her hands worked
desperately to get rid of them but she was too slow. She watched in
horror as the horde reached her throat and then went higher. They
scurried over her face.

She clenched her mouth tightly closed but
they forced it open and climbed inside. They burrowed into her
ears. Her mouth was full of them and more poured in. She gasped for
air as they pushed deeper down her throat.

She refused to be choked to death by
spiders. She forced her hand away from her head and reached for the
pistol at her waist. Just one squeeze and it would all go away. The
pain in her head would disappear and she wouldn't be able to feel
the spiders crawling down her throat.

Her fingers clasped around the pistol; her
hand shook with the effort.

"I don't think so," Tobius said.

Nova blinked and the spiders were gone. She
swiped at her clothes but there was nothing there. She heaved a
mighty sigh of relief and curled up into a ball on the ground. She
didn't feel the tiny rocks and pieces of sand digging into her, or
feel the tears dribble down her cheeks. All she could do was focus
on her own breathing and keeping her sanity.

She blinked a few times, her vision blurred
by salty tears.

"I will do it again unless you tell me what
I want to know."

Nova stiffened.

"I can promise you the pain will be ten
times worse the next time."

She clenched her fists and sat up.

"How much technology do you humans
have?"

She tried not to think, to keep her mind
blank, but her brain was still heaving from the recent turmoil.

"Five... Four..."

Nova involuntarily flinched.

"Technology," Tobius said, his voice
seething with hatred.

The word brought a barrage of associated
images. Nova's memories soared back over everything she'd seen. The
Confederacy ships, contraband weapons, and the troops. She tried to
stop herself but once the mental floodgates were open she couldn't
close them again. Everything she knew came pouring out as a stream
of conscious images.

"Still barely more than parasites," Tobius
said, when she'd run out of memories. There was a note of relief in
his voice.

"Who, who are you?" Nova whispered. Her
voice was dry and strained. It scraped over her throat like
sandpaper.

"We're the Ancients. Your gods," Tobius
said. "But you already knew that."

The pain had mostly subsided; all that
remained was a dull headache. Had she just sentenced all of
humanity to die? She couldn't do that; she had to be strong. But
the pain was so bad. It was a red cloud in her recollection, a bad
place where she daren't go again.

"How did you survive the shockwave?"

Nova clenched her jaw. She refused to think
about Codon's ship and his new shield. She pictured Cal. He floated
around Crusader's storage bay. It wasn't the most imaginative image
but it was all she could do.

"Didn't you learn last time?" Tobius
said.

She pushed her jaw forward and stared
straight at him.

"This weapon will do things to you that you
can't even imagine."

A part of Nova screamed at her to give in.
She couldn't withstand another blast from that gun. She'd be pushed
over the precipice and sent into madness. There was no escaping it.
She clenched her teeth and continued to visualise Cal, zooming
around Crusader.

"I call it the time-vortex. If nothing else
it will be an interesting way for you to die. What you've given is
enough for us to be ready. We won't be trapped here, not
again."

Tobius clicked a few dials on his weapon and
aimed it at Nova. She met his eyes briefly and the gun fired.

CHAPTER TWELVE

If Nova thought she knew pain before, it was nothing compared
to the agony coursing through her now. Her head was engulfed by
fiery pain; the nerves and veins running up and down her arms and
legs burned.

Pictures and scenes flew past her on all
sides, making her cringe. She soared through a tunnel of
hallucinations. All of history played out around her. Tiny bacteria
multiplied, growing and dividing until they grew into creatures
with legs and eyes. Next to them, mountains thrust up out of oceans
and were then worn down by storms until they crumbled back into the
seas.

Spaceships flew through the air. Stars
exploded and collapsed on themselves. All of creation, the
universe, was happening around her head. It was terrifying and
beautiful, all at the same time. Agonising and yet wonderful,
maddening.

Her mind was slipping. With each new image,
her brain tipped further towards the edge. There was so much
knowledge, so much information flying straight at her. Her mind
couldn't cope with it all. How could any one person contain the
entirety of time and space inside their heads?

They couldn't.

She squeezed her eyes shut but the images
didn't stop; she could still see them through her eyelids. There
was no escaping the enormity of it all.

She watched as electricity flowed through
wires, and impulses flowed through neurons. She watched babies born
and people die. Creatures with legs as long as buildings stomped
through trees with blue-glowing leaves. Other animals, like slugs
the size of ships, rolled along the floor of a tropical rainforest.
Entire planets were reduced to rubble. Bombs, black-holes,
bodies.

Sounds boomed from all directions; every
colour had its own frequency. Nova heard the blue of the sky, she
listened to the darkness of space, the sound of leaves growing, of
seeds bursting, of hearts beating.

Her focus zoomed in on individual noises. It
was as if she could hear every noise that had or would ever been
made. She could hear each individual heartbeat of each individual
organism as they pondered their arduous way through life.

She thought she heard water flowing down
rivers; instead, her vision was filled with blood flowing through
veins. The crimson liquid splashing against the sides of
blood-vessels created a cacophony in her ears.

Smells. So many smells. She sensed new rain,
the fresh scent of falling droplets plummeting out of the sky.
Flowers bloomed and their fragrance was so strong that it made her
head light. For the first time, she smelt fear; it was a tangy
acrid scent which made her heart beat faster, made the hairs on the
back of her neck stand on end.

She could feel things too. While her eyes,
ears and nose were accosted and overwhelmed, she touched every
piece of creation through her fingertips. She stroked a blooming
flower. Her fingers caught a falling raindrop. She put her hand
through an exploding supernova.

It felt as though the entire universe was
flying straight at her; all of her senses were being overrun.

There was only one thing that made sense
amongst all the madness. Directly in front of her, so obvious he
was practically invisible, was Tobius. He was smiling at her, the
gun still aimed at her face.

He was oblivious to the atoms flying past
his head, to the big bang and big crunch happening over and over
again. He looked only at Nova. She clung to that thought. If she
could just block out the rest, block out the universe happening all
around her then maybe she could cling to the shreds of whatever
sanity she had left.

She blinked and glared at Tobius. His smile
faltered with her gaze but he continued to point the gun at
her.

It was so hard to focus on this one
individual when there was so much happening. So much knowledge, so
many questions answered. She couldn't ignore the beauty and majesty
of it all.

But she had to.

There was something in her hand. What was
it? She daren't glance down. To look even an inch to her side would
mean staring directly into the sweep of time. She was sure that her
sanity would be lost if she did that. Instead, she squeezed her
fingers tighter. The cold object was so familiar. It felt like
safety, like home. There was only one thing in the world that felt
like that. Her gun.

She gripped it tighter, sure that she would
have only once chance. A part of her knew that Tobius couldn't read
her thoughts; he wouldn't dare while time and space were flying
through her brain. She was free, alone, her only chance.

She lifted the familiar gun. It felt a
thousand times heavier than usual, weighing down her arm and
shoulder. It took all of her force of will to raise it up and take
aim.

Tobius grunted with surprise.

Nova squeezed the trigger and her shoulder
jolted backwards with the force of the recoil. The sound echoed
around the closed room, sending ripples through the images flying
past her. She didn't see if her shot hit, all she was aware of was
a bright light, searing pain, and then darkness.

***

Nova's mind clawed back from the brink. Its
blood-stained claws clutched at the shreds of darkness all around
and hauled her consciousness back to the surface. She wanted to
snuggle back under the dark shrouds, to drift away to the timeless
gloom where she could watch all of time and space fly past her. The
rest of her refused to give in.

The survivor in her clutched and scrounged,
searching for anything solid to grip onto, anything real. Questions
streamed through her mind; what was reality? Hadn't everything
she'd seen flying past been part of reality? Didn't that make her
tiny fleeting existence, the dream?

No! She couldn't drift away on such
thoughts. She had to focus on the here and now; the rest of time
and space could wait. As she regained awareness, she discovered
that reality was just as dark and shrouded as her imaginings had
been.