The Exodus Towers (66 page)

The tactic did not work.

For all Skyler’s effort, the subhuman’s accelerated viewpoint gave it plenty of time to see his outstretched weapon and shift its position just enough to avoid impaling itself. The sub hit him shoulder to shoulder, a glancing impact that sent them both into a spin. The creature couldn’t handle its own momentum and continued past, its body twisting over in midair as it fell away.

Skyler lost his grip on the axe and spun in place, his right leg twisting painfully beneath him. Before he could fall himself the creature moved far enough away that it took its red aura with it, and Skyler found himself thrust back into the slower reality of the dome one more time.

“Stop fucking doing that!” he shouted as he landed painfully on his right knee. He forced himself up in time to see the pocket of red racing toward him again.

And to his left, another came.

Skyler had no time to even look for his axe. He did the only thing he could think of and dove forward into a tucked roll. He felt the painful yet gratifying smack of kneecaps against his back as the charging creature toppled over him, moving too fast within its own frame of reference to stop itself.

Entry into another red aura made Skyler feel more and more like he’d gulped down a bottle of Darwin’s worst cider and then twirled in circles for half a goddamn century. He fought to concentrate, felt a momentary panic that he’d
truly
lost track of time. Struggling to his feet, Skyler took an unsteady
step toward his enemy if only just to stay within its portable time field. The sub flailed on the ground near him and sprang to its feet just as Skyler approached.

Skyler swung, missed badly. The creature lashed out with a splay of ragged, black-clad fingers and clipped him across the chest.

Something moved to his left and Skyler glanced just in time to see another red shape merging with his. This creature stood smaller than the first, using all fours to run. When it came inside, the two subhumans grunted at each other and fanned out slightly. Sensing the flanking tactic, Skyler stepped back as well, intent to keep both in front of him somehow. He toyed with the idea of running but knew he’d only step outside their time frame and appear as a comically slow jogger from their point of view. They could stroll after him and lick their lips before pouncing.

Terror gripped his heart and squeezed when a third red shape began to push inside the boundary, and Skyler had all but resigned himself to death when he saw—

—
her
.

Ana.

Ana, with a submachine gun that barked thunder and spat fire.

Ana, with two severed black hands tied to her belt, still dripping blood.

Ana, screaming. An incoherent war cry that Skyler felt sure would have given the subhumans pause had they lived to hear it. Her bullets ripped across the chest of the first and the face of the second. Both toppled to the ground before they could even turn to face her.

Ana
.

Skyler couldn’t take his eyes off the two dismembered hands hanging from her belt. His mouth opened, the question forming and dying, self-evident.

A third creature ventured into the dome within the dome and she shot it, too: a burst that took the being in its heart and sent it toppling backward. The gun clicked, empty.

Then a fourth enemy raced in. In one smooth motion, Ana flipped the gun around in her hands and clubbed the creature
so hard in the face that teeth, maybe bone, maybe both, sprayed out.

Lovely Ana
. Blood-spattered and full of rage and the best thing Skyler had ever seen.

“Holy
shit
,” Skyler managed to say.

“Are you just going to sit there?” she shot back between a quick gasp for air. “Get a pair of hands, they—”

The fifth subhuman to enter blindsided her. It came in fast and low, galloping on hands and feet, and plowed hard into Ana’s lower back. She shrieked and went down hard, her face smacking into the ground without the benefit of raised hands to break her fall.

Her attacker rolled past, got up, and turned to finish its work.

“Hey!” Skyler shouted at it. “Over here!”

Ana hadn’t moved. The creature decided she was no threat and turned to Skyler. He had no weapon other than a small utility knife in his back pocket, too hard to fish out and deploy. Vanessa’s spent rifle lay in the dirt off to Skyler’s left where Ana had dropped it. He stepped toward it and the subhuman matched his motion plus a half step forward, closing the gap. It reared up to walk on just its legs now.

“Right,” Skyler said, and moved in with clenched fists. He jabbed first with his left then threw a haymaker with his right that caught the being on its ear. It staggered, recovered, stepped in, and shoved unexpectedly with both hands, pushing Skyler back a few steps. He almost fell, one foot brushing the edge of a deep gash in the ground.

Nowhere to retreat
, he realized.

Ana still lay prone.

The creature howled and came at him again. Skyler saw movement behind it and knew what to do.
Oldest trick in the book
.

He dropped to his knees and turned.

Vanessa, racing through the edge of the red space and up behind the creature, leapt and kicked with both legs. She hit it perfectly, right between the shoulder blades. With a yelp of surprise and primal understanding the subhuman toppled over Skyler and into the freshly formed ravine behind him.
It fell four meters before smashing against the bottom of the cleft, one leg splayed out at an impossible angle. The sub cried out once in pain and then went still.

“Is that all of them?” he asked. He was breathing hard, blood pounding in his ears, the mother of all headaches looming like a storm on the horizon.

“Not even close,” Vanessa said. She wiped sweat from her brow and took in the space around them, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of Ana’s limp body.

Skyler was already moving. “Cover me.”

“Sure.”

He slid to his knees at Ana’s side and felt for a pulse. He had to press hard on her neck to filter out his own pounding blood and the near-constant vibration of the dome itself, and as he did, Ana groaned slightly. Ever so slightly, but it was enough.

“Skyler,” Vanessa said, sounding suddenly far away.

He glanced up. Vanessa stood a few meters off to his side, crouched down and back on her heels. She stared through narrow eyes and Skyler followed the gaze.

The reddish time field associated with the hands Ana had on her belt had faded to almost nothing, dissipating even as Skyler watched until it was gone.

Then he stood as well and took a step back from Ana. Around them loomed the reddish-hued pockets of death of a half-dozen subhumans. As they converged their auras merged like droplets of blood coalescing.

The creature in the middle of the line of enemies was enormous. A head taller than even Samantha and half again as wide. A wall of corded muscle, scars, and filth, all pulled forward by a wide grin of violent ecstasy.

Skyler glanced around. He had no weapon at all, and Ana to protect as much as himself. He looked for anything. A rock, a stick, anything at all, and saw nothing save for the earth at his feet and the edge of the dome itself a few meters away.

The creatures surged forward.

One leapt high, its wild gaze on Ana.

Vanessa screamed, a sub racing at her low.

The monster pack leader roared with bloodlust.

Skyler …

The edge of the dome, meters away
.

Skyler turned and ran.

He burst through the edge of the dome and fell into the mud beyond, his mind feeling like so much shredded cheese.

Rain spattered against his face and he let it. He stayed in the mud for a few long minutes and let the water run into his mouth, until he could no longer taste blood.

When his brain seemed to figure out what time meant again, he sat up, pushed himself to his feet, wiped his hands, and took off his climbing harness. He laid the gear on the ground very deliberately.

Then he turned toward the path that led to the farmhouse.

“Right, then,” he muttered. “Enough is enough.”

Skyler ran as fast as his legs would carry him, which wasn’t especially fast at first, but he gained momentum with each step.

At the farmhouse he called out for Pablo, but the man was not around. No matter, Skyler decided, and set to work.

“You motherfuckers want to play with time?” he said to the walls as he dressed a scrape on his arm. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Six minutes later he left the cottage again. Relaxed, fed, and bandaged.

And armed to the teeth.

Skyler punched back inside the dome with a submachine gun in each hand.

The scene before him was almost exactly as he’d left it, fifteen minutes earlier. Half a second had passed inside.

He shot the leaping sub first. It hadn’t even landed yet from a jump that began fifteen minutes earlier.
Surprise, asshole
. The creature’s landing turned into a lifeless belly flop, centimeters from Ana’s side.

“Down!” he shouted to Vanessa.

She dropped flat.

Skyler opened fire with both weapons, spraying gunfire indiscriminately before him. The guns pounded back against
his palms, sending shock waves of pain up his arms and into his back. He ignored it utterly, held the triggers down. Someone was shouting. Himself, he realized with unexpected glee.

Before him the subhumans fell like cut weeds.

He fired until both guns were spent. Shell casings tumbled in the dirt around him.

When the clips ran dry, Skyler dropped both weapons unceremoniously and whipped around the third from his back.

Only the giant subhuman still stood, standing amid the corpses of its pack. It flexed two mighty arms in a show of rage and howled at Skyler. Then it took a long step forward.

Skyler shook his head. “Enough. Is.
Enough
.”

He fired the grenade launcher and the subhuman’s head exploded in a shower of bone and blood.

It fell to its knees and collapsed forward in an earth-shaking thud. A sudden, satisfying silence followed.

Vanessa was standing behind him, he realized. “Pistols, at my belt. Take them.”

She drew both weapons and stepped to his side. “I had just enough time to think you’d abandoned us before you reappeared,” she said breathlessly.

“I felt a little underprepared, decided to change the odds.”

She somehow managed a smile. “You look more ridiculous than any of those sensory action heroes.”

“You’re one to talk,” he said. “Twenty years of jujitsu, eh?”

“And finally useful.”

“Well, stay sharp. We’re not done.”

Vanessa’s face tightened. She nodded with grim determination. “I’ll take Ana outside.”

“No,” Skyler said, too stern. At Vanessa’s surprised look he added, “Time’s racing forward out there. If her injury is as bad as I think, every second is going to count. Stay here with her while I finish this.”

“Let’s just get out of here; there’s nothing—”

“Not quite yet. All of this was to protect that damn object, and we’re bloody well leaving with it.”

Vanessa swallowed. “Okay.”

All that remained was details. Skyler found no more red-hued fields whooshing about the dome, only the purples—which
he shot—and some blues that moved too slowly to bother with. He simply walked around them.

The dome continued to shake. At the center Skyler saw the earthen pillar crack, then collapse into a small avalanche of debris. When the dust settled, he saw the thing he’d expected to find from the beginning.

Half-buried in the collapsed pillar’s base was a Builder ship, nose down, the back half of it splayed open like a charred flower. Skyler gave it a once-over and decided to ignore it. The hourglass-shaped object that had been placed so deliberately upon the peak of the spire was the important part, he knew with instinctual certainty.

He found the object halfway out toward the dome’s edge, in a crater that had once presumably contained one of the chromatic time fields. In some delicious irony, the alien object had killed a subhuman when it fell into the depression. The creature lay just beside the thing, its head crushed.

“Get ready, Vanessa!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Coming to you!”

She hollered back in acknowledgment as Skyler lifted, pushed, and pulled the heavy object toward the edge of the dome where Vanessa and Ana waited. He half-hoped to see his young companion sitting up, alert, but she still lay exactly as she had.

“She’s got a lot of bruising on her lower back and abdomen,” Vanessa said grimly.

Skyler gave a single nod. “We’re going to have to move her.” He tried to sound strong, and thought he’d failed miserably.

Despite the reluctance in her eyes, Vanessa nodded.

“We’ll head straight back to Belém and get her to the doctors. How are we doing on time?”

She glanced at her watch as if she’d forgotten all about it. “February,” she said.

The weight of it all suddenly crashed in on Skyler like the collapse of the pillar he’d witnessed. The alien place, the violence, and poor Ana … He fought to get his ragged breaths under control. Vanessa placed a calming hand on the center of his back.

“C’mon,” he said. “We’re almost out of time.”