Hyperspeed Dreams by Anna Carven

Chapter Thirty

What the hell is going on?Tasha’s vision swam. The pain was a dull, constant ache, pounding through her head and her chest and right down into the base of her spine. She had no control over her limbs anymore.

All she knew was the solidness of Lodan’s arms and chest as he carried her down the cold corridors.

The familiar smell of antiseptic and old blood filled her nostrils. She wanted to retch, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t do a thing.

Lodan moved impossibly fast; so fast that the harsh lights above became a mesmerizing blur.

They were close to the experimental labs now; so damn close.

He knew. She’d told him. He knew what to do—how to get it.

“It’s kept in a locked chamber behind the main treatment room. You’ll have to find one of the scientists —you can only get in if you’re identified by retina scan—or you could just cut a hole in the three-foot thick metal door, I suppose. Ha. I’ve never been inside, but I know what the damn things look like. You’ll probably have to threaten one of the scientists to within an inch of their life to convince them to show you where it is.”

“That will not be difficult, believe me.”

He dodged mangled bodies and pools of blood. Vicious sprays of crimson painted the walls and ceilings.

She was a trained killer, but the effortless savagery of the Kordolians’ violence shocked her a little, even in her semi-delirious state.

“Hurry,” she whispered as the blood and the ultra-bright lights and the monotonous concrete blurred into a long, endless swathe of red-tinged misery.

She was slipping away.

She could feel it.

She’d never been this close to death before.

A bolt of plasma seared the edges of her vision, followed by another, and another. The noise was deafening.

Lodan looked down, but she couldn’t see his face behind the obsidian mask of his armor. It was probably for the best. She didn’t want to see his expression right now.

“Hold on,” he grunted, a terrible urgency creeping into his voice. “Bastards. We’re going to push through.”

Voices floated in the air around her; she heard Tarak shouting. Lodan responded in Kordolian. The other warriors snapped back and forth at one another in rapid-fire Kordolian.

The smell of blood and charred flesh filled the air.

It was madness.

Still, Lodan kept going.

Some of the voices became distant; they were splitting up, going further and further down the network of corridors, presumably to ward off an onslaught of attackers.

Once they realized that Kordolians were loose in the tunnels, The Praetorian would throw everything at them; they would incinerate these halls if they had to.

They would sacrifice the people down here to keep the organization intact.

Tasha knew them. That was just how they operated.

Lodan spun on his heel and started running… backwards.

“What the hell?” she blurted.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, running as fast as before, even though he was backwards.

That’s when a blast of searing plasma hit him in the back. Heat washed over Tasha, but she was shielded from the worst of it by Lodan’s body. If she wasn’t wearing this strange alien armor, she probably would have been burned to a crisp.

Damn it, did he just take a full hit of plasma?

Couldn’t be…

Nobody could survive that. She must be delirious already.

Someone in front of them cranked off several plasma blasts in quick succession—someone on their side, thank the stars. Lodan spun around and started running forward again. The data flowing across Tasha’s visor went nuts, flooding her vision with streams of blue Kordolian glyphs.

Was this what Lodan was seeing? How did he decode all this shit so quickly? Before she could make sense of anything, he set her down beside the cold concrete wall.

“Wait here.” His voice was both dangerous and terribly gentle. “I’ll be back.”

Tasha tried to rise to her feet, but she was too weak.

Damn it.

She looked up just in time to see two menacing obsidian figures—Lodan and Tarak; from the way they moved, it couldn’t be anyone else—disappearing down the corridor into a thick haze of smoke.

Three Kordolians stood guard over her, swords unsheathed, guns drawn.

Tasha recognized this section. They weren’t far from the treatment rooms now. Just a few steps forward then turn to the right, and…

Boom!

Another sheet of plasma fire engulfed the corridor, followed by another… and another.

Who the hell could withstand that? Even with their advanced armor, surely Tarak and Lodan couldn’t…

Lodan!

She clenched her fists and grit her teeth in frustration. Why couldn’t she do anything? Why was she so fucking weak right now?

Boom!

There was the fucking plasma again. At this rate, there wouldn’t be anything left of this place.

Terror gripped her. The chaos and confusion was torture. Her inability to move was pure insanity.

Lodan! She wanted to scream at him. Don’t risk death… just for me. Don’t you dare…

Suddenly, the plasma fire stopped. Out of the smoke haze emerged two black figures.

They’re back? Already?

She recognized them, but she didn’t. The creatures that stared back at her weren’t the lethal, graceful, armor-clad warriors that had protected her.

They were straight out of a horror film.

The armor was completely obliterated in places, revealing charred flesh; skin melted away from faces, eyeballs burned out of their sockets.

Dead men walking.

No! It can’t be…

The warriors surrounding her didn’t even blink. Why weren’t they reacting, saying something, rushing to their aid?

Why was everyone quiet?

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The sheer horror of it all stole her words away.

You shouldn’t have done this for me. I’d rather die than see you like this!

With every last shred of her remaining strength, she forced herself to rise to her feet. She would not let them get away with this. The ones that had done this to them… to her Kordolians… she would carve their hearts out of their fucking chests…

The charred, unrecognizable beings kept walking toward her. Like something out of a gruesome nightmare, their eyeballs started to knit back together…

How is that even possible? Is that really you, Lodan?

Then she saw the perfectly intact outlines of their blades and guns, leaving her with no doubt whatsoever that these two were indeed Lodan and his commander.

But then she remembered what Lodan had said to her. No matter what I do or what I look like to you…

The one in front had to be Lodan; she was sure of it. He was a little taller and leaner than Tarak, and he only had one long sword at his back, not two.

How the fuck are you still alive?

She rushed toward him, not caring that he looked like a demon out of the darkest pits of hell.

Her eyelids fluttered.

Her heart twisted inside her chest.

Everything went dim.

“Idiots don’t know how to handle plasma,” he grumbled as he reached her and drew her into his arms.

Tasha didn’t care that he was nightmarish. She didn’t care that hard armor and seared flesh were wrapping around her, lifting her up as the last trace of strength fled from her body.

“Don’t die,” she gasped, the thought gripping her mind as she collapsed into his arms.

“Don’t worry about me,” he grunted, sounding like his usual self—as if he didn’t have half his damn face burned off. “I’ll heal. So will he. It’s you I’m worried about…”

Tasha was barely aware of him lifting her into his arms again amidst the haze and the blood and the scorched air.

She was floating on a tide of pain and destruction.