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He died, and Nix bought his fucking camera. And every time she used it, she thought of him. After all, photography was his hobby, not hers. She never really cared to wait for a photo to develop, not before… Well. Before.
Kessandra. She was really here. Nix had hoped it was a baseless rumor, but of course, she couldn’t be that lucky. A thought intruded: Who’s going to die this time?
Kessandra tilted her head, and her organic eye—a deep, smoky green—glittered with amusement. “Then you feel I won’t be a match for you?” It finally felt like she had the upper hand, and Nix couldn’t contain her smirk. She’d pay for this later, once the commander got her alone—but now, in this moment, Kess was hers. “I think you’ve spent too much time in your ichoron tower, Subarch.”
The subarch may be excellent with a serviceman’s pistol, but Nix ruled the bloody land of close-quarter combat—and the sarrant was an extension of her own body. The meter-long sword-spear was a Valkeshian promise of death; even the wooden practice ones could break bones and bruise flesh. Over all their tours to the front lines, the sixty-first hadn’t lost a soul, which was largely thanks to Nix’s skill on the battlefield. She’d be damned if Kessandra broke her streak.
Kess didn’t have to wait long; Nix was feeling fairly murderous.
Kess was in danger. That should have bothered Nix more. Instead, she felt like laughing, because obviously, Kess was in danger. She was a politician, as cunning as she was ruthless. Even if her enemies wouldn’t dare attack outright, they were perpetually lurking on the edges of her life.
“You’re a great friend, Leon. Take care of yourself down there.” He smiled. “I will.” She walked past him, then paused at the elevator. “If you see glowing red eyes—get the hell out of the tunnels.” And she boarded the elevator, pressing the button to the bottom floor. As the doors slid shut, the horror on Leon’s face stuck in her mind.
Quian died—and Kessandra left. Nix remained with nothing but haunted memories.
“Great working with you. Try not to get attacked on the way back to your fancy tower,” and stalked back to her family’s apartment.
Nix saluted, and a pair of elderly women tittered in quiet discontent. And here Nix thought soldiers were supposed to be respected for their service. Apparently, that only applied when she fit into the nice little boxes society set for her.
Only the elevator attendant by the buttons shared a private glance with her—and he seemed just as exasperated with their crowd. She cracked a wry smile for him, and he winked back. It was a small courtesy.
“See you on board, Sergeant. Try not to murder a royal before we disembark.” Nix snorted. “No promises.”
Nix flipped off the door. It was wholly unsatisfying.
“Okay. I believe that he wanted her dead. Now my question is why?” Nix couldn’t answer that without voicing Kessandra’s concerns about ichoron. She shrugged. “I mean, she’s an ass. I can’t blame him.” Leon was startled into a laugh. He clamped his mouth shut, but his eyes still wrinkled in mirth. “Sergeant, you’re going to get in trouble, talking like that.” Nix grinned back, feeling a bit lighter.
“Not even a hello?” she drawled, feigning more confidence than she felt. “This is a pretty bold place for an attack.” The Elite narrowed his eyes. “I have my orders. No one will question me.” Orders… from Polaris, no doubt. “They might if I’m bleeding on the carpet. Look, there are easier ways to know if I’m a threat. You could ask, for one.” Nix paused, considering. “I mean, the answer would be ‘yes,’ but it’s politer than trying to decapitate me.”
Fear sliced into Nix’s mind—you’ve failed; she’s already dead—and it solidified into something dangerous. Without warning, Nix kicked the door in. All the fancy ichoron locks in Valkeshia couldn’t stop her from splintering the wood around it, and after a few tries, it shattered around her boot. She muscled inside, expecting the site of a massacre— —and found Kessandra, wrapped in a towel.
With little else to do, Nix towed one of the couches in front of the damaged door—at least that’d slow the Elites down. The very motion exacerbated her wound, which gushed with fresh blood. She bit her tongue before she could scream, or cry, or something. She needed to bind that injury, and fast. If Nix had been smart, she wouldn’t have removed his knife at all. She lectured that to her ensigns. The sixty-first would be laughing if they saw this.
Kessandra didn’t even look at them as she strode for the elevator, moving so fast a burning pain slid up Nix’s side. “Hang on,” she gasped, staggering into the elevator. “I got the shit beat out of me yesterday, Kess. One second.”
She was talking in absolutes, like there was no way to stop this. Nix scowled, anger flaring again. “I’m not killing you, Kessandra. Shit.” “You don’t have a choice, soldier. This is a direct order.” “Fuck your orders,” Nix snarled. For the first time, Kessandra’s eyebrows shot up, surprise painting her face. It wasn’t often Nix could catch her off guard.
“You look like shit. No offense.” Clearly they’d moved past the point of politeness. Nix rolled her eyes. “In what world wouldn’t I take offense to that?”
“For the record, I advised against both the surgery for her eye and the deployment. But at that point, the primarch was closing in—it was the mines, or a mysterious death on the front lines.” Nix was going to kill him. No, first she was going to kill Kessandra… in a less-than-literal manner. Then she’d find the primarch and slit his throat, in a very literal manner.
As they walked, he squinted at her posture. “You’re walking stiff. Did something happen?” “Got into a fight. He lost.” Eventually. Leon frowned, but Nix didn’t want to elaborate here.
Leon drew a slow breath. “Stay safe out there. Don’t go hunting something you can’t fight, okay?”
She smirked grimly. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be fighting real threats first.” “Considering you’re basically limping, that’s far from comforting.” She clapped his shoulder.
A bone. They’d reached the leviathan fall. Before Nix could contemplate that, a crash echoed in the gambling hall. Nix stiffened, hand reaching for the sarrant over her shoulder on instinct. She strode swiftly through the wide entrance, shifting to a painful jog as screams echoed in the huge room. Far beyond the tables of slot machines, a panicked thrush of people were shoving for the far exit. They were, of course, hitting a wall of soldiers trying to do the exact opposite. And in the room’s center, surrounded by shredded corpses, was the female Elite. Nix sized her up in seconds—the
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The fact that Kessandra went against two of these things in an hour sent a spike of panic through Nix’s veins. She should never have let the subarch out of her sights. Her voice was clipped. “After this, we are going to have a long talk on acceptable risk.”
Her ribs were agony. Her breath felt short. And Kessandra plucked the sarrant from her hands before she realized it. Nix lunged for the weapon, but Kessandra easily danced out of range. “Try the pole,” she said, but there was no humor in her tone. “It’s apparently quite effective.”
“Wow. Is this how you are at parties?” Hallie strolled past Nix with an appraising glance at her attire, the scratches on her face. “Glad I skipped the invite.” On the couch, Kessandra wheezed a laugh.
She laughed bitterly and muttered, “Why the fuck am I here?” No one answered, of course.
“Doctor, we’re not hallucinating looking at that image.” That seemed to quell her. Hallie’s jaw clenched, but she looked again at the image. “Three decades ago, no one thought ichoron was dangerous… so anything is possible. We don’t know what we don’t know.” The statement lingered between them, baneful and dangerous.
“Doctor Jesko, you may leave. Be safe getting back to your lab.” “Sure,” Hallie replied, shouldering her bag. “Don’t kill her.” It wasn’t immediately clear who she was talking to.
Nix would snap the primarch’s neck in two. He’d better pray they never made it back.
“What was the right move, then? Tell me,” Kessandra hissed. Nix held her gaze. It felt like she might ignite at any moment. “We work together. I’m your knight, Kess. Use me. You’re not alone on that board.”
Kessandra squeezed her hand, hard. “Please, Nix. You promised.” “I’m not going to kill you,” Nix spat. “Then I’m g-going to kill you,” she replied, choking on a sob. There was no doubt in her words.
Nix really should have remembered that second sedative. “Don’t hold that against me,” Nix muttered, mostly to herself.
The doctor took one look at them—Kessandra, unconscious, bound—Nix, bloodied, shaking—and pinched the bridge of her nose, right below her heavy glasses. “I suppose now’s a bad time for the ‘I told you not to kill her’ joke I had planned.” Nix didn’t even have the energy to laugh.
“The sooner we get that thing out, the better her chances. Let’s not waste—” She didn’t have the chance to finish. An explosion wracked the ship.
The currents were coming from all angles—even if the water originated in the promenade, it had flooded with vengeance toward this side of the ship. Now it churned into a vortex Nix could barely fight. She surfaced with a gasp, drenched, the water ice-cold. Fuck. She hadn’t thought about hypothermia. It hardly mattered. She could save someone, at least.
She was so, so tired. Her sarrant was in reach. Nix’s eyes flicked towards it. Leon saw. He put a hand on his pistol. “Don’t. I don’t want to kill you.” “How kind.”
“How can the reality be worse than this?” Unless the Crypt Keeper did exist, and it was possessing people like she suspected. But he killed that thought in a second. “The bones outside. The fall that created this ecosystem, the spot that seemed so perfect for a settlement.” Derision cut Leon’s expression. “This wasn’t a sea creature. There is no leviathan. There were two ancient beings, and Aeris killed Lumos and left its corpse here to rot.” Leon laughed, cold and disbelieving, and rubbed a hand over his face. “And then you all went and set up a mining operation in its fucking brain.”
She slowly unsheathed her sarrant, brandishing it. He cocked the hammer on his pistol. “I don’t want to kill you, Nix. I probably should, but… fuck, you’re a great officer, and an even better person. Please, don’t make me do it.” That twisted her heart.
He heaved a sigh, then fired a shot. Shock—and on its heels, hot pain. Nix staggered, an agonized cry erupting from her lips. Blood welled on her left thigh, and she gripped the wound with one hand, falling against the banister again. For a moment, it looked like Leon might tip her back over, straight into the churning vortex below.
It was a flesh wound. That didn’t mean it hurt any less.
The ship was doomed. Was Lumos the Crypt Keeper this entire time? And Aeris—who the hell was Aeris?
She wouldn’t make it to the medical bay, to Hallie and Kessandra, even if she could disarm the bomb. Not like this. But she had to try for the ballast tanks, at least. She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t attempt to stop another catastrophe, even if it swept her into the icy, waterlogged graveyard below. Kessandra would be furious, but Nix couldn’t care.
Nix collapsed as her boot touched the final step, and she didn’t remember hitting the floor.
Hallie pressed a hand to Nix’s forehead, her cheek, and breathed a sigh. “Kessandra is fine. The surgery went well; she should be waking up soon.” Whatever she was checking for, Hallie seemed to find it satisfactory, because in the next breath she smacked Nix’s arm. “But when she finds out what you did, she may kill you all over again. Blood loss, hypothermia, shock. You two are going to drive me into a watery grave.”
“Heal juice,” Nix repeated, deadpan. Hallie shrugged. “It’s a medical term. You wouldn’t understand.” Nix snorted. “No, I don’t think I would.”
A gunshot cracked through the room. “Found a pistol.” Kessandra was almost smug. An infected sank her teeth into Nix’s shoulder. She cried out, thrashing, but the woman was like a street dog. “Oh, fuck off,” Nix snapped, and slammed the woman into the nearby wall.
Kess breathed a sigh. “Fine. Affirmative. The sergeant is in charge.” “And don’t you forget it.” Nix smirked.
