Chapter 23
* * *
Taer woke up immediately - a sharp jolt - as if the nightmare had chewed her up and, not satisfied with the taste, spat her out.
"Damn..." she groaned, pulling down the sweaty sheets and trying to sit up on the bed. "Again..."
The nightmare started right on schedule the night after the guiding was activated. Her body was shaking with small shivers, like a chill, and every joint was aching. She felt as if she had shattered into a thousand little pieces, and someone had hastily glued them back together. Not much care had been taken to fit the pieces in proper order.
Taer stretched out her arm, and with a loud snap, the elbow joint snapped into place. The palm crunched into a fist - the nasty aching feeling subsided a little. Reaching for the small table by the bed, she pulled out her communicator. Blue numbers flashed on the screen...
Three o'clock! Taer wondered. I slept for almost twenty-four hours!
She summoned the droids to make the bed and tossed the communicator back onto the table. She rose carefully from the bed. It seemed that if she shifted more weight on her leg, it would burst like a glass of the finest crystal in a careless hand, and she would collapse to the floor like a broken doll. Whether or not that was really the case, she did not want to find out. So Taer moved slowly toward the bathroom, carrying herself gently across the room like it was the greatest jewel in the world.
Walking past the security terminal, she mechanically ran a diagnostic, glancing unseeingly at the scattering of images from the tracking sensors, and was about to turn away when suddenly her body froze, and a moment later, she seemed to burst into flames from within.
A wave of heat swept through her, burning away the shivers and weakness, her lungs on fire like after hours of cross-country. Taer took a deep, scalding breath, as if she'd inhaled pure flame instead of air, and stopped breathing altogether. At the same moment, her right hand shook the blaster from the holster left on the table in one incredibly crisp and graceful movement, simultaneously cocking the ready lever and setting the power to maximum. The accelerator turned on, and as her body floated in a thick syrup of thickened air in a swift dash towards the cloaked sliding panel that separated her and the lord's bedroom, Taer realized what had caused the homing reaction.
None of the pictures of the security terminal showed any summoned droids. It hit her belatedly. Either someone had blocked my communication channel, and they just didn't summon, or someone had hacked into the surveillance network, and now there was a "visual loop" on the terminal, spliced together from old records
The panel slid noiselessly to the side, and Taer stretched out in a crawling leap at the very floor, eager to escape the dangerous confines of the doorway. The fluffy pile of carpet swept in front of her face. She rubbed her shoulder gently against it and went into a roll, frozen in a tight clump behind the huge, human-sized mirror in the lord's bedroom. Only the edge of her right eye and the muzzle of her blaster protruded beyond the boundaries of the mirror.
The dark room was flooded with the ghostly reddish light of the night sky, glinting dimly on the scarlet silk of the upholstered walls. One of the segments of the huge window that occupied the entire outer wall was open, and the slight breeze brought with it the scent of wet leaves, the quiet rustle of cilias, and the distant trill of rare finches. The frame of the mirror against which she snuggled cooled her cheek and smelled of old metal. There was silence and peace in the bedroom. The lord sprawled out, and slept across the bed, seemingly unharmed.
She slid out from behind the mirror and moved in a wide arc toward the lord's bed, flowing from place to place, from one hiding place to another, with the scarlet dot of her aim resting on the door leading to the hallway and frozen virtually unwavering despite all her movements. Guider, managing to aim, survey the room and look behind the doors to the corridor and dressing room at the same time, brought Taer up to the lord, her palm resting near his face. The sleeper's calm breath came in a warm wave over her fingers.
Thank shadows, false alarm! With relief, she thought.
And a moment later, she realized how uncomfortable her position was. Deep in the night, in her lord's bedroom, holding her palm to his face for some reason, with only one blaster, even without a holster or belt, still pointed toward the door. A cool, damp breeze blew in from the garden, sending shivers down her spine:
Oh, Ryan, don't let him wake up, she mentally pleaded. He'll think I'm crazy, or they'll put me in some kind of asylum.
And then, to her horror, she saw the lord's eyelids flutter open, and his eyes (very slowly from the still 'accelerated' Taer's point of view) begin to open.
For a few moments, they stared into each other's eyes. The lord's look of confusion was replaced by surprise, and Taer began to think feverishly about what to say when suddenly there was a quiet click, and the door to the corridor began to open...
As the light beam of the ajar door widened, a dainty hand and the edge of a dark purple dress became visible...
The blaster in Taer's hand shrieked, and a ball of orange firefly discharge raced towards the opening door. She watched in horror as the edge of the door slowly drifted to the side, revealing an intruder - a small scarlet Istalia flower pinned to the shoulder strap, long flowing gold earrings that accentuated the beauty of their owner's neck, dark hair gathered in a long tight ponytail with wide, dark red ribbons. It was Baroness Kayrin Rional in the tight dark purple dress she had worn during the last breakfast. The discharge shattered into Kayrin's face in a bright flash, scarlet sparks of instantly burnt hair splattering to the sides, the tight scarlet bud of the explosion burst with smoky petals, fading into a black frost of soot. The Baroness swayed slightly but steadied herself, and her left arm went slowly upward.
Taer threw the lord back so that he fell behind the bed and darted away from the intended line of fire with one mighty swing of her hand. The next shot fired by the 'specialist' also hit Kayrin's head and - again - with no tangible result. Baroness Rionale trembled a wave of light sweeping through her arm and a dainty silver slicer leaping out of her wrist and into the palm of her hand.
In response to this, the guider must have decided to change tactics as Taer's blaster let out a pulsating howl, lighting the baroness's chest in flames of smoke. Kayrin began to swell rapidly like a disturbed swamp jumper, and her skin began to take on a distinct silver hue, a slither rustling. An invisible jet ran across the room, trying to catch up with Taer, knocking white fountains of filler from the bed, flourishing a reddish stream of sawdust on the polished sides of furniture and light wisps of pile flowing across the carpet.
Taer felt a slight jolt to her left side and was hit by something warm and wet. An alien prickly thought flashed through her mind. No pattern correction required! The guider continued to send out discharges. The scarlet dot of the sight twitched to the side, and a bright flash of tearing covered the Baroness' palm with the clenched slither.
Kayrin, who by this point resembled a strange headless semblance of a human with rough silver skin and huge arms and legs that looked more like poles, jerked awkwardly and collapsed to the side, stepping out of the doorway and out of sight. There was a soft clap, and a cloud of energy-absorbing mixture hung like a pearly wall in the corridor.
Taer stood frozen for a few moments, holding the doorway in her sight, then she frantically exhaled the scalding air and took her first breath of the whole time:
"Ancient Shapeshifter. I thought they were extinct," she heard her own voice, more like a croak.
And she realized that the "guider" was right, and it really was an ancient shapeshifter, just like in the scary fairy tales her older sister liked to tell.
Her body turned towards the lord - the latter, seemingly unharmed, was peering out from behind a parted jumble of beds and staring at her like a mesmerized man:
"Taer, the hand..." he said at last, with some strange intonation.
Her gaze dipped a little lower, and the "specialist" realized with horror what the lord meant.
Her entire left side was covered in blood, there was a dark wound just below her chest, and her right arm was missing above the elbow. Or rather, it was not where it was supposed to be, but on the floor. And around it, a dark stain was swiftly pouring across the carpet.
"He went for reinforcements." As if nothing had happened, the guider continued. "We should change positions."
At that moment, her left hand swiped the phaser forcefully across her thigh, exposing the focus to the minimum, and brought the barrel to the wound.
Taer realized what was about to happen and became unbearably scared:
I don't want to! The thought rushed through her mind, and for the first time, she tried to resist the guider.
"I don't want to..." she heard herself wheezing. Her hand loosened, hanging limply, the blaster falling to the carpet with a thud.
She suddenly realized that she was incredibly cold, and every breath was followed by a flickering pain in her left side. Another hoarse breath made her break into a convulsive cough. Taer wiped her lips and stared in surprise at the scarlet droplets left on the back of her palm. At that moment, the world shook around her, black dots danced in her eyes, and the floor swept toward her with splotches of scarlet.
* * *
The sensation of living warmth that had appeared near his face made Alex wake up. When he opened his eyes, he tried for a few moments to figure out what it was that he was seeing. And when he did, at first, he thought he was still asleep. Above him, holding his open palm close to his face, leaned Taer in her Eve costume. Simply put, completely naked. Despite the obvious unreality of the sight, Alex's gaze slid almost spontaneously down to the mouthwatering curves and roundness of the "specialist," gleaming in the reddish light of the night sky.
And when she in uniform, where does that disappear to? Dumbfounded, he thought, instantly realizing that the curves and roundness were perfectly real.
Alex looked at Taer in surprise, trying to figure out what that was about, and froze, gazing into her face. Her unnaturally dilated eyes seemed to be completely black, staring unmovingly through him. Or rather an eye. The right one. Because the left one was looking somewhere in the direction of the front door, which gave an eerie impression. The barrel of the blaster in his left hand was pointing in the same direction.
At that moment, the lock on the door clicked softly, and Alex was thrown into the air. The world around him flipped and spun, exploding in a whirl of flashes and howls of flying discharges. He suddenly realized that he was flying toward the small table behind the bed, and he reflexively clutched himself into a lump, covering his head with his hands.
Rhythmic flashes of gunfire rolled through the bedroom with a howl, momentarily illuminating the room with orange light before exploding with loud pops somewhere in the hallway. Alex tried to rise from the floor, but at that moment, something unseen rustled dryly through the room, tearing everything in its path.
The bed behind which he had fallen spewed out a swirling cloud of shreds and sawdust and collapsed on its side with a loud crack of shattering wood, a swirl of silk paneling, sawdust, and filling material swirled over the small, elegant couch that stood next, and it collapsed flat in half, a huge mirror collapsed to the floor with a loud clang. Something drew a bizarre zigzag across the carpet and caught up with Taer. A wound opened on her forearm, splattering a scarlet blotch to the sides, and the "specialist" disappeared for a moment in a swirl of tiny blood droplets. In the corridor, something clattered softly...
Suddenly it stopped as suddenly as it had started.
An unnatural silence fell over Alex, so quiet that he could hear the thud of his own heart. He rose again from behind the ruins of the bed and searched for Taer with his eyes. The girl stood frozen like a statue on the other side of the bed. She was covered in blood, her right arm was missing, and blood was gushing from a dark cut on her forearm. Her face was perfectly still, and the blaster in her outstretched hand was perfectly still.
"Fuck!" Alex whispered dazedly.
"Ancient Shapeshifter," Taer commented blankly, taking a deep breath as if after a long dive. "I thought they were extinct."
She turned her head towards him, her eyes still unnaturally dilated and staring through him. Blood poured darkly down her side, but the "specialist" seemed not to notice.
"Taer, the hand..." Alex finally managed to get it out.
The specialist looked at her wound with the same vacant expression, but judging by the serenity of her face, she had no emotion whatsoever.
"Gor azad va' zor," she said as she slid the blaster across her thigh. "Do sa" per koli."
The barrel of the blaster froze near the open wound, and then her face came alive with fear in her gaze:
"I don't want to..." she wheezed, coughing. Taer swayed and collapsed to the floor as if the thread holding her together had broken.
Alex stood motionless for a few seconds and then, finally realizing what had happened, rushed toward the fallen girl:
She's just in shock. It went through her mind. She probably didn't even feel the pain.
He struggled to roll her onto her side, his hands sliding over her blood-soaked body, and the "specialist" was just too heavy to lift. Making sure that Taër was breathing and nothing seemed to interfere with her breathing, Alex tried to clamp his hand over the wound.
This obviously doesn't make sense, he thought as he watched the dark streams gushing out in frequent small jolts from beneath his palms. That's no way to stop the blood.
Alex rushed to the bedside table and on the way turned on the light and pulled the belt from his 'hunting' trousers.
A ring of light ran along the entire perimeter of the domed ceiling, flooding the room with warm white light. The air was filled with white flakes of bedding and fine wood dust, the carpet was gaping in narrow zigzag gaps, the bed was torn to shreds, the couch was splintered on one side, and the shards of a huge mirror, its massive metal frame slashed aslant, were lying on the other side of the room.
Where the stripe of impact had touched the walls, long narrow strips of tattered silk upholstery remained, through which the dark gray stone of the walls showed. Almost in the center of the tattered room, drenched in blood, lay Taer. The white filler fluff swirled in a silent blizzard, clinging to her, lingering in melted snowflakes.
Alex tried to tear the long, narrow flap from the sheet, but the silk wouldn't budge. With a growl, he grabbed the pillow and literally ripped the pillowcase from it.
"Oh, how to tighten it!" He exhaled, tightening the strap around the wound with an improvised tampon from a folded quadruple pillowcase. "It poured and poured..."
He remembered that if the tourniquet was too tight, it could lead to tissue necrosis, and anything that was tightened would then have to be amputated. But for some reason, the instructors had never explained how to determine if the tourniquet was tight enough.
Tightening the belt, Alex hesitated, his hands clenching as if trying to grasp something; he had been firmly taught that a note must be put under the tourniquet, stating the time of the tourniquet. He knelt beside Taer, glancing frantically for a few seconds for the watch, then suddenly frozen in nervous, silent laughter. He suddenly realized that he didn't even know how many hours there were in the day or what was written here:
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"God, what a mess I've been in," he whispered, cocking his head and looking up.
Above, the huge domed ceiling, a bloodied dark-haired youth, clutching the flag in his hands, called after him. Flames raged, and piles of bodies lay around him. A white griffin on a burnt scarlet cloth sprang up. He looked menacing and angry from above.
"What, I don't deserve the high rank of Lord?" Alex grinned and clenched his fists. He exhaled a long, calming breath.
Relax, it's just hysteria, an inner voice came to life.
"I know!" Alex snarled aloud, trying to palpate the pulse on Taer's neck.
There was a pulse. Very frequent but faint, almost imperceptible.
"How much blood you've lost..." he grimaced.
Although her hand had almost stopped bleeding, there was a sticky, dark stain on the white carpet around the specialist. Then he noticed a thin, scarlet trickle of blood on the side of the Taer, just below her breasts. It was a narrow wound, a little less than a finger thick:
"Fuck! God, I'm such an idiot! I'm an idiot!" Alex whispered, frantically trying to flip the monstrously heavy Taer onto her other side so that the wound was on the bottom.
All he remembered of internal bleeding was: dark blood - liver, intestines, kidneys, light scarlet blood - lungs. The trickle was bright scarlet. He yanked a healthy scrap of sheet off the bed, folded it tightly, and pressed it to the wound. Alex was already looking around for a suitable piece of cloth to bandage the Taer, pressing the tampon to her side, when suddenly he heard quiet footsteps in the corridor. Almost wheezing with exertion, he tugged at the wreckage of the bed and, grabbing her blaster from the floor, placed the barrel on the edge of the bed. Near the muzzle, a scarlet dot floated in the air.
Must be an aim, Alex decided, and the scarlet dot lay just to the side of the entrance - where the entrant should be a split second after appearing in the opening.
The handle slid a little in his blood-red hand, and he wrapped a second palm around the top of it to be sure. He lurched.
The edge of something white flashed through the doorway, appearing near the top for a moment and then disappearing. The blaster shrieked and spat out a yellow ball of the discharge as Alex reflexively fired. On the opposite wall of the corridor, a small scarlet ball of explosion burst, leaving behind a black stain with a reddening core on the pale wood panel.
I know such tricks Alex thought angrily, shifting half a meter sideways from his old position and aiming the sight exactly in the middle of the doorway. He unfocused his gaze and, relaxing his hand, pressed lightly on the trigger picking out the slack.
Such tricks he did, indeed, know. Some smartass peeked into the room on a swing, hanging from a jamb, standing on something high, or simply jumping up, appearing for a split second where he was least expected - in the upper corner. And now that someone is leaning against the wall and realizing exactly what it was that he saw in that brief moment.
I don't think he can distinguish me. Only the edge of his head and the barrel of his blaster showed above the torn mishmash of the bed. And I won't give him a second time.
Seconds stretched on, but nothing happened - the unknown enemy was assessing the situation.
I wish I could throw a grenade at him while he's thinking - it will be a good lesson.
Thoughts, spurred on by adrenaline, formed an unpleasant picture, and Alex began to squint at the open secret door leading to Taer's room. His body literally shuddered with the urge to dash in there, for he too had marked himself, and the unknown "white one", unlike him, might well have a grenade on him as well. He grabbed the "specialist" by the surviving arm and, trying to be as quiet as possible, began dragging her to the secret door, realizing with horror that at any rate, he would not make it.
"Allesandro?" There was an uncertain female voice from the corridor. "Are you all right?"
Alex threw up Taer's hand and raised his blaster again. The voice was similar to Kayrin's, but there was no certainty, especially since Taer was saying something about shapeshifters.
"It's me, Kayrin," the worried voice came out again. "I was in the fencing hall and I heard rumbling and gunshots..."
"How do you prove you're Kayrin?" Alex answered with a question, taking cover behind the doorjamb of the secret door.
Taer's words about the shapeshifter were still in his head, and the fencing hall was, to say the least, too far away to hear the soft buzzing and clapping of blasters.
And what was she doing there anyway, in a fencing hall, in the middle of the night?
"When I was a little girl," He heard from the hallway. "We used to come and visit, and I used to call you 'Caslem Cislem,' and you hated it and threw incredible tantrums..."
"Anything from a more recent history?" he suggested, wondering if 'Kayrin' knew about the secret door leading to Taer's bedroom.
By all accounts, it seemed likely that she did not know and could go out the back and if it had been a case of training, he would have done so without hesitation.
Except this isn't a game. There the balls hurt more, Flashing in his head as Alex exhaled slowly through clenched teeth, trying to calm his racing heart and the fever that was gripping him.
"When we came back from the Voigrom," Kayrin continued after a moment's pause, "you told me you didn't want to marry Valerie, but you were being pressured by Countess Durlurl. And when you were helping me pick out dresses for the Unification Party, you supposedly stepped off the top of my dress while helping me unbutton the clasps."
Alex sighed in relief:
Unlikely anyone from the outside could have known about the two incidents at the same time, he decided and shouted into the corridor. Come in!
In the doorway, with arms outstretched, a figure in a tight white suit appeared, the hilt of a sword dangling from her belt. A solid helmet with a white, opaque visor, on which was an intricate monogram, covered her head. It was Kayrin's fencing costume, and the figure was clearly hers:
"The Great Shadows!" There was a cry muffled by the helmet. She wanted to run to him but froze. She must have seen a phaser pointed at her. "Alex, are you all right? Are you hurt?"
"Don't move. My hands are shaking." He warned honestly. "Take off your helmet."
The baroness pulled off her helmet, and a dark wave of thick hair fell over her shoulders. Kayrin's bottomless black eyes glowed with concern. Her face, which must have been devoid of makeup, seemed a little paler, but as usual, it was impeccably perfect and incredibly beautiful.
"It's me." She said it again. "Don't shoot."
"Or something that looks like you," Alex whispered tiredly, not lowering his blaster.
He had to choose whether to shoot or not. On the outside, it was 100% Kayrin, but...
Fuck! Shapeshifters or something. Should I poke her with silver?
"Don't worry, it's me, Kay." The Baroness assured him, seeing the disbelief in Alex's eyes as he stared at her through the scope. "You're covered in blood..." She added with a strange intonation.
Alex made a decision and lowered his blaster. Kayrin, still anxious face, ran towards him but froze in horror when she saw Taer's body, hidden by the ruins of the bed until then:
"O Protectress!" She exclaimed, frozen. "What's wrong with Taer? What's happened here, anyway?"
"Someone or something attacked us. I didn't understand anything. Taer said something about a shapeshifter, an ancient." Alex began to explain his confused impressions of what had happened. "By the time I woke up, Taer was already shooting at someone, then something slashing was flying across the room. Taer's arm is severed, and there seems to be a slight lung injury. She needs to be rushed to hospital."
"Then why didn't you call the servants in?" Kayrin asked, not hiding her amazement at why such an obvious thing had not been done.
"Because I'm an idiot!" Alex whispered dazedly
He had honestly forgotten that the castle was full of people. Maybe there was a doctor too. He rushed to the communicator and, clutching the knob responsible for calling the servants, shouted: "Run to my bedroom! Call an ambulance at once! Get two bags immediately, one filled with water and ice. The other must be clean and dry."
The communicator responded to his call with silence. It was probably damaged during the firefight.
"What are the bags for?" The baroness wondered, squatting beside the Taer but keeping her eyes on Alex.
"To save the arm," Alex explained. "If they can fix a burnt-out Dudo, I don't think they'll have a problem sewing her arm back on."
She gave him a strange look but said nothing. The Baroness got up and peered over his shoulder: "This is the passageway to Taer's room, isn't it?" She asked.
"Er..." Alex stretched out without understanding. "Yeah, what?"
"I bet she's got a first-aid kit in there," Kayrin exclaimed excitedly, shoved Alex aside, and disappeared into the room. "Keep an eye on Taer for now." It came from over there.
He leaned over the specialist and listened. Her breathing was faint and a little hoarse. He moved the sheet that covered the wound in her side a little to see if the blood was foaming...
And at that moment, a golden blade flashed with a quiet hum next to his face.
"Don't move." Kayrin hissed from behind me. "Or I'll blow your head off before you even think about it."
Alex, not moving and at the same time wondering if he could reach the blaster without Kayrin noticing, beckoned his eyes in her direction.
The baroness hovered over him as a white statue with grim determination on her face, her left hand clutching the hilt of her sword, whose golden blade froze a few centimeters from his face, burning his skin, and in her right, she clutched something like a drill with a large screen. She stepped forward slightly and kicked the blaster that lay beside Alex away with a kick of her foot.
"Kayrin? What's wrong with you?" As calmly as possible, Alex inquired, who suddenly thought that if she wanted to kill him, she'd just blow his head off without any conversation. "Don't you think..."
"Shut up!" She shouted angrily at him. "Tell me where Allesandro is, or..." The streak of gold glittering fire moved menacingly closer. "I know what I do with the likes of you... Tell me where he is or I swear I'll cut you in four times eight pieces."
"Relax, there's no need to dissect anyone. I am Allesandro, the real deal."
Kayrin leaned towards him without removing her blade and squinted unkindly into his eyes:
"The real Allesandro couldn't stand the sight of blood." She hissed. "He would get sick and literally faint. And almost no one knew about it because he was too shy and hide his weakness. He was, after all, the Heir to the Cassards."
"Um... you must have forgotten. I've lost my memory..." Alex began to excuse himself, squinting at the blade that was burning his skin more and more... "A phobia could well be forgotten, being in the damaged areas..., more so in an extreme situation."
God, what am I saying... I'm so busted, he thought, watching the baroness's reaction carefully.
"You've forgotten the phobia, then." She smiled wickedly. "And you remembered the Survival and Adaptation course, didn't you?" Baroness nodded at the belted arm. "Only the Searchers and Saboteurs get to read it, and Allesandro wasn't even in the Guard!"
"I'm doing this intuitively..." said Alex, who decided that explaining that he'd taken a course in extreme medicine along with anti-avalanche training as a snowboarding free rider would be suicidal. "Believe me. It's me, Alex, I mean Allesandro."
"And we're about to find out..." Kayrin brought the 'drill' with the screen she had in her right hand to Alex's neck and suddenly jabbed him in the back, just below the shoulder blade, in a sudden, lightning-fast motion.
"Well, I hope that convinces you..." Alex said, wrinkling his nose at the unexpectedly painful sting. "By the way, while you're figuring out what I am, maybe you could help Taer. She's dying."
"She's not dying." The baroness snarled, squinting at the screen of the softly beeping drill. "Her head was unharmed, her blood had stopped, and she breathing. She had at least an hour."
For a few lingering seconds, the Drill chirped softly, probably analyzing the sample, the flaming gold of the blade stinging the skin mercilessly:
I'll probably get blisters later, Alex thought aloof.
The 'drill' made a low, shimmering sound:
"The human..." Kayrin groaned, clearly unable to believe her eyes. The surprise on her face changed to anger. "So the disguise..."
"Kay, come on, don't be silly..." Alex started, but he stopped when he saw the look in her eyes.
"I can feel that you're not Allesandro!" She whispered, bringing her open palm to his face and standing still. "I'm sure of it."
Alex suddenly felt as heavy as if he'd been rammed by a thousand-ton train. The world lost its colors, the sounds were gone, and only the thud of his heart convinced him that he was still alive. Somewhere in the depths of his chest shuddered a heavy dragging nasty feeling. He looked up at the baroness through the grey haze that obscured his eyes. There was an incredible tension on her face, a tiny drop of sweat crawling down her temple, the look in her black eyes literally burning him, and for a moment, he thought they were a dull blue somewhere in the depths.
Suddenly everything stopped, the world became colorful, and the nasty feeling in his chest disappeared. Alex sighed in relief and squeezed his eyes shut, pushing the gray haze out of his eyes. Kairin, on the other hand, stood frozen with some incredible mixture of fear and surprise on her face. She looked at her hand with the blade at Alex's face in surprise, as if to say, "My God, what am I doing!" The Baroness stood in indecision for a few moments, but then there was a desperate determination in her gaze like someone determined to do something incredibly frightening:
She gonna strike.
Alex was about to jump aside, desperately aware that he wouldn't make it in any case. Suddenly something like a frantic inspiration lit up Kayrin's face, and the blade flashed away:
"Oh, forgive me, Allesandro!" She gave him a big hug. "I don't know what came over me. When I saw you covered in blood, I didn't think it could be you, and what you said about the shapeshifter... it was stupid."
"Okay, never mind." Alex touched the burned cheek lightly and grimaced in pain. "What was that, by the way?"
"What do you mean?" Kayrin asked though she seemed to know exactly what he talking about.
"Well, when you put your hand to my face. " That's what Taer did, by the way. Alex remembered. "I suddenly felt so sick, and I think your eyes even lit up."
"Are you sure?" Kayrin interrogated deafeningly. "What color?"
"Er... Blue, I think, but I'm not sure." Alex, who was blinded by the light of the blade, admitted.
"You imagined it." She exhaled in relief and smiled. "And you were sick from the burn. Please forgive me. I didn't mean to." She added with an unhappy expression on her face.
"Yeah, well..." Alex began, and then his eyes caught on Taer, whom he had completely forgotten about with the whole "interrogation" thing. He rushed over to the "specialist" inwardly freezing and checking a pulse. He sighed heavily. Alive.
"We need to get her to a hospital right away. She has lost a lot of blood and may have hurt her lung."
Kayrin, without saying anything, disappeared into Taer's room and returned with a small plastic case with a complicated green sign on the lid:
"I'll take care of Taer for now." She informed him as she removed his improvised belt tourniquet and wrapped some sort of instantly healed tape around the wound. "You get the servants to contact the hospital and get your Arm up. And explain to me what's going on!"
"The communicator is damaged, and I can't remember what else to call them," Alex confessed. "I don't know what happened, but I woke up, and Taer was shooting a blaster at someone in the hallway, but I couldn't see who. Then something threw me out of bed, and something whizzed across the room, cutting everything. When it all settled down, Taer's arm was cut off. She said it was a Shapeshifter and that they were extinct, then she added something, not in English, and said, I don't want..."
"Not in what she added it?" Kayrin interjected.
Although her face wasn't visible because she was leaning over the specialist injecting her with a red tube, you could see her tense up:
"In another language." Alex fumbled. "Said something in another language, then "I don't want to," and passed out. From shock, blood loss, or both." He added, looking sympathetically at the motionless Taer."
"What did she say in another language?" The baroness asked as she continued to work on the 'specialist'.
"I don't remember exactly..." Alex stretched, squinting his eyes up and trying to remember exactly what the Taer had said. "Gor azat vazor, I think it was..."
Kayrin obviously tensed up again: "We need to call the police urgently, or better still, a squad of Guards from the Representation."
"The communicator doesn't work." Alex reminded her. "And what do those words mean, by the way?"
"It's the language of the 'branch of the flame'."Kay frowned. "I don't know it very well, but 'Gor' means enemy, and 'zor' means reinforcement. That's why we have to call in the police and guards as a matter of urgency. There should be a room near your bedroom with servants on duty. Tell them to look for the communicator."
"I'll go and find them then..." Alex started towards the exit but was stopped by the Baroness:
"No, you'd better stay here with Taer in case the attacker is still in the castle."
"But then, who would call the police and the servants?" He objected.
"I'll make a quick run for it," Kayrin suggested, but then, seeing Alex's gaze, she added. "Okay, we'll make a quick run for it, and I don't think anything's going to happen to Taer."
Within two minutes, Lord Cassard and Baroness Rionale had dropped in on the unsuspecting maids on duty, nearly fainting the poor girl. Whether it was the way Alex looked - he was wearing only his pants and covered in blood from head to toe. Or the tone in which Kayrin demanded that they get out and quickly find a working communicator and the steward with pilots.
Panic and commotion quickly filled the waking castle. Soon Lord Cassard's bedroom, despite its imposing size, was crowded. The guests, servants, droids, a crowd of half-dressed people bustling about. Soon the droids assisted Taer was hoisted onto a makeshift stretcher of the two hovering platforms used to serve the table, and accompanied by Kayrin and two pilots, she headed for the garages. Alex lingered a little longer. He tried a seemingly primitive thing: two bags, one filled with ice and water and the other empty and dry, to save his hand. But the servants just didn't seem to understand him. Especially as it turned out that no communicators worked in the castle, and it was impossible to explain anything to the people on the spot - they had to send "messengers".
Finally, Barra, who proved to be the cleverest, came running in with two bags of something that looked like foil and a bucket of ice. And Alex, together with Lord Brenor, who was also soaked in blood, inwardly shuddering with horror, packed the limb first into a dry bag and then plunged it into the bucket of ice:
"To be honest, I'm not quite sure why we did it, Lord Cassard." Lord Brenor, who had dropped in the day before as he had promised to "pay a visit" and check on his health after the assassination, confessed. "Wouldn't it have been easier to use a freezer or just put ice on it?"
"The thing is Lord Lister, that direct contact with ice..." Alex began, but then there was a pulsing howl from the traction generators, a dry snap, and blue ball lightning exploded with a violent crack under the bedroom ceiling. A savage, unbearable pain burned his entire body, and Alex collapsed to the floor, cramped.
His body was completely disobedient. He couldn't even move his eyes. His consciousness was trapped in an unruly, inert statue. Massive, angular metal boots came into view, then another. Something snapped again as if a huge lash had struck the water, and a bursting ball of discharge crackled somewhere far away. Someone flipped it over, and Alex saw a figure bent over him, clad in a black, oily gleaming spacesuit with a sheer opaque visor.
Here comes the reinforcement of the enemy, he thought, as he, frozen as a motionless monolith, was carelessly taken by the shoulder, lifted lightly with one hand, and dragged somewhere. We should have left at once.
He was thrown into the open side door of some vehicle hovering opposite the bedroom. The yellowish porous surface of the floor threw itself against him and hit him in the face. Soon the aerocar was rocking from the massive passengers scrambling inside, the door slammed, and the engines howled:
"What demons!" There was an angry cry from somewhere overhead. "What is this?"
"All who matched the description of the target." There was a clear challenge in the tone of the man who answered.
"Oh, shit! Why didn't you just blow them all to all shadows?!"
"The Grand insisted that identification had to be done, and they were all covered in blood. It would take a long time to analyze. You interrupted the operation yourself! What was I supposed to do?"
"Blow up the whole floor!" Shouted the first speaker. "Not dragging them on board!"
Alex, who was slowly regaining his ability to move, turned his head gently.
The rather spacious saloon, clad in light beige plastic, was cluttered with massive figures in black spacesuits and weapons. Six people sat along the walls. One seat was empty, and the seat opposite was occupied by a ruptured spacesuit with a huge fused gash on its chest.
One of those freaks must have got to him after all. With satisfaction, Alex thought, he noticed some kind of weapon not far from him, placed between the seats, with a massive perforated barrel and a muzzle into which his fist would fit freely: If I could reach it... But the body listened very badly.
"Come on. You're making a lot of noise." It came from above. "Let's identify this Cassard of yours, run a scan, slash, and throw the body out."
"No, fuck, once we got them alive, let Grand... look, this one's moving..." And a blinding ball of pain exploded in Alex's head, and he whirled off into the darkness somewhere.
* * *