Naxe jerked awake with the sense she’d been yanked from a familiar place she did not want to leave to…
The room was thickly covered in vines and thick trunks and filled with a green light. The truly strange part? She thought she heard music not far away. Some of the tendrils of some of the vines almost seemed like they were moving to the distant beat.
She was secured but not painfully so. She sensed if she tried to move that could change, so she tried to stay still. After a time of looking around, her eyes began to adjust to the strange light and she realized that there weren’t just plants in this place, but several of the strange creatures like the one who had attacked her. I know you.
Her words came back to her accompanied by a tremor of memory. It balanced on the threads of the place she’d left when she woke, but reality had to win. She needed to deal with what was in front of her. She felt a sense of loss when the other faded away.
“We’ve done this before,” she said, her voice loud in the almost silence. The music had changed, but the beat of it was still insistent.
“You should not have come back.” This voice came from almost at her feet.
“Kismir. You’re Kismir.”
“So you do remember,” it hissed. “You break your promise and then you come back.”
“I wanted to keep it,” she said, feeling the slow stirring in her mind. The shadow rose, but it was already fragmenting, more like smoke now. “He…took it. He took my memory.” She looked around her. “He took your freedom.”
“Excuses.” Kismir’s tone was scornful.
“I want to be free, too,” she said. “He trapped me, too.” Who was he? She didn’t remember that part yet, but it was there, behind the last writhing piece of the shadow.
“We will all be trapped together now.” The finality in his voice chilled her, despite the heavy heat in the room.
“We don’t have to be.”
“You said that before, but you failed.”
Was there a hint of hope in Kismir’s voice?
“Tim,” she said, “the robot. He can free your ship.” Her hope faltered. “If he still…lives. And the others.” If they’d hurt Riina nothing could save them. “The metal man could free this ship. If you let us leave, he will help you. His name is Tim and he is…good.”
“We cannot leave even if our ship is free.”
“It is the same for us. My ship is out there. It is waiting for us to shut down what keeps us all trapped here.” It felt so odd for the vines that held her to be swaying to the music. It felt like dancing. Dancing and talking. She almost laughed and more of her memory opened up. “I wasn’t alone when we met the last time.”
“They are still here. You know that. We are all trapped together.” There was a hint of despair in the dusty voice.
He’d not killed them, whoever they were. He didn’t want to hurt them. She remembered this. And she remembered a voice ordering their death…his voice. If only she could see his face. Her fingers curled into fists.
“We could be free together.” Naxe tried to keep her voice calm. Faces without names floated in and out of her mind’s view, but she could not identify where they fit into her life. The thought gave her pause. She’d had a life different from this one? “I don’t belong here.”
She knew she sounded dazed. She couldn’t remember where she did belong, but it wasn’t here.
“None of us belong here,” Kismir said.
Did his voice sound less shrill, less angry?
“Tim is very skilled. He can crack the codes that keep this ship here.”
“And if we try to leave he will fire on us.”
Had he fired on Blooban? Probably not, but he would if he realized how free she was. She knew this, though she still couldn’t remember why. Or who.
“He will if we can’t stop him,” Naxe agreed, “but this time we—I have help. I have a chance.” She stared at his midnight eyes. “You held my…crew hostage, but I couldn’t do it alone. I tried, but I couldn’t…” Crew? Not crew exactly, but what they were still eluded her. “He is crafty and evil. You know this.”
“We know this,” Kismir admitted. There was a short silence filled with the distant beat of a new song that her vines moved to. “If you free us, he will know. He will be ready.”
“Yes.” Naxe’s thoughts raced. “But I will be ready, too. Before, I didn’t know, I didn’t understand. Now I do.” She felt resolve stirring in a new way, felt it send strength to her limbs, but more importantly to her mind. Now the shadow cowered in there, trying to hide the last secret.
Kismir stared at her for what felt like a long time. For some reason the music that throbbed somewhere felt right for the moment. As if it called them both to act.
“If you betray us again…”
“You have to let everyone go, Kismir. You don’t need to hold them to make me do what you want. I want to do it already. I will do it or die. But I need the help of the people who came here with me.”
The silence was a long one, but not as tense and the music seemed to adjust to it, too.
“Very well.”
“If you fight us, we will kill you.”
Halliwell looked for the voice, but didn’t find it until he looked down. And the vine let him look down, he realized. The creature was about as high as his knees, with black eyes. His face was flat and square and it had grass growing out of the top of its head. Its skin was camo—green, brown, and gray.
“We don’t want to fight you,” he said, wishing his voice were more Picard and less…Rambo.
“Naxe says Tim can free our ship.”
Halliwell blinked as relief flooded him. She was okay. Or at least as okay as they were. And this thing, its ship was also trapped. Well, that wasn’t as much of a surprise as it would have been a couple of years ago. Had he hoped to help without shooting something? Memo to self: don’t be self-delusional in another galaxy. Memo to the memo: shooting happens.
“Tim can try.” Halliwell didn’t think he should make promises for Tim. “Why don’t you ask him? And you should probably let his girlfriend go before you ask him.”
The music still pulsed into the air around them, but Halliwell was pretty sure Tim could still hear them.
It didn’t speak but suddenly the vines holding them retracted. His thoughts cleared, too. Had one of them been inside his head? It was not a thought he wanted to linger on for too long.
The room brightened and now he could see Tim and Riina. Tim wasn’t quite as free as they were. The vines that had held him were looser, but Halliwell had a sense they were waiting for Tim to do something hostile.
“Free the others,” Tim said, his voice flat as the music faded to a low murmur.
“We’ll free them when we are all safe.”
In the better light, Halliwell could see at least five more captives, limp in their bonds, their eyes closed once more. How long had they been here?
Halliwell didn’t like leaving them, but the troll had a point. Why wake them before it was safe?
“You will not hurt them,” Tim said. His tone was flat, but somehow he managed to sound pretty serious about that.