“Where else could we take him?”
Mereta stepped forward.“Greetings and apologies for my obviously unwelcome presence.I assure you, I hadn’t anticipated putting you in such a precarious position.”
“Precarious?”Elcoger’s awe overrode some of his outrage.“Of course I wish to help your eminence in any way I can, Secretary-General, but I didn’t sign on to be executed.”
Lokmi snorted.“No, you signed on for all the money you could lay your hands on.”
“Which isn’t enough to cover this situation!”Elcoger’s fury erupted.“When are you taking him away?It had better be today!Within the hour!”
“You realize there’s no chance of that,” Piras answered.“If we budge, we’ll be caught.You’ll be on the hook too, and you know it.Tell me about the delivery shuttle.Will it be traced?”
The Dantovonian’s facial segments ground together in his agitation, but his reply managed some equanimity.“Do you think me an amateur?It’s used solely for secret deals.It has no markings and no transponder for it to be traced.My workers are stowing it in its hidden berth as we speak.”
“Excellent.We did our best to leave a confusing trail, so we have a good chance authorities will never think to look in your shop.”
“A bad chance is still a chance.”
“Don’t play the innocent,” Piras snarled.“Though we didn’t spell it out, you had to guess we came to find and help Mereta.”
“I thought you’d at least have the sense to have an exit strategy in place.Not bring him here!”Elcoger shook a clenched pincer at Piras.“I’ll have Kalquor’s entire treasury for this unfair use of my hospitality.Make no mistake; the empire will pay!”
He ordered the containment disabled and flew out of the room, buzzing louder than before.As soon as the door closed behind him, Kila ordered its protective containment on lethal.
Hope sighed.“That went well.”
“Poor fellow.”Mereta’s sympathy was real.He was all too aware of how much peril his presence caused the hapless Elcoger.
“Think he’ll turn us in?”Lokmi asked Piras.
“Not if he wants to live.He’s aware the All won’t spare him just because he didn’t know how hiding us would end up.”Piras shook his head.“If he had, he probably would have done it anyway.”
“Money talks, and it’s the only language he speaks,” Kila agreed.
Mereta wasn’t so sure.Beneath his anger, Elcoger had looked terrified.Justified or not, it had been the secretary-general who’d put such fear in him.
* * * *
Kalquor
Cassidy shifted on her stool as a slight cramp tightened her abdomen.She barely noted it between her examination of the microscope vid of Dark tissue, the computer analysis of the specimen, and wondering if she’d seen the last of the Other.
Distraction was good.Though she despised the Darks, it had been as hard as she’d feared to take samples from her subjects.Because she had no anesthetic that numbed the creatures, they’d had to endure brutal pain of removal of flesh, eyes, and the various organic matter required for study.The screaming and pleas for the All to save them had made her think of her own soon-to-be-born child crying for her.No amount of reminding herself how unmoved the All and its entities would be if the situation were reversed could ease the stabs of conscience she felt for inflicting torment.Hiding the guilt was also difficult, but necessary to keep her clanmates and Emperor Egilka from barring her from her work.
Above all, she had to find a way to destroy the All, no matter how inhumane it made her feel.
I bet the Other would be interested to know the effect taking the samples have on me.After a week since its last visit, Cassidy wondered if she’d see the neighboring dimension’s second occupant again.The idea the Other had lost all interest in her dealings with the Darks worried her immensely.Each day that ended with no contact had Egilka and her exchanging hopeless glances.
Another distant pain rippled through her, and she shifted.She ordered the microscope to zoom in on the membranous coating of a cell.
A stream of vicious threats erupted in her head.Cassidy glanced up at Egilka, who sighed.He offered her a wry smile.“Hearing it?”
“Oh yeah.It’s definitely unhappy.Be glad you can’t hear what it would like to do to you.What setting are you using?”
“Point-five seems to be the sweet spot in dimensional shift to allow any bit of the Dark samples to revert to their in-between state and assume a separate entity.”
Separate?I’m no Separate!I’m the All, you—
Cassidy snorted as the specimen reverted to language she’d only heard from Degorsk when he’d been in full rage over a careless pilot running into his brand-new shuttle a day after he’d bought it.“How small was the sample?”
