She Who Sees Through Darkness

Part Twenty-Seven

Katrina's face felt frozen and stiff, even with her mask. Her heavy breathing had left a circle of wet cloth around her mouth that rubbed painfully against her lips. Her legs felt as heavy as lead. The distinctive broken ridge that marked the peak of Orso had drawn closer, but remained distressingly tiny. She estimated she'd gone five miles. She felt like she'd run a marathon.

Remove their muscles. Excellent plan to design the ultimate soldier, Dr. Harper. Her snowshoe snagged on a hidden rock. Gravity tugged her forward. She stuck out the spike in an attempt to halt the fall. It skidded on a patch of ice. She landed in a puff of snow. When she stood, snow slid down the neck of her shirt. No. Cold was deadly enough. She didn't need moisture on top of that. Damn you, Dr. Harper, and damn me for being stupid enough to underestimate Payaa.

Katrina pressed onward. Once or twice, she thought she heard the engine of a snowmobile humming in the distance, but her ears remained as normal as they'd always been, and the landscape had grown rockier, blocking her sight in most directions. I must be imagining things. She had no clue why any of Shawn's people would come so close without offering aid. Payaa still hovered nearby—Katrina occasionally glimpsed her distant shadow sliding across stars—and looking through her eyes might have told Katrina if she was alone or not, but she didn't dare reach out. She'd only end up begging Payaa to come with her until she lost her way and dropped into some hidden crevasse in the ice.

Some small part of her was relieved the wyvern had discovered her ruse. This was Payaa's home. No matter where Indigo sent her, she'd never be permitted to fly free. She knew how important flying was to Payaa. And what do you care about her for? You easily abandoned Quickfingers, who you've known your whole life. But while Quickfingers was her oldest friend, Payaa was a part of her mind. So? What's your mind, or a wyvern's, or the lives of all the wyverns, compared to the Universal Vision?

Katrina jerked her chin up towards the horizon. Sweat tricked from her arms, more than she'd sweated since they'd transferred her. The wind sunk into her bones.

Two more miles passed. She counted her steps, filling her skull with numbers instead of fears. Darkness settled around her like a heavy down quilt. The stars glittered like diamonds, and patches of ice reflected their light and the light of the waxing moon. Cold wind blew snowy dust off the ground, tracing graceful sketches in the air. The Northern Lights danced high over her head. For a moment, one shimmering teal veil slipped into the shape of a wyvern.

You could slip into death here without even noticing. The thought startled her. Vasilyev would have noted it as a red flag. Her legs screamed for a break, but stopping meant never starting again. Five marathons had taught her as much. Her eyes tried to pick apart the distant shadows surrounding the base of MountOrso, scanning for any sight of Shawn and his promised plane. She could radio for help, but the radio they'd given her was attuned permanently to Wyvernhall's frequencies. She could have fixed it, given time and tools, but those were nowhere to be found.

She was about to start screaming curses again when her vision caught a pair of parallel lines: snowmobile treads, fresh ones at that, mostly unmarred by the wind and fresh snowfall. I'm not alone. Even if Shawn's men hadn't left this track, machines meant people and people meant heat. Heat meant life. The track pointed towards the mountain—an arrow, leading to hope.

She pushed forward. The land rose up around her, closing her off from the outside world as scrub bushes grew more and more frequent. Her eyes flickered over details in leaves and woody stems. Without open spaces, or the sky, Dr. Harper's augmentations were all but useless.

The snowmobile lay abandoned in a thicket, clumsily covered with branches in a hasty attempt to disguise signs of passage. Katrina looked it over for salvageable parts, but nothing immediately stood out to her, and she couldn't waste more time looking. A pair of bootprints lead away from the machine and towards MountOrso. Her heart lightened as she pushed forward. The second wind she'd come to count on in marathoning washed over her—she could make it, she would make it—

The boots lay abandoned atop a bare outcropping when she stepped out of the forest. She pushed to the top of the ridge—further, further—and a scream of disbelief rang from her mouth as she found the still-flowing river that shaped the point and cut her off from MountOrso. The peak was still a mile away.

"No!" she shouted, and slammed the butt of her spike into the ice. Nothing changed. Entering the water meant she might freeze to death before reaching the mountain. Captain O'Brien had told her a method for how it could be done, which required making a torch so a fire could be quickly assembled on the other side. She had her fire kit, but doubted she'd be able to get a fire going with only the wet, dying bushes that lined the banks. I have to risk it. The adrenaline was leaking from her limbs, and her head was nodding, but she simply had no other choice.

Katrina turned towards the river.

"I didn't expect you'd come this way," said a familiar voice.

She pivoted. It was Vasilyev, naked and soaked, his milk-pale skin curdling in the darkness. Muscles bulged under his bare skin. This was the same man who'd offered her tissues when she'd cried in his office. She hadn't realized the full impact of his second-generation status until now.

"I didn't expect you to come. At all." She gripped her spike tighter, cursing the loss of her gun. "How did you find me?"

"I paid a local pyromancer to find your destination. She said the odds were fifty percent you'd arrive at MountOrso. It sounded like my best chance."

To do what? she wanted to ask, but she had a damn good sense of the truth. "You came to kill me."

"I wanted to see my son again. I can't do that if you blow my cover." He stepped forward. "I thought you'd outfly me, even with my head start. I didn't think you'd come alone. I'll have to take care of Payaa when I'm done with you."

She tightened her grip, dredging up more adrenaline reserves. Her pounding heart sharpened what the cold had dulled. "I lied to you. Why do you think I told you to shut down our tracker chips? I'm a double agent, fool, but like hell would I admit as much out loud, in there! For all I knew, you were testing my loyalties to the Valve! The way you broke down—come on, it doesn't matter how long you've been undercover, it's the mark of a shitty spy. I didn't buy the act!"

He took a step towards her, eyes filling with brown as he did, his shoulders joints swiveling forward. "I never wanted to be a spy. You can blame Indigo for this."

"Indigo will blame you." She took another step backwards. "You wouldn't dare make my brother angry?"

Doubt flickered all over his face for a moment, but he shook it off. "Even if you speak the truth, he would do nothing. He wouldn't risk his only spy in Wyvernhall."

Well, he's right about our priorities.

White fur burst from his limbs as he curled forward, dropping to all fours. The air rippled around him. Katrina raised her butterfly spike. Vasilyev's form coalesced into a polar bear ten feet tall at the shoulder, with jaws built to rip seals in half.

Well, she found herself thinking, at least no one can say I died easy.

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