Out of Control Read online

  The elves wore helmets from under which their snow-white hair flowed freely, leaving only their faces exposed, faces that were the same milky white stone as the columns they had emerged from—even their eyes. The stone elves drew their weapons, long, wicked-looking swords and sharp spears with blades that shimmered orange and blue. Tara realized that they were no more made of steel than the elves themselves were made of flesh.

  “I have woken the Guardians,” Torrhanin said heavily, looking down at Tara and Chay. “May I be forgiven.”

  And then the figures of silver and light made a high-pitched keening noise and ran, crashing into the advancing army of darkness. Where the Guardians’ swords met black limbs and charred armor, the creatures gave out hideous shrieks, parts of their bodies streaming away into the clouds from which they had been formed. Under the feet of the elves, the stone of the floor pulsed a true, clean light, and shadow and brightness roiled together in the walls and ceiling, their fight reflecting that below.

  “We must leave them,” Torrhanin said as soon as they were fully engaged. “They will give us time to assemble our forces. Follow me.”

  Tara had just enough time to scramble onto Chay’s back before the elf turned and began to stride rapidly deeper into the reaches of the elven palace, the bubble of white purity on the floor following him.

  “What’s happening?” Tara demanded. “What did you do?”

  “I was betrayed,” the elf said without slowing, suddenly looking very old. “Betrayed into giving the enemies the very key I sought to keep from them. The breach is localized—for now. But if we can’t shut the door again, the time of darkness will return to your Earth as it has taken over so many of our worlds.”

  Tara shook her head, not fully understanding. All she knew from Chay was that the elves were from another world and that they fought against some of the other fae who came over from same place. She didn’t know anything about keys or breaches. But this was hardly the time to ask for details.

  Something happened to the air around them—it rippled as they walked, and suddenly, they were no longer in the great hall but moving down a narrow white corridor much like the one that Tara and Chay had used to enter Narnia except that the smooth walls were now decorated with fluted carvings and delicate ribs with rows of narrow, pointed windows on either side. There was no sign of the darkness here, but she heard a distant boom, like the ones she’d heard back in Black Mesa before they’d come through into the elves’ domain, and she could feel the shaking of the floor through Chay’s body.

  But that wasn’t half as terrifying as the view through the windows, which made Tara’s stomach drop into her shoes. On one side, she could see nothing but a great, burning red sun against the blackness of space. On the other stretched a field of stars.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Where is this part of the structure, you mean?” Torrhanin asked, stopping at a wooden door in the side of the corridor that faced the blazing sun. “It is everywhere but nowhere. It is in Black Mesa, and it circles this sun. If it were to do just one or the other, it would be very bad for us.”

  Tara started to protest against that non-answer—a protest that turned into a squawk as he jerked the door open. But instead of being sucked out into the void, she found herself facing a spacious room under a blue dome that rose high overhead, a room that was crowded with elves who seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the space that they were in could not possibly exist.

  Torrhanin stepped inside, and even as she craned to look out the nearest window into space where the room should by all rights be, Chay followed the elf inside, and Torrhanin shut the door behind them.

  Tara clambered off Chay’s back. The room looked like a cross between a lecture hall and a Hollywood spaceship bridge. It rose upward from the door in tiers with banks of seats behind narrow, polished tables—all except for the highest level, where two grand chairs stood alone, their high backs and elaborate canopies inevitably causing Tara think of them as thrones.

  A woman was sitting on one of the thrones already, her fingers dancing in the tracery of the blue light that hovered in the air in front of her. Torrhanin reached into his robe, coming up with stack of devices that Tara recognized as twins to the suppressor that was pressed behind her ear, which she’d examined in some detail in the bathroom right after she’d gotten it. He handed them to her.

  “With this, our friend Beane will be able to see things as you see them,” he said. “He can give the rest to your people in need, as I pledged to him in return for his aid.”

  “Thanks,” she said, slipping the devices into the front pocket of her leggings as she looked down at the blunt head of Chay’s panther form.

  Torrhanin strode up the stairs that ran down the center of the room to take the second throne. All around, other elves worked in a frantic silence, manipulating more blue lines or tapping at things that Tara couldn’t see on the surfaces of the tables.

  Torrhanin slotted his staff into a socket where the arms of the thrones were joined. It shone brilliantly for a second, bright enough that Tara had to look away, before it dimmed to a soft, pulsing glow. Torrhanin bowed deeply to the woman, brushing his lips against her cheek even as her look of absolute, intense concentration didn’t waver.

  “My dearest queen, what is our status?” he asked as he straightened and then took his own seat.

  “Our Guardians are driving back their vanguard,” she replied.

  “Has the main body of their army been spotted yet?” Torrhanin asked.

  Her fingers moved as quickly as if she were playing an invisible harp, the blue lines leaping and reforming. “No sign. They might be trying to get through elsewhere, or they might be counting on the vanguard’s victory to widen the breach.”

  Torrhanin’s raised his hands in a mirror of hers, and his eyes went half-unfocused as he began to move his fingers through the air, too, summoning his electric blue interface from nowhere. “All Guardians are awakened. Good. And the regular Shi Guard?”

  “The captain is reinforcing all points of vulnerability,” the woman said. “We have begun the evacuations, but they are not complete. We are losing entire sectors, Torrhanin, and there are people still in them.”

  “Securing the borders must be our first priority,” Torrhanin said harshly. “If we do not succeed in that, we shall lose all.”

  “Let me at least send a small detachment of Guardians,” the woman pleaded, and for the first time, she broke her gaze from the air in front of her to look at Torrhanin, and her perfect forehead creased with concern. “My lord high king, I submit myself to your understanding and your mercy—”

  “Stop.” Torrhanin cut her off. “I grant your supplication. We must get the shifters home to aid us as they can. Their escort will save whomever else they are able.”

  Seconds later, the door behind Tara opened again, and she dodged out of the way as a formation of the stone Guardians marched through. Behind them was not the corridor that Tara had just come through but another room, one that looked like an armory from medieval times, with swords and daggers lining the walls. The man leading them inclined his head.

  “My Lord High King, Majesty of the Shi-under-Autavin and Prime Physician of the Golden Orders, I report.”

  Torrhanin’s voice rolled out. “Good captain, I give you these shapeshifters to keep under your good care to return to Autavin and burden you with the task of the safety of our civilians. Guide them from the threatened reaches of the Shi to the high places of safety. They are assembling at the points of evacuation at my command. They are many, and your men are few. I wish you well—and may the peace between the suns be upon you.”

  Beside Tara, Chay sat back on his haunches—and then lifted his torso into the air as he shifted. None of the elves even seemed to notice his nakedness, but he took one of the elven outer robes that hung on the wall and slipped it on, tearing the edges of the long rolled collar so that he could tie it closed.

  “A suppresso
r,” he said to Tara.

  She handed one over, and he closed his eyes and pressed it against his skull directly behind his ear. When he opened his eyes again, surprise flitted across his face for an instant before he focused on Torrhanin.

  “How do I help?” Chay said. His face was set in lines of what Tara recognized as tightly contained rage, and Tara thought she knew why. Whatever was happening here was going to affect Black Mesa as well, and the ultimate cause of this breach was the elf king’s actions and the deal he’d struck with Chay.

  Chay continued, “If this invasion has something to do with my servers and my rootkits and my intrusion suites, I’ll know better than you how to stop it.”

  “There is nothing you can do from here,” Torrhanin said. “Even with a mind-net, your human brain cannot interact with our systems. That is why I have charged my men with helping you find a way back to Black Mesa, where you will be able to see the interface that was created from there, and you can help close the breaches.”

  “So call back the door,” Chay said. “We’ll go through it now.”

  “And so will our enemies,” Torrhanin said. “No, they have taken the door now, and so I have sealed it. The captain will get you back to your own world—to Autavin. From there, you can communicate with their people, let them know what is happening, and get back to Black Mesa and render us aid from the otherside.”

  “I’ll need to know what’s happening,” Chay said tightly. “What this place is.” He looked around the room. “I never even knew it existed. Not like this. You asked for a piece of Black Mesa, and that’s exactly what I gave to you, but you clearly took far more. You talk of breaches—you threaten my facility with them, my world with them, but I don’t even know what they are.”

  “They’re the worst thing that could happen,” the elf king said. “They are the very thing I have spent these centuries trying to halt, and if you don’t go now, Arturus’ empire might just win.”

  “My lord,” the captain urged, bowing this time to Chay as he motioned toward the door.

  Chay gave the king one more long look, then reached out a hand to Tara. “Together, then,” he said softly, and she could see all the anger and pain in his eyes—anger at Torrhanin and at himself, and pain out of fear of what he’d helped unleash.

  “Together,” she agreed, and they stepped through the door and into the armory.

  Chapter Three

  So this is what “Narnia” is really like, Chay thought with a mixture of awe and rage. All this time, he’d assumed there was something more, something different from the confused mess of impressions that he was able to see when he entered the elves’ sanctum.

  What he hadn’t expected was anything on this scale.

  Even as he’d followed Torrhanin through the seething confusion he was able to perceive in his panther form, he’d realized that there was far more to the elves’ realm than there should be. The small corner of Black Mesa that he’d given over to them couldn’t begin to hold the sheer distance they’d traversed.

  Once he’d gotten the suppressor on, Chay had begun to understand just how much more there was to it. The control room that he found himself in had as many people as the entire elves’ sector should, going by the biggest measurements that his sensors had ever registered. Certainly, it held far more than the small band that Torrhanin had presented him with five years ago, seeking refuge.

  Then there had been talk of guards and Guardians and evacuations. And Chay had a feeling that he hadn’t even seen one tenth of Narnia or the Shi or whatever the elves wanted to call this place that was hooked into his base, endangering his people.

  Now a phalanx of the eerie stone soldiers surrounded them, and Chay hoped that Torrhanin meant what he’d said. At this point, he wouldn’t put any form of trickery past the elf. Even as Torrhanin told the guards to help them, he could have sent secret orders to secure their deaths.

  The room beyond the control room was some kind of armory, and Chay paused in front of one of the weapons racks. The blades of the weapons seemed to bend the light unnaturally, and Chay suspected that they were many times sharper than ordinary steel.

  Well, there was one quick way to test Torrhanin’s sincerity. If these soldiers wanted to kill them, they wouldn’t want them to be armed. He snatched up two belts, each with a sword and a dagger dangling from a sheath, and handed one of them to Tara. The stone Guardians paused, saying nothing, until he rejoined them, strapping the belt on as he walked.

  “I don’t know how to use a sword, Chay,” Tara said softly as she fumbled with the buckle.

  Chay swallowed a bark of laughter. “That makes two of us. I didn’t make Chief Petty Officer before I quit,” he said. “So I’ve never even worn a saber to dinner parties.”

  “But you at least know how to use a knife, right?”

  Chay lifted a shoulder as they passed through the door from the armory into another corridor. “Yeah, bae girl,” he said. “I know how to use a knife.”

  Though what he wouldn’t give to have his MK23 and his M4 at his side instead of these inert chunks of metal….

  The Guardians also carried weapons that seemed like they belonged to another age—dirks and halberds, swords and glaives. They didn’t even have so much as a bow or a rock that could be flung from a safe distance. But their bare blades practically glittered with power.

  He pulled Tara close to his side as she finished fastening the belt, keeping his other hand lightly on the hilt of the sword to keep it from banging into his leg as he walked. He didn’t know where they were going, but he wanted Tara near him, where he had some chance of protecting her.

  “Who are you?” he asked the stone soldier that Torrhanin had identified as the captain. It seemed a little less rude than demanding what he was, because he wasn’t an elf any more than he was human.

  The captain turned his white stone face toward Chay. His eyes were as blank as eggs, with no hint of pupil or iris, and yet Chay did not doubt that they could see him. The Guardian’s stone eyelids blinked, his snow-white eyelashes brushing his hard cheeks.

  “I was the one called Ruathan du Tarnatha,” he said. “That was my name when my mind was taken and placed in the foundation stones of the Shi.”

  “Yeah, okay, you realize that doesn’t make any sense to me, right?” Chay asked.

  For that matter, nothing here really made any sense. The corridor seemed to stretch out forever, without any hint of an end, even though it was perfectly straight and there was no reason that Chay shouldn’t be able to see where it stopped. Occasionally, they would pass a window, outside of which almost any scene appeared to be possible—a swirling nebula, a sunlit pasture, an ocean teeming with thousands of tiny, translucent fish.

  “You are still made from human flesh,” the captain said dismissively, looking away. “Though you are a shapeshifter, your stock is still inferior. You cannot be expected to know of such things.”

  “I can’t know anything I’m not told, no matter what my stock is,” Chay said through gritted teeth.

  “Now is not the time,” Ruathan said just as they arrived at a door in the side of the corridor that Chay had somehow overlooked before.

  The rest of the soldiers fanned out behind their captain, and Chay tensed. The Guardian opened the door to reveal a room where the white walls were bare of ornament and the low ceiling formed heavy groins supported by massive square pillars. Boxes, barrels, and crates were stacked everywhere.

  Apparently, even elves had need for storerooms. And huddling among the supplies was a crowd of people—mothers holding children against their bodies, men and women with their great ages carved even on their elven features. All who were old enough to carry something bore a kind of a sack or a single-strap backpack that was filled to bulging. They recoiled when the door was thrown open, but registering the Guardians, they gave a cry of relief, clambering to their feet.

  “Marsheen!” one old woman cried out, stumbling forward to one of the guards. She stopped in front o
f him, her eyes overflowing with tears, and reached out a tentative hand that almost but not quite brushed her face. “Marsheen,” she repeated.

  The Guardian gave no reaction aside from a brief, curt nod.

  “Citizens of Rally Point Eglantine,” Ruathan called out. “Assemble yourselves for evacuation. Our squad will see you to safety.”

  The rest of the elves came forward, parents comforting children, the hale and hearty helping those too young or too old to walk on their own. There was a single floating sledge in the room, a platform that hovered two feet above the ground, and those not able to keep up were helped onto it, two young women taking the handles at one short end to steer it.

  “I am the Chief of Rally Point Eglantine,” said a young woman who had an infant strapped across her body. “I hand our people over into your care.”

  “Accepted, Chief,” the captain said in clipped tones. “Follow us now. And stay close together. No one may drop behind.”

  Chay found himself with Tara at the back of the crowd of people as they started forward again, Ruathan bringing up the rear. This time when they stepped out into the corridor, it was three times as wide as it had been before. The Guardians walked quickly, and some of the civilians struggled to keep up.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Tara whispered. “Because I think I lost the thread sometime back.”

  “Apparently, I never really had it,” he muttered back. This place still made him dizzy, with its vastness and its impossible doors that led to even more impossible rooms. Now that he had a better appreciation of why the census app wasn’t able to keep track of the elves in their sector, he was amazed that the sensors ever picked up anyone at all.