Page 97 of Butterfly Effects

Then we moved into the center of the hive.

This wasn’t a ring: it was a circular room, roughly as large as a swimming pool. Like a swimming pool, it was recessed compared to the floors around it, dropping about six feet from the threshold. There was no padding on the other side. If we hadn’t been moving slowly and carefully, someone could have been seriously hurt.

The minimalist theme was continued here; there were no unnecessary furnishings, only six beds like raised garden planters, high sides with a recessed center, each one containing a female Johrlac in a black bodysuit gleaming with rainbows, like the surface of a polluted lake, their eyes closed and their hair fanned out over their pillows. Their hands were folded on their chests, and five of them weren’t moving.

The one who was moving was in the process of sitting up as we crowded in the doorway. She turned toward us, eyes as blue as glacial ice, and shook her head in obvious disappointment.

“I suppose this was inevitable,” she said, and flicked her fingers, eyes flashing briefly white.

Oh, shit.

Twenty-Four

“Bring her home.”

—Mary Dunlavy

In the queen’s hive on Johrlar, about to face the collective

THE KAIROS GUARD WHO HAD been at the front of our group flew backward, impacting the wall behind us with a sickening crunch. We all turned to stare, then looked back at the Johrlac, who was standing now, stepping delicately out of her planter.

“We’ve been expecting you,” she said.

Sam looked at me and nodded. I nodded back.

“Then you know we’ll keep coming,” said one of the Kairos.

“Yes, we do,” she said. “We also know you’ll lose.”

Sam’s tail wrapped hard around my waist, and he jerked me off my feet as he leapt, spinning me around in front of him so he could get an arm under my behind and toss me gently into the air. He caught me before he hit the ground in the center air, then went bounding back to the others, grabbing Artie, who yelped.

The drop presented a genuine issue for our guards, since the Johrlac queen wasn’t exactly going to wait for them to climb down. She began telekinetically grabbing them as they moved forward, flinging two more into walls before she shifted a third—fourth, really, but math is not my strong suit—forward and he stopped, hanging in midair. I looked back at the doorway. Mark’s eyes were gleaming lambent white. They were playing tug-of-war.

Normally I would object to using a living person for that sort of game, but it was keeping her focused on one guard, and distracting her from the rest. Sam was able to get five of them down before she let go. Mark was still pulling, and that guard hit the wall like the others, slingshot backward by the sudden loss of an opposing force. There was a horrifying crunch and Mark grimaced, the light in his eyes literally going out.

“This is not going to end well for you, abomination,” said the queen. “We have the power of six, and you have the power of but one. Give up and allow yourself to be destroyed. Kings are not to rise.”

Those of us on the ground level fanned out around her, moving carefully. She still didn’t seem to see us if she wasn’t trying: Mark had the full force of her attention.

Or seemed to, anyway. She turned abruptly, looking at Artie. “You should not be here, little restoration,” she said. “We put back what the cuckoo had broken. You’re free now. Go home and leave our affairs to us.”

“Not without Sarah,” snapped Artie. “Where is she?”

“It was a fair and balanced exchange,” said the queen. “We returned you and we retained her. She belongs to us now.”

“Where. Is. She?”

“If you can’t find her on your own, your claim is not so great as you’d imply,” said the queen calmly. “Very well, little restoration. If you can find her, and if she wants it, we’ll let her go. But if you can’t, the math is in our favor, and you will leave us.”

“Artie,” I called, low and tight. “If you can’t do this, we have to find another way. We only get one shot.”

“I know,” said Artie. He began walking around the sleeping queens, looking down at them. He paused a few times to get a closer look, bending down and studying their faces closely.

At the third queen, he bent further, reaching down to delicately smooth a lock of hair away her face. “This is her,” he said. He looked up, focusing on the queen who had been fighting us. “She got this scar over her eyebrow when we were twelve. We were playing in the woods and she lost her grip on the rope we were using to get up into the treehouse. She hit her head on a rock when she fell, and I thought she was dead. This is Sarah.”

“Are you sure?” asked the queen, almost mockingly.

He nodded. “I’m positive,” he said.