A Shroud of Night and Tears (Beyond the Wall Book 3) by Lucas Bale

Author:Lucas Bale [Bale, Lucas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Dark Matter Publishing
Published: 2015-05-23T22:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R 30

WHEN NATASHA first tried to rationalise what she was being told about her birth—that she had been deliberately bred to possess some physiological genetic aberration—she wanted to dismiss it as arcane and impossible. A ruse, or some complex manipulation she couldn’t yet fully understand. But in truth, she could see instantly it was real—and it terrified her. She glared at the strangers in the room, all of them shrouded in familiar haloes, shimmering auras of pale colour. How can I deny there is something wrong with me? she thought. When I can see it so clearly in front of me? When, in truth, I have known it from the day I was born?

Navigating the tunnels was a release for her, an easy escape from the torture of her memories and the dark voice behind her ears. The sweet whisper of the exotic fabric of space was the part of her life she had always treasured most—a high without equal. Yet she had also been a slave to it. The abuse of stim had come as much from the physical emptiness she felt when she was away from the tunnels as from the nightmares she still had when she slept. She wondered then if her DNA explained her overwhelming need to escape and explore as a child; whether running away from her father and brothers, and sleeping in caves filled with vermin, was in fact that foreign part of her manifesting itself, even as a little girl. Whether it was the last remaining subconscious indication that her mother had ever existed. However, those thoughts were soon replaced by others. Questions she needed answers to. How and why, of course, but most of all, by whom?

Does it explain why you’re a killer? she asked herself bitterly. Or is that something worse? Is that just who you are?

Perhaps it was all of those things, but it was her future too. Whatever’s left of it now. If this untidy little man was right—and the events that had unfolded around her over the past few weeks instinctively proved to her that he might be—then the Republic was about to find itself knee-deep in a war it would almost certainly lose.

The trapdoor opened above her as she considered this, and someone began to descend the steps. She stepped away, behind the makeshift stairs, to allow the newcomer space to drop into the room. He was less than halfway down when she felt the first nagging doubt; something in the way he moved, something that she recognised, but couldn’t place just then.

It was only when the newcomer shouted—a pained, animal sound that could only have originated from somewhere deep inside him—and then reached for his weapon, did she realise who it was. A cold wash of horror swept over her, burning her skin.

Skoryk! Before she could ask herself what he was doing here, before she could come to the inexorable conclusion that he must be here for her, in that split second, his pistol was coming up and levering outward towards Weaver.

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