her desk. “Platforms falling dormant. The High Command has ordered us to engage autonomous mode!”
Shaking visibly, the man sat back down. We watched through an off-kilter monitor as he typed furiously. The woman in the room pushed back from her desk, then looked up at the ceiling as a low sound rumbled through the platform.
“Autonomous defenses engaged . . . ,” the man muttered, still typing. “Escape ships are falling dead. Saints . . .”
The room shook again, and the lights flickered.
“The planet is firing on us!” the woman screamed. “Our own people are firing on us!”
“They’re not firing at us,” the man continued, typing as if in a daze. “They’re firing on the delver as it envelops the planet. We’re just in the way. We need to make sure the nowalk is closed . . . Can’t access it from here, but maybe . . .”
He continued to mutter, but my attention was drawn by something else. Lights gathering at the back of the room on the screen. They were breaking reality, making the far wall seem to stretch, become an infinite starfield penetrated by intense, hateful pinpricks.
The eyes had arrived. The woman in the room screamed, then . . . vanished. She seemed to twist in on herself, then shrink, crushed by some invisible force. The remaining man, the one who had been speaking, continued furiously typing at his station, his eyes wide. A madman working as if on his last will and testament. Though his face dominated the screen, I could see the blackness gathering behind him.
Lit by stars that were not stars.
Infinity coalescing.
A shape stepped from the darkness.
And it looked just like me.
5
I stumbled back from the screen, colliding with the press of officers. I was suddenly fully alert like I felt before a battle, and I found my hands forming fists. If they wouldn’t let me out, I would punch my way to—
“Spensa?” Kimmalyn said, taking me by the arm. “Spensa!”
I blinked, then looked around, sweating, wide-eyed. “How?” I demanded. “How did it . . .” I looked back at the screen, which had paused on the image of the dead man and his room filled with stars. The line at the bottom indicated the video had reached its end.
The freeze-frame had a complete shot of me standing behind him. I was there. I WAS THERE. Wearing my modern DDF flight suit. Same shoulder-length brown hair and narrow face. I was frozen in place, reaching toward the man.
My expression though . . . I looked terrified. Then that expression changed, impossibly mimicking how I now felt.
“Turn it off!” I shouted. I reached for the screen, pulling out of Kimmalyn’s grip, though a stronger grip seized me.
I wrestled against those hands, struggling to get to the screen. Both with my body, and . . . and with something else. Some sense inside me. Some primal, panicked, horrified piece of me. It was like a silent scream that emerged from within and expanded outward.
Then, from someplace distant, I felt as if something responded to my scream.
I . . . hear . . . you . . .
“Spensa!” Jorgen said.
I looked up at him. He was holding me back, his eyes locked on mine.
“Spensa, what do you see?” he said.
I glanced at the screen and my image there. Wrong, so wrong. My face. My emotions. And . . .
“You don’t see it?” I asked, looking around at the others and their confused expressions.
“The darkness?” Jorgen asked. “There’s a man on the screen, the one who was making the log. Then there’s a blackness behind him, broken by white lights.”
“Like . . . eyes . . . ,” one of the techs said.
“And the person?” I asked. “Don’t you see someone in the darkness?”
My question was met by more confused stares.
“It’s just blackness,” Rodge said from the side of the group. “Spin? There’s nothing else there. I don’t even see any stars.”
“I see stars,” Jorgen said, narrowing his eyes. “And something that might be a shape. Maybe. Mostly just a shadow.”
“Turn it off,” Cobb said. “See what other logs or files you can dig out.” He looked at me. “I’ll speak with Lieutenant Nightshade in private.”
I looked from him to the room’s startled faces, feeling a sudden shame. I’d worked through my worries about being viewed as a coward, but it was still embarrassing to have made such a scene. What did they think, seeing me break like that?
I forced myself to calm down and nodded to Jorgen, prying