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again in an infin-itesimaUy slow motion. The pain rubbed up in her mind. This time, she did not black out.
She was beginning to remember now. The way to fight the r-con. The pain, she said, did not be-long to
her. Her mind was separate; her body could scream all it wanted, but it had nothing to do with her. She
moved a step toward the r-con, this time inches all at once, and her ears heard someone gasp.
"Laz," she said again, and this time her voice was stronger. "Get her face above the water."
She could feel him staring. She could feel his effort like a push in the air.
"I can't " His voice ended in a horrible, grating, cutoff cry.
"You can," she returned. She took another step. The water washed at her knees. "She'll drown if
you don't. Look at me," she said harshly. The sounds broke from her lips, but she did not recognize her
voice. It was raw and shattered, like an edge of glass torn by a metal file. Her words were almost lost in
the spattering of the water streamers that fell from the rim of the pit, but her voice went on, chewing,
grating at his con-sciousness.
"You can do this. One muscle set at a time. Reach down Lift her head."
He tried to move, and his arm jerked. "I can't!" he screamed.
"You have the kind of focus it requires. I can feel it in your field." Her words went on, but her eyes
saw only the r-con. "The fire is nothing," she said through gritted teeth. "The bum belongs to someone
else& "
Her foot stubbed on a rock, and her legs tightened suddenly into a flame. For a moment, while the water
insidiously crept higher, she could do nothing but stand and wait. If she screamed out, her ears did not
know it, though there was some kind of keening there. Carefully, hideously slow, she lifted her foot
above the cut rock and onto the tiny submerged ledge.
The pale shadows of the meres in the corners of her sight were not real against the black walls. Her
world narrowed. Fo-cused. Became a single goal: the red-black demon who hung on the rough rock
wall. The past, which had taught her to fight such pain, would carry her right to her death.
Someone was sobbing with every breath, but with the claws of flame that tore at her chest, she couldn't
tell who it was. She was closer now. That was the only important thing. Closer now to the r-con. Two
meters away, two meters above. She could not reach it. The slick walls the water and mud& She
couldn't climb even if she could close her hands on the rock.
She couldn't swing her harness fast enough to knock the box off the ledge, but she knew what she had to
do&
"Daya forgive me," she cried out.
She opened her biogate.
Ruka howled in her mind. The biogate pulsed with pain. All around her, like waves of wind that curled
and pressed at her face, the snarling of the cats grew to a crushing din. Even that foreign scent seemed
frozen by her pain.
Something sucked out of her mind like a vacuum as the cats tried to close themselves off, but Ruka's link
held the gate open. She tried to tighten the gate to a narrow channel, but the pain of her body was in the
way. She could tell herself lies, she could pretend she didn't feel the burn, but she could not ignore every
one of the billions of synapses that snapped and frayed in the searing field of the r-con.
Help me, she pleaded.
The catspeak surged and hissed.
Help me&
Her mind screamed, and something seemed to respond. A wave of snarling washed in. Her body faded;
her thoughts crystallized. It was as if her pain were caught and absorbed by a thousand sponges that each
took a flame from her body. No one feline mind took the brunt of that fire, as all had done that searing
second before. And a tide of catspeak spat and hissed as they swept closer to her body.
A tawny head appeared at the rim of the pit.
The box&
An image of the red-black demon& A rock batted from above& She built the pictures and projected
them as if Ruka would understand. The cub disappeared. She could feel him now, moving back to the
woods and digging in the mud. He grasped a stick in his mouth and began to drag it back. An-other cat
shape slipped across the tarmac, carrying a broken clump of bone. And another, from the other side,
slinking be-tween the huts.
Here, she directed. The side of the rim from which they would have to bat their objects down into the pit.
They couldn't just shove them over the lip: the overhang protected the box.
Another step. Another fire that swept from toe to torso. An-other step, and she had to move between
Wren and Bishop. Wren's gaze, covered by the darkeyes, could not hide his blind horror as he relived
his time in the r-con, but Bishop stared at her as if she herself were the demon.
Ebony water swirled thigh-deep, but Tsia could not see the pool through which she waded in that eternal,
slow-motion fire. She could not see the tendons that stood out from her neck like boards. The eyes that
seemed slitted and sparking. The fingers curled like a cougar's claws, and the teeth that gleamed in the
rain. There was only one thing in her pain-blinded sight: a red-black box on the wall.
"Laz " She forced the word out between her teeth.
"I have her," he returned. His voice was little more than a rasped scream.
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