B26C25 - Recover After Stab

I had gloated when that Howler fell to its death.

And now no choice! No choice!

<Places,> I ordered. <Get ready.>

Marco, Cassie, and Rachel all moved swiftly into place. Erek, too. Guide stayed close.

WHAM!

The door blew back on its hinges. Ax stumbled, bleeding, into the room.

The first Howler was two seconds behind him. He bounded into the room.

Rachel, Marco, and Cassie hit him, simply barreling into him.

Erek snatched up Guide like the Iskoort was made of feathers. He jumped to the door. Guide clung to Erek's neck, terrified, as Erek filled the doorway.

The first Howler kicked with shocking power and sent Rachel stumbling back. A swipe of his arm, with retractable claws down, ripped red lines in Cassie's side. She fell. He aimed his flechette gun. Marco hit him from behind. His aim went wild, ripping a line across the wall and up onto the ceiling.

The pursuing Howlers stopped abruptly at the doorway. All together they might dislodge Erek. But Erek was holding Guide.

The rules of engagement! The Howlers could not kill an Iskoort!

The first Howler spun and nailed Marco with a fist. Not till he pulled back did I realize that fist had held a knife. The handle now protruded from Marco's stomach. He stared at it, disbelieving.

And now the Howler steadied his flechette gun, ready to finish Rachel off.

"No!" I yelled.

The Howler looked at me and blinked.

"Forget them! This way!" I ordered.

The Howler was trying to clear his head. He recognized me. But he knew I was dead. Wasn't I?

"Their leader, over here!" I said, desperately hoping against hope he'd buy it. I took off at a trot.

The Howler followed. I almost collapsed from relief.

I stopped suddenly. The Howler stopped, too, wondering what -

I hit him. Once, twice, three times, each blow aimed with Howler eyes, each blow directed at weak spots that only another Howler would recognize.

He was down. Barely.

The other Howlers were solving the Erek and Guide problem. They were burning several new holes in the walls. Guide couldn't be in front of all of them. In seconds, the Howlers would be inside.

<NOW!> I yelled in thought-speak. But Marco was unable to respond. He was transfixed, looking at the knife in his stomach.

<Marco! The memory emitter! Now! He's getting up!>

It was Ax, bleeding and staggering, who suddenly thrust the small, shiny device into my hand.

I gave him a nod, took a deep breath, and slapped the probe onto the Howler's head.

<Time for an education,> I said.

The Howler glared at me with his dead blue eyes. He leaped up. He drew his Dracon beam weapon. He aimed it . . . nowhere.

He shuddered. He started again to aim the weapon. Then he shuddered again.

His eyes closed.

I stopped breathing.

Into the Howler's head flowed all the memories of my life. From vague, early images of my mother's face above my crib, to riding on my dad's back at some amusement park, to school, to friends, to all that had happened since we'd taken a shortcut through an abandoned construction site.

All that I remembered of my life was flowing into the Howler's brain. And the lives of Cassie and Rachel and Marco and Ax and Tobias. And even Guide. And the long, long memory of the android who called himself Erek.

All that we were emptied into that Howler's head. And from there would flow into the endless pool of collective Howler memory.

<Is it working?> Cassie wondered.

Suddenly, the Howler disappeared. He was simply gone.

The Dracon beams no longer burned against the walls of the room.

Erek stuck his head out through the door. "They're gone," he said.

Marco yanked the knife out of his stomach and began to demorph.

In the time it took him to pull it out, we went from that small Iskoort room to a very different place.