Counting the soldiers was impossible. There were too many of them. The archaeologist in Mia wondered if this was what Zhao Kangmin had felt like when he realized the terracotta fragments Chinese farmers had found were actually pieces of an army.
There had to be more than a thousand dynasty soldiers in this one tunnel. Even though she’d known about them for ten years, Mia had never really taken the opportunity to study them.
Mostly because when she normally saw them, they were trying to kill her.
Each soldier stood seven feet tall. Their gray samurai armors were held together with bolts and screws and soldered cable, plates of armor concealing microchips and motherboards. Some had spears strapped on their backs. Others had swords in their belts. They were cold, efficient, and deadly.
And they were so very different from the Reishosan.
Mia leaned back against the cold tunnel wall. Her eyes were crossing, and a headache was building at the back of her skull. She was overthinking it.
But part of her had always thought one samurai armor would look exactly like another. Most of the ones she’d encountered in dig sites and Asian museums were similar enough.
But this was different.
Like Monet and Da Vinci. Like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Whoever engineered the dynasty soldiers had nothing to do with the Reishosan armors. Their design was entirely other.
The Reishosan armors looked sculpted, as though they’d been forged by hand and not by any mechanical process. Each plate of armor had intricate, ornate carvings and designs that blossomed over the metalwork.
And that made sense. Korin’s people had made the Reishosan armors. That’s what he’d told them. That they’d been forged in the Kayosen villages by their most gifted artisans.
So how do you explain Jinsoku then?
Her stomach tightened.
She’d expected Jinsoku to be like the soldiers. She’d thought his armor would be like theirs. But it wasn’t. Now she’d been close enough to the warlord to see the detail in his armor.
Jinsoku’s armor was less like the soldiers and more like the Reishosan, for whatever sense that made.
Mia cast her gaze to Yamainu, still muttering under his breath and bustling from control panel to control panel in the midst of his nerve center.
Her leg wasn’t hurting as badly as it had, but the scraped skin on her left wrist might have been distracting her from the overall pain.
How long have I been down here?
It felt like years, but it couldn’t have been that long.
Mia took a steadying breath. Sam and the others would find her. True, this was the first time she’d been taken like this. And none of them knew where to look. And she was also assuming they were still alive and hadn’t been crushed to death when Connecticut Avenue collapsed.
She clutched her fists against her knees.
They’re alive. They’re looking for me. All I have to do is stall and learn. She locked her eyes on Yamainu at his controls. Stall and learn.
She swung her legs off the cot and stood up slowly, testing her weight on her throbbing leg.
Yamainu glared at her with his steel-gray eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mia said, jangling the cuff on her left wrist. “I’m just tired of sitting.”
He muttered under his breath.
“Don’t you get lonely down here?” She turned to face the lines of soldiers. “Your friends here aren’t exactly good company.”
“I wouldn’t say you are either, Miss Davalos.”
Mia threw a smirk over her shoulder at him. “Well, it’s not exactly like you’ve tried to have a conversation with me. You keep telling me to stop talking.”
Yamainu’s nose twitched.
Aha.
It was a small expression, but it told her enough. She’d seen Ronnie make that same face countless times when he wanted to smile but was trying to act cool.
She’d seen through Ronnie’s facade a few weeks after he’d come to live with them—damaged and broken and so very afraid. He’d been like a wounded dog, snapping and growling at anyone who got too close. But all she’d had to do was wait for him to learn that she wasn’t his enemy.
Maybe Yamainu was the same way.
Mia crossed her arms and watched him. “You said you don’t want any part of this.” She tilted her head. “That if you got your way, you wouldn’t be involved.”
Yamainu didn’t engage. He kept himself focused on whatever he was doing with the control panels on the table.
“Is Thallia threatening your family?”
He froze, fingers midway to one of the panels.
“Has he threatened to hurt people you love? And that’s why you’re helping him?”
Yamainu didn’t respond, but he didn’t start moving again either.
“Because we can help you,” Mia said. “You know that. The Reishosan can help you, but we can’t if you don’t trust us.”
Slowly, Yamainu lowered his hand. He rested his fingers on the tabletop and smiled faintly to himself.
“You are very kind, Miss Davalos.” His voice rumbled in his chest, a low, dangerous thing. “That is something I have come to admire about you. Your kindness.” He offered her a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That you would concern yourself with anyone that I care for is indicative of your gentle nature.”
He returned to pushing buttons and adjusting knobs.
“I have no family left to love.” His voice was barely audible. “I have no love left at all.”
Mia approached him cautiously, until the chain that bound her to the bed stopped her.
“I’m sorry.”
He paused again and looked at her, his eyes wide. “You are sorry?”
Mia nodded.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I know what it’s like,” she said. “I’ve lost people I loved. I would never wish for it to happen to anyone. Not ever.”
He frowned at her. Slowly, he bit his lower lip, his eyes shifting from side to side as he considered something.
Yamainu lifted his gaze to her at last, his expression neutral but his eyes bright. “Do you want to die, Miss Davalos?”
Mia drew back. “What?”
“It is a simple enough question? Do you want to die?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Nor I.” He reached toward a control panel and adjusted one of the levers. “And that is why I serve Thallia. If I do not, he will kill me. And I do not wish to die, so I must remain useful to him.”
Mia straightened her shoulders. “At what cost?”
His answering smile looked sad. “I stopped counting the cost years ago.”
“Thallia is a murderer,” Mia said. “He has killed millions.”
He scoffed. “Millions? Who told you that?” Yamainu went back to his control panels. “The Sarraqum?”
Mia furrowed her brow. “Korin Sado.”
“The Sarraqum.” Yamainu nodded. “The Thief. Yes, that is what he would have told you. But he is wrong. Thallia has not killed millions. He has killed billions. Countless billions, Miss Davalos.” His smile reappeared, but the look in his eyes was hollow. “You do not yet understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What your friends are trying to do.” He shook his head. “Thallia cannot be stopped. No one has ever stopped him, not truly. The Sarraqum only delayed him—delayed the inevitable. Your world will fall, like all the others. And the more your people fight back, the more of you he will kill—just as he has killed so very many others throughout the universe.”
Yamainu finished with one control panel and turned his attention to the next. A bank of lights over the lines of soldiers switched on, bathing them in red light.
Mia refocused on him. “So your life must be pretty grand, huh?”
He blinked at her. “You would think so. But no. I am a slave, Miss Davalos. I do as I am bid.”
“And you still want to live?”
He made a face. “You would have me wish to die?” Finally his eyes twinkled. “Perhaps you are not as compassionate I as believed you to be.”
“I’m just trying to understand. That’s all.” Mia folded her arms again. “Why are you so desperate to live at the cost of entire worlds? If you want nothing to do with Thallia and all he’s doing is using you, why serve him?”
Yamainu regarded her with that hollow-eyed stare again.
He left the control panel and rounded the end of the table, closing in on her with a graceful rustle of his clothing. Mia stood her ground and threw her shoulders back as he approached.
“A friend of mine once told me,” Yamainu said, his voice a deep rumble, “that where there is life, there is hope.” His eyes softened. “As long as I yet live, I suppose that I cling to hope that I will be able to make Thallia pay for what he has done.”
Mia stared up at him. “You’re living for revenge?”
“That is one way to put it, I suppose.” He shrugged. “No other slave has been allowed such great authority over his war machine, his technology, his internal systems. Perhaps I am merely waiting for the day when I can bring it all crashing down around his head.”
Yamainu held her gaze.
“But Thallia knows this,” he said. “He knows my aspirations of vengeance. He knows the rage that lurks in me. And though I cling to hope, he is ever more skilled at wringing it from me until I am too tired to fight him anymore.”
The man with the strange gray eyes returned to his work, humming softly to himself.
“I have no illusions, Miss Davalos,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I know what I have done. I am as much a monster as Thallia himself is, as much a villain as Jinsoku. Though if we are keeping score,” he smirked, “Jinsoku has slain far more than I. Thallia has only had me in chains for twenty years, and Jinsoku has been his pet for centuries.”
Mia frowned.
What a strange way to refer to Jinsoku. What did Yamainu mean by that? Was Jinsoku a slave too?
That doesn’t track at all.
“The scowl does not suit your lovely face, Miss Davalos.”
“You’re confusing,” Mia said. “I’m trying to understand you, and you aren’t making sense.”
He flashed a smirk. “Well, I am an alien, I suppose.”
“An alien?”
“Yes.”
“Like Thallia?”
“No, of course not.” Yamainu chuckled. “And therein lies the irony. For all his great and mighty power, Thallia is still Earthen. He may be from the first dimension, but he is from your planet. And I am not.”
Mia shifted. “Another planet?”
“Yes. Far from here. Not even in your same galaxy.” Yamainu flapped a hand at the side of his face as though what he’d said had no bearing on their conversation. “I had a name and status and influence and power, and I lost it all. Thallia took me, forced me into his service, and after the first few years I lost the will to fight him.” He shrugged. “So much for my bold resistance and the burning desire for revenge. He found my weakness and exploited it.”
“Your weakness?”
“I want to live.” Yamainu smiled at her. “It is as simple and as complicated as that.”
Yamainu reached under the table and pulled out a data tablet, which he plugged into one of the control panels.
“Whatever selfish desire lurks in your heart, Miss Davalos, Thallia will find it. He will exploit it. He will use it against you. That is what he does best.” Yamainu smiled sadly to himself. “And before long, you will find yourself doing horrific things for no other reason than the desire to have one more breath. Until one day you no longer know yourself.” He scowled. “It is a shocking revelation to understand the depth of your own depravity.”
The ache behind his words tore at Mia’s heart. He wasn’t telling her everything—far from it. He was talking around her, as though meeting her had torn something inside him open, and he couldn’t ignore it any longer.
“You’re not like Jinsoku,” Mia said.
Yamainu stopped and looked up at her. “No, I am not. I am far less loyal than he is.”
“Loyal?” Mia nearly choked on the word. “Nothing about Jinsoku is loyal.”
“He is extremely loyal to Thallia.” Yamainu smiled. “He serves Thallia willingly, wholeheartedly. He has done for centuries, and he has served him well as negotiator and ambassador and governor.”
“Governor?”
“Surely you didn’t think Thallia’s vast empire rules itself?”
Mia blinked and stepped back.
Yamainu moved around the table and approached her again. “Miss Davalos, what do you think is happening here?”
“Thallia is trying to invade our world,” she said. “And we’ve been stopping him.”
Yamainu’s eyebrows drew downward. “Ah. I can see where you may have been misled in this assumption.”
“What?”
“The soldiers?” He gestured toward the ceiling. “The ones you have undoubtedly encountered throughout your years in San Francisco? Yes, those are scouts. We send them to assess a dimension’s technological capabilities before we begin planning for invasion.”
Mia shook herself. “Scouts?”
“Those are not the invasion forces.” Yamainu tapped on his data pad, and the lights in the tunnels flared to life. “These are the invasion forces.”
Mia turned and felt her stomach fall.
The subway tunnel stretched much farther than she’d seen before. With all the lights on, it ran for miles and miles. And there weren’t just a thousand soldiers. There were thousands and thousands and thousands.
“This is one tunnel among many,” Yamainu said quietly. “Thallia has been stockpiling them here and in other locations around your world for decades. So that when his invasion begins, his forces will already be on the ground.”
Yamainu shut the lights off with a faint smile.
“After all, moving his entire castle from one dimension to the next requires a significant amount of energy.”
Mia’s eyes burned as tears spilled down her face in spite of herself. “We’ll stop you,” she whispered. “The Reishosan will stop you. They’ll stop him.”
“They’ll try.” Yamainu shrugged. “Undoubtedly. And that’s the problem, you see. Thallia has no desire to kill your friends, Miss Davalos. He needs them.”
Mia gawked. “What?”
“He needs their power. He needs their armors. Like I said, transporting his castle from one realm to the next is a tremendous power drain.”
Yamainu focused on his work again.
“That is the choice they will be given,” he said. “Once the invasion begins in full.”
“What choice?” Mia scoffed.
Yamainu stopped again, his eyes focusing solely on her. “Have you not been listening? Do you not yet understand?”
He came around the table, laying his data pad down.
“Thallia can provide a comfortable arrangement for your friends. Terran is the most fertile, the most unsullied world in the interdimensional continuum thus far.” He spread his hands wide. “There are so many resources Thallia can make use of, and if your friends will surrender to him, he will spare most of the people of this world. They have no need to be enslaved. They can be employed.”
“What?” Mia gasped.
“Your friends can join Thallia as his warlords, like his other warlords.” Yamainu sighed. “Surely you didn’t think Jinsoku was the only one. No, Thallia has others. And if your friends will join him, serve him, he will incorporate this world into his realm in a way that is not at all uncomfortable. There are many benefits to partnership with someone like Thallia.”
Mia drew back from him. “That’s not a choice,” she hissed. “They would never choose that. Thallia has no right to take over this world. He has no right to take over any world.”
Yamainu smiled sadly. “That will be their choice.”
“Join or die? What kind of a choice is that?”
Yamainu’s scowl faded. “Miss Davalos, Thallia will not kill your friends. No, indeed he cannot kill them. For if he does, he shall lose their armors entirely, and that cannot happen.”
Mia clutched the fabric of her blouse.
“No, you still do not hear me. Thallia knows the depths of darkness that lurk within all of us. He sees the weakness we all despise in ourselves. And he knows precisely how to hurt us so that we surrender our will to him, even when we would have much rather resisted.” Yamainu’s eyes shimmered in the dim tunnel lights. “Thallia will not kill your friends, Miss Davalos. He will kill you.”
Mia drew back another step, and Yamainu followed her.
“He will kill you very slowly.” Yamainu leaned into her face. “He will give you to his tormentors, and they will make you last for months. You will lose your mind in agony and anguish. You will beg for mercy and find none, for your value, Miss Davalos, is suffering.”
Mia tripped on the cot and stumbled backward. Yamainu bent to stare into her eyes.
“And in your torment, your friends will break.” He hissed. “For they will bear witness to every second, every moment of your pain. They will be helpless to stop it. All they will be able to do is watch. And the only way to end your pain will be for them to surrender.”
Silent tears spilled down her cheeks. Words wouldn’t come. They seemed lodged in her throat.
“I am sorry, Miss Davalos,” Yamainu whispered. “I am sorry. I want no part of this, but I surrendered long ago. I was broken long ago.”
Trembling beneath his gaze, Mia took a deep breath and forced her voice to be steady.
“I don’t care what you think,” she gasped. “I don’t care what you believe. They will never surrender. Never.”
Yamainu lowered his gaze with a shudder that wracked down his spine. “The longer you cling to that belief, Miss Davalos, the longer Thallia will make your suffering last. The longer your friends will be forced to endure your torment.” He lifted his gaze to her. “Hope is poisonous. And every man has a breaking point, even your Reishosan.”