The Cyber Chronicles Book II: Death Zone Read Free Page A

steps revealed her fatigue; only pride and
stubbornness fuelled her now.
    The mosscat
led them to a large, flat-topped grey rock, which he assured them
was Real-reality. Sabre kicked it to test this, and found it solid.
The fungi, by contrast, yielded to his finger when he poked them,
allowing it to sink in as if into soft clay. When he pulled it out,
his finger was clean and the fungi undamaged. Tassin wrinkled her
nose at his experimentation and climbed onto the rock. Sabre
unpacked the bedrolls and spread them out to soften the hard
surface, and Purr groomed his grey fur with pudgy hands.
    Tassin eyed
him. "You changed back there, I saw you. What else can you change
into?"
    Purr sneezed,
and his fangs grew longer. He glared at the Queen. "I don't change,
I adapt. It depends on my mood, but I have various aspects, none of
them monstrous, I assure you. I can't become bigger or sprout wings
and fly. I merely shift to suit my mood, or the climate."
    "So if you get
angry you sprout teeth and claws?"
    "Something
like that."
    "I do not
trust you."
    Purr sneezed
again, becoming chubby, and gave a purring chuckle. "Fine, I'll
leave, and you can manage alone."
    "No!" Sabre
glared at Tassin. "Leave him alone, he's agreed to help us."
    "I do not need
his help!"
    "Do you think
you can find your way through the Death Zone alone? Half the time
you can't see the sun." He gestured at the mist above them. "And
even when you can, you don't know whether it's the Real-reality
sun, or Flux-reality."
    Purr nodded.
"That's true."
    Tassin turned
to him. "So how will you find your way?"
    He shrugged.
"I just know which way is which. I was born here."
    Tassin
scowled, bit her lip and shot Sabre a hard glance. Purr settled
down, snuggling into his bushy, black and white-banded tail. She
turned her back on him and lay down, clutching the hilt of her
dagger. Sabre sighed and stretched out between them, exhausted.
With the discovery of water and the possible danger of their new
surroundings, the cyber had raised his metabolic rate back up to
normal, which drained him. He closed his eyes and drifted off to
sleep, secure in the knowledge that the cyber would alert him to
any danger.

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
    A soft
scraping woke Sabre, and his eyes flicked open as he gripped his
knife. He sat up and looked around. Tassin still slept, curled up
like a baby, and Purr was flattened at the edge of the rock,
watching something. Sabre crawled up behind him and lay down on his
belly next to the mosscat. Purr started violently at his silent
arrival, lifting several inches into the air as if yanked up by
invisible strings. The hair along his spine stood up in stiff
spikes, and his legs looked a lot longer than Sabre remembered
them. Sabre smiled at Purr's comical reaction to his stealthy
approach and peered over the edge of the rock. Below, a strange
creature crawled past, its claws rasping on a nearby boulder. A
shiny black carapace clad an almost spherical body, which crept
along on six long, spiny legs. A ring of jet eyes circled the body,
and a pair of slender, serrated pincers was tucked under its
forepart.
    "Real-reality
monster," Purr whispered.
    Sabre nodded,
studying the beast as it crawled away, its spiny legs digging into
the soft dark soil. It barged between two fungi, pushing through
the Flux-reality. Purr relaxed as it disappeared amongst the fungi
and returned to his roly-poly aspect with a soft sneeze. Sabre
looked over at the sleeping Queen, glad she had not woken to see
the horror. As he gazed at her, flashes of green and brown
flickered through the rock.
    "Change," Purr
muttered.
    The landscape
warped, smearing like water colours running in the rain, and
transformed into scintillating pillars of gemstone and crystal
sprouting from a sheet of what looked like alabaster. Bright
sunlight sparkled on facetted diamonds and coloured crystals, and
emerald sand drifted against ruby rocks.
    A
blood-curdling scream jerked Sabre's attention from the