Between Darkness - Chapter 2: Kate Unleashed

"Kate, you need to stay behind the line."

Kate Morrison ignored Chelsea's voice in her earpiece. The shuttle bay doors were opening, void-cold air rushing past her face, and somewhere out there in the darkness, people were dying.

She could feel them. That was the worst part—feeling every death as a small, sharp absence. Like candles being snuffed out, one after another. The Hollowing had done that to her, had opened something in her mind that let her sense the threads connecting all living things. Each person was a tiny light in her awareness, a spark of warmth against the cold nothing that existed between dimensions.

Now those sparks were going dark by the hundreds. Each one was a scream she couldn't unhear, a void she couldn't unfeel. Somewhere out there, a mother was dying. A child. A soldier who'd signed up to protect people and was discovering that protection didn't mean survival.

Kate was eleven years old, and she carried all of it.

"Kate!" Chelsea's voice sharpened. "The combat zone is too hot. Admiral Voss ordered you to the secondary position."

"Admiral Voss isn't here." Kate stepped to the edge of the bay door, magnetic boots clicking against the deck. Below her, the battle sprawled across a million kilometers of space—human ships and Dominion vessels locked in a dance of fire and death. "I am."

The shuttle waiting behind her hummed with barely contained power. It was supposed to take her to a safe position, somewhere she could use her abilities without putting herself at risk. A command post. A fortified station. Somewhere the adults deemed appropriate for their most valuable weapon.

Weapon. That's what they called her now. Not child, not patient, not victim. Weapon. Kate had stopped being offended by it months ago. Words were just words. What mattered was what you did with them.

She reached out with that part of herself that wasn't quite human anymore—the part that the Hollowing had touched, had changed, had claimed piece by piece over years of use. The dimensional corruption that lived inside her like a second heartbeat, that she'd learned to harness even as it slowly ate her alive.

The Dominion ships ahead burned with it. She could taste their Hollowing signatures on the back of her tongue, bitter and wrong, like metal and rot and something older than stars. Each vessel was a node of darkness, channeling power from that other place—the dimension the Dominion had cracked open centuries ago, had learned to drink from like vampires at a wound.

*They're using it for everything now,* Kate thought. *Weapons. Shields. Phase drives. They've figured out how to draw more power than ever before.*

And she knew why. The Hollowing was hungry. It wanted into this universe, wanted to consume everything that lived and breathed and thought. The Dominion had found a way to give it what it wanted—a little at a time, in exchange for the power to conquer.

They were feeding it. And it was growing stronger.

*Little door,* something whispered in the back of her mind. *Little door, let us through.*

Kate shoved the voice down. She'd been hearing it since she was six years old, since the first time she'd touched the darkness and felt it touch back. The Hollowing talked to her constantly now—promises, threats, offers she couldn't accept. It knew her better than she knew herself. It was patient.

It could wait.

"Shuttle pilot," Kate said aloud. "New heading. Take me to the front."

The pilot's voice came back uncertain. "Miss Morrison, my orders are—"

"Your orders just changed." Kate turned to look at him, and she knew what he saw—a girl barely eleven years old, small and thin and fragile-looking. Her dark hair was pulled back in a practical ponytail. Her eyes were brown, ordinary, nothing special.

Except they weren't quite right anymore. Something moved in those eyes that shouldn't move, something that looked back at the pilot and saw straight through him to the fear underneath.

The pilot swallowed hard. "Yes, ma'am."

The shuttle accelerated toward the battle. Kate felt the g-forces press against her, felt the vibration of the engines through the deck plates. Outside, space blazed with weapons fire—plasma bolts and missile trails and the distinctive purple-black discharge of Hollowing-infused weapons.

She pressed her hand against the viewport, watching the carnage unfold. A human destroyer took a direct hit, its hull splitting open, atmosphere venting in a cloud of crystallizing vapor. Kate felt the crew die—forty-seven sparks going dark in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

She catalogued it. Filed it away. Kept moving.

A Dominion cruiser loomed ahead, its hull covered in those pulsing bioluminescent patterns. Kate reached toward it with her mind, felt the corruption running through its systems like black blood through diseased veins. The Hollowing recognized her, reached back—

*Little door,* it whispered in her thoughts. *You've come to play. We've missed you.*

Kate slammed it shut. Forced it back with everything she had. The mental effort sent pain spiking through her temples, but she'd learned to ignore pain a long time ago. Pain was just information. It told you what was broken, what needed fixing, what you were losing.

She was losing a lot.

"There." She pointed through the viewport. "That cruiser is coordinating the phase attacks. It's how they're bypassing our shields—central command node directing multiple ships at once. Take out that ship, and the whole network fails."

"How can you possibly know—" the pilot started.

"Because I can feel it." Kate's voice went flat. Cold. The voice of something that had seen too much to waste time on explanations. "Land on that ship."

"Land on a—that's a Dominion warship! It has weapons, defenses—"

"Yes." Kate was already moving toward the airlock. "I know."

The shuttle changed course, diving toward the cruiser's dorsal hull. Anti-aircraft fire streaked past, close enough to rock the small vessel. Kate braced herself against the bulkhead, feeling each near-miss as a tremor in her bones. A plasma bolt grazed the shuttle's wing, and warning lights flashed across the cockpit.

They hit hard. The shuttle's emergency clamps fired, anchoring them to the enemy hull with a scream of tortured metal. Kate cycled the airlock without waiting for the pressure to equalize—vacuum rushed past her, but her suit held, and she'd been in hard vacuum before.

The silence was absolute. No sound in space, no matter how loud the explosions. Just Kate and the stars and the ship beneath her feet.

The cruiser's hull was warm beneath her boots. Warm and alive with that awful pulsing energy, that heartbeat rhythm that matched the darkness in her own chest. She could feel the Hollowing flowing through the ship's systems like blood through veins, could sense the crew inside—sixty Dominion soldiers, their minds touched by the same corruption that touched hers.

They knew she was there. She felt their awareness shift, felt them reaching for weapons, for countermeasures. They'd been warned about her. They knew what she could do.

Kate knelt, pressed her palms against the hull, and pushed.

It wasn't a physical push. It was something deeper, something that happened in the space between heartbeats, in the dimension beneath dimensions. She reached into the ship's Hollowing network and *twisted*—found the threads of corruption and knotted them, found the flow of power and dammed it, found the connection to that other place and severed it.

The effect was immediate. The cruiser shuddered beneath her. Its running lights flickered, died, flickered again. The bioluminescent patterns on its hull went dark—and stayed dark. She felt the crew inside screaming, felt them dying as the systems they depended on failed.

Sixty sparks going dark. Sixty lives ending because Kate Morrison decided they needed to end.

She didn't feel guilty. Couldn't afford to. These were the people trying to enslave humanity, trying to feed everyone she loved to the Hollowing. Whatever they'd been before the Dominion changed them, they were enemies now.

And enemies died.

Across the battle, Kate felt other Dominion ships falter. The phase coordination node was gone. Without it, they couldn't synchronize their attacks, couldn't bypass human shields with the precision they needed. The Dominion formation scattered, each ship suddenly fighting alone.

It wasn't victory. But it was time. Time for human ships to regroup, to adjust their tactics, to fight back.

Kate stood, swaying slightly. Her head throbbed. Her nose was bleeding—she could taste copper at the back of her throat, feel the warmth running down her upper lip. Using her abilities always cost something. The Hollowing took a piece of her every time.

But people had stopped dying. For this moment, right now, the tide of snuffed candles had slowed.

*Worth it,* she thought.

"Kate!" Chelsea's voice was panicked now. "What did you do? We're reading—the Dominion formation is breaking up. They're scrambling."

"I know." Kate wiped blood from her nose with the back of her glove. The white fabric came away red. "I gave you an opening. Use it."

She didn't wait for a response. There were more ships out there, more nodes of corruption. She could feel them pulling at her, calling to her. The Hollowing wanted her attention.

Kate gave it what it wanted.

For the next hour, she moved through the battle like a wraith. The shuttle pilot followed her orders without question now—he'd seen what she could do, seen her shut down three more coordination nodes with nothing but her mind and her will. He'd stopped looking at her like a child somewhere around the second ship. Now he looked at her like a weapon.

Which was fair. That's what she was.

Each time, the cost grew higher. Her nose wouldn't stop bleeding. Her hands shook. The headache behind her eyes had become a constant pressure, as if something was pushing to get out.

*Or pushing to get in.*

The Hollowing whispered to her between attacks. Promises of power. Offers of relief. All she had to do was stop fighting, stop resisting, let it in completely. It could make the pain go away. It could make everything go away.

*You don't have to hurt anymore,* it told her. *You don't have to be afraid. Let us in, little door. We'll take care of everything.*

Kate ignored it. She'd been ignoring it for years.

But it was getting harder. Each time she used her power, the voice got louder. Each time she touched the darkness, it touched her back. She could feel herself changing, feel the boundaries of her identity growing thinner, less certain. Sometimes she looked in the mirror and wasn't sure who was looking back.

"Kate." Chelsea's voice again, softer now. Worried. "You need to stop. Your biosigns are all over the place. Whatever you're doing, it's killing you."

"Not yet." Kate pressed her hand against another Dominion hull, felt another surge of wrongness, another wave of that hungry darkness. "Soon, maybe. But not yet."

She pushed. The ship died. More human vessels survived.

The math was simple. One girl for thousands of lives. One damaged, corrupted, dying girl for an entire civilization.

Kate had made her peace with that equation a long time ago. She'd been making peace with it since her mother died, since her father died, since everyone who'd tried to protect her discovered that protection had a price. She was the price. She was always the price.

*People need me,* she thought. *That's enough. That's enough reason to keep going.*

"There's a carrier approaching the civilian evacuation corridor," she said, scanning the battle through senses that weren't quite physical. The carrier was huge—a massive Hollowing signature, the brightest she'd encountered. "Big one. If it gets through, it'll hit the transport fleet."

"We don't have anything in position to intercept," Chelsea said. "Our ships are all engaged elsewhere."

"You have me."

Silence on the comm. Then: "Kate, no. That ship is too big. Too powerful. You can't—"

"I have to."

The shuttle changed course one more time.

Kate felt the carrier before she saw it—a wall of darkness across her senses, so bright it hurt. This wasn't just a ship. This was something special, something the Dominion had invested heavily in. She could feel the corruption radiating from it like heat from a sun, could feel the Hollowing inside it laughing at her approach.

*The flagship,* she realized. *That's their command ship for this entire offensive.*

If she could take it down, the invasion might break entirely. The Dominion's coordination would collapse. Their ships would scatter, fight individually, be picked off one by one.

But the carrier's defenses were stronger than anything she'd faced. Layers of Hollowing-infused shielding, countermeasures designed specifically to resist psychic attack. The Dominion knew about her. They'd prepared.

Kate smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of something that had stopped being afraid a long time ago.

*Good,* she thought. *I like a challenge.*

She reached deeper than she ever had before. Past the barriers, past the shields, past the countermeasures. Down into the heart of the flagship's power core, where the Hollowing burned brightest, where the connection to that other dimension was strongest.

And she spoke to it.

*You know me,* she told the darkness. *You made me. You broke me open and climbed inside and thought you owned me. But I'm not your door. I'm not your vessel. I'm not your anything.*

The Hollowing laughed. It always laughed.

*Little girl,* it whispered. *You ARE ours. You've been ours since the moment we touched you. Every time you use us, you become more like us. Every time you fight, you lose. You can't win. You can only become.*

Kate felt the truth of it like a knife in her chest. The Hollowing wasn't lying. She was changing. She was losing herself, one battle at a time, one use of her power at a time. Someday there wouldn't be a Kate Morrison anymore. There would just be the thing the Hollowing wanted her to become.

But not today.

*Then I'll lose,* she told the darkness. *I'll become whatever you want. But not today. Today, I'm still Kate Morrison. Today, I still choose. And today, I choose to burn you.*

She reached into the flagship's power core and twisted.

The destabilization was immediate and catastrophic. Kate felt the Hollowing energy turn inward, eating itself, devouring the ship from the inside out. The carrier's lights went dark. Its weapons fell silent. Its hull began to glow as internal fires spread through its corridors.

Kate's vision went white. Her body convulsed. She was dimly aware of falling, of the shuttle pilot catching her before she hit the deck. Pain erupted through every nerve, every synapse. She felt things tearing inside her—not physical things, but something deeper. Something that wouldn't grow back.

*Too much,* she thought distantly. *Used too much.*

But the flagship was dying. And the transports—thousands of civilians, families, children—were safe.

When Kate's vision cleared, she was lying on the shuttle's deck, Chelsea's voice screaming in her earpiece. Everything hurt. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much. Blood was streaming from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. She was shaking so hard she couldn't control her limbs.

But she was smiling.

"It's done," she whispered. "I stopped them."

"Kate, you need medical attention immediately. Your neural readings—your brain activity—something's wrong. Something's very wrong."

"I know." Kate closed her eyes. "I know what they say. I know what's happening to me."

She'd known for a long time. Every use of her power burned away a little more of who she was. One day, there wouldn't be anything left to burn. She would become what the Hollowing wanted her to become—a door, a vessel, a portal for something that shouldn't exist in this universe.

But not today.

Today, she was still Kate Morrison. Still human. Still fighting.

And tomorrow, she would fight again.

Because people needed her. Because she was the only weapon that worked. Because somewhere out there, the Dominion was still coming, and the Hollowing was still hungry, and someone had to stand in the way.

It might as well be her.

The shuttle began its return to the fleet. Kate lay on the deck, too weak to move, too tired to care. The pilot kept glancing back at her, his face pale, his eyes wide.

She couldn't blame him. She'd seen herself in the mirror after battles like this. She knew what she looked like—a broken doll, a thing that had been used up and thrown away. Something that shouldn't still be alive.

But she was alive. Against all odds, against all reason, she was still here.

*One more day,* she thought. *One more battle. One more chance to save people.*

It wasn't much. But it was enough.