The younglings' resistance because of their age was renown.
He worked on the man and woman until they believed they had pulled over from fatigue and that his appearance was no more than a bad dream.
The youngling was different.
He sent the young one's protectors away and dropped to his haunches easily, though Jasper lay like a dead weight within his hold.
“Don't… hurt her,” Jasper whispered in their native tongue, gritting her teeth against her pain.
Her eyes fluttered as she fought fatigue. She was badly injured and her body was trying to heal itself through rest.
“I am not a savage.”
“I have heard stories,” she replied in Latin.
Jeb was disgusted that Jasper would think him capable of harming a youngling.
He focused on the girl, but Jasper's comment rung inside his skull unpleasantly.
“Little one,” he began, switching to English. “Who do you think we are?”
The little girl looked carefully at Jasper.
Then her eyes moved to Jeb, and she looked unafraid.
“Angels,” she replied with the logic of a four-year-old.
Jeb went through his mental inventory, looking for the meaning, and though they were not the perfect heavenly creatures the girl thought they were, it was a safe identifier.
Jeb smiled at her.
“That's right,” he lied smoothly as he cupped his large hand over the back of her head.
“Thank you for your watch care after my partner.”
She nodded, though she thought the angel spoke oddly.
The lovely people blinked away like falling stars in the middle of a little-traveled road, while her relatives sat like corpses in the cab of Uncle Jeremy’s truck.
She stared until twilight descended and her adult relatives finally awoke as though they’d just had a deep sleep.
*
“Principle, that was close,” Jasper whispered.
She flicked her eyes to Jeb's and added, “I think you hurt me worse on the return.”
“Your grateful attitude blows me away.”
“I hate Earth vernacular.”
“Tough, get used to it.”
Jeb sat beside her, his mind on that hot Reflective he'd had to leave behind instead of giving her what she clearly needed.
Basically, he hadn't gotten his rocks off because he'd had to chase Jasper down like a skipper. Jeb understood he wasn't being entirely fair. If Jasper hadn't leapt, she would’ve been killed. Still, his fun had been curtailed, and it made him exceedingly grumpy.
He plowed his fingers through his tousled hair and expelled a frustrated breath, leaning back in the chair near her bedside.
“Please, I'm hungry,” Jasper said, her upturned lips telling Jeb that she was pleased by his temporary slave status.
Jeb glared at her as he spooned another mouthful of the gelatin into her full lips, now marred only by a shallow cut and a yellowing bruise. Days of healing had taken only hours.
Her back would be fully mended by the morrow.
A glob of the green goo sat on one plump lip, and he scooped it off and stuffed it into her mouth.
Not that it would keep that sharp tongue at bay.
“What of Rachett?” Beth asked. She gnawed thoughtfully at her bottom lip in between bites, giving away her emotions.
Jeb busied himself with stirring the green translucent grub. It jiggled obscenely as he loaded another spoonful.
Jasper put her palm up to ward off another bite, and he noted how small—and strong—her hands were.
Jeb dipped his eyes to the bowl then set it down. “He attends to Ryan.”
Jasper put her face in her hands.
Go ahead, cry, weak female, Jeb thought uncharitably, his old prejudices vying for position.
But she simply swiped at her face, raw with healing wounds.
“Attends to… or disciplines?” she asked, a defiant hook to her chin.
He grinned despite himself.
Beth Jasper obviously knew the tenor of their commander. “A little of both, I imagine.”
Jasper did not smile; she appeared serious, and Jeb found his smile fading as he looked into her delicate face.
Her eyes were as hard as his own.
“Ryan will retaliate.”
Jeb nodded. “If he was smart… he would not. It was a clear victory. But he will not be pleased to have been bested by a female.”
“It is not that I am female,” Jasper commented.
Her brown eyes laid hold on his gray ones, and he cocked an eyebrow, folding his arms over his chest.
“Then what is it, for I know you die on the vine to tell me.”
Jasper rolled her large eyes in her head. “It is that I am better.”
Jeb inclined his head, conceding the obvious. “As a jumper.” He stood, throwing out his hands. “I have not seen the like.”
Suddenly, Jeb whirled around. Overcome with curiosity, he gripped the ceramic bars on the hospital bed. His movement caused the thin snaking plastic tube that bit her flesh with a needle to sway like an undulating snake.
Jasper smiled. “And only Rachett truly knew what I was capable of.” Her hands toyed with the many threads of the unraveling border of the wool blanket that covered her.
“Why? It is a rare gift, to jump into something that small. Why would you not spread the proof of that talent far and wide?” Jeb asked, twirling in a neat circle in the middle of the room.
Jasper met his eyes, and Jeb saw something there that caused him to stop moving.
“Because,” Jasper whispered, “that was not small.”
Jeb felt the air still in his lungs as he moved nearer to her bed. “Look at me, Jasper.”
Her gaze rose, unwavering and dark, full of secrets.
“The six-inch blade in motion… that is not small?”
Jasper shook her head.
Jeb pulled a chair across the floor, and it shrieked in protest as it scraped the floor. He twirled it around and sat in it backward. “Tell me.”
The air left her lungs, and she whispered the truth for the first time since their Commander had discovered what she was capable of, since that day when she had leapt into the locator sphere.
“Mist,” she answered.
Jeb put a fist over his mouth to stifle a noise.
They were in such trouble. Not he… but a partner that could jump through mist particles? His eyes couldn’t even track something so small because of their sheer diminutive size. It did not bode well.
She leapt by intuition. Somehow, she knew it reflected and could jump into the body of the mist? Unheard of.
And she was female besides.
Who is Beth Jasper, and what is her purpose?
She looked at him with guarded hope, and the look he returned was everything he felt—dislike.
CHAPTER THREE
Beth
Beth's face fell. Merrick might have been her new partner, but he was definitely not friendly. He treated her like a child he’d had to rescue and feed.
If Beth could have been an independent, she would have chosen to do so straightaway. However, that wasn't the way of the Reflective. They were partnered for a reason. And though she had not officially been advanced from her inductee status to full Reflective, she suspected Commander Rachett would see it through.
He was a tough man shaped by experience, but he was fair.
That was why Beth was surprised that he hadn’t anticipated her jump when confronted by Ryan's contraband weapon. The prick.
Beth stubbornly adjusted herself in the bed. I’ll be damned if I ask Merrick. He was all but whistling from boredom.
“You can go. I'm fine,” Beth said, smoothing her palms down the itchy blanket.
Jeb let the front legs of his chair slam down, and it caused Beth to jump. “Nope… you're the new part of our little team, and I have to suck it up… kind of like a bad marriage.”
“You know, I guess you're
having some residual from being at Three?”
Merrick shrugged his broad shoulders.
“It takes time to come down from the foreign high.” He winked and Beth felt a tension leave her that she didn't know she held. Merrick could be okay when he wanted to be.
“Where… have you…”
“I like Sector Thirteen best,” Merrick replied casually, his eyes flicking to hers then away.
“Not Earth?”
Merrick shook his head, leaning back in the chair again.
It tilted dangerously, his muscular weight causing it to creak as he laced his hands behind his head and regarded her thoughtfully.
“No, Earth's a pain in my ass. They have great language—colorful.” He gave a short laugh. “But they take a shit where they live. And the pollution, the crime… and I think we have a tech storm brewing that we'll have to address before too long. Actually, I know it.”
Beth held a secret desire to visit all the planets.
She looked at her clenched hands. Her greatest desire was not to police the planets they held steward over but to explore them.
She kept it to herself, along with the fact that she'd just dumped herself on Earth by random accident. That hadn't been a visit; it'd been a catastrophe.
She owed her five years of service to the Reflective, and then she was free to explore and find the one who was destined for her—a promised soul mate.
That is, if Beth survived her service.
The nature of the Reflective duties were always the issue. With a death rate of one in two, there was no guarantee that a Reflective would live long enough to claim the prize of his or her other half.
Still, the proverbial carrot dangled before them.
Beth raised her chin and leveled her stare at Merrick. He was not a chatty male. His words, like his actions, were economical.
He came from a family of pureblood Reflectives, and the old feelings of isolation kicked in. Beth did not look Reflective, she was female… and she was small even for her gender.
But Rachett had seen that essential spark within her and included her in the training.
She asked him, “Earth? We will be assigned there?”
He nodded. “Yes, it's only a matter of time. The handwriting's on the wall.”
He’d used an interesting idiom that heralded from the Earth people's Bible, a relic of prophesy. Their Bible was not unlike Papilio scrolls that spoke of the Principle. An intersecting bit of beliefs, she supposed.
“Why thirteen?” she asked, wondering why that planet held his interest most.
“I can't manipulate the Band.”
“Ah…” Beth instantly remembered her training of that world. A primitive people had been saved by a futuristic, but interfering, group from Three. Interesting domiciles on that planet, she remembered.
“So the challenge then?”
Merrick grunted in enigmatic response, taking a piece of candy out of his pocket. He threw it into his mouth, then jawed it around.
Without warning, the door burst open.
Merrick jumped from mid-lean, tossing the chair out of the way.
Lance Ryan entered, slapping the door against the wall.
*
Beth slithered out of the bed, lightly touching her toes on the cold tile of the hospital floor.
She scanned the room for anything to use as a weapon or possible escape.
Damn, her weapons were hung neatly from a new uniform at the back of a chair in the corner.
Of course they were.
Who needs weapons when there is an armed Reflective at the door? Beth narrowed her eyes. The guard had been bought and paid for by Ryan, obviously.
Beth's gaze bored into Merrick's muscular back, and her heart stuttered. Merrick would never go against Ryan.
They were most likely in cahoots. That was probably why Merrick had been so cavalier, feeding her and taking care of his injured partner as they were required to do in the event of mishap.
She was doomed.
Maybe not.
She took a deep breath, contemplating the unthinkable. Beth's eyes roamed the four corners of the room, trying to locate anything reflective.
But the hospital had been scrubbed of anything that could refract.
“Well, hi ya, Ryan,” Merrick greeted him like an old friend, still in full Earth dialect.
Ryan frowned.
“Get out of the way, Merrick.”
Beth backed up, moving toward the window, glancing outside.
She was at the metaphorical cliff again. She wasn't healed fully from the last jump. Her injuries would certainly be worse if she jumped again.
So few held Beth in any regard that it might have been her only free pass that Merrick had been sent to collect her.
No one would come a second time. Her jump would leave her trapped in a foreign sector void of her people, unable to travel decisively without locators.
Jumping was dangerous without a focus sphere.
She could end up anywhere… or any time.
Beth shuddered. But she supposed that fate was better than death.
“Nope, can't do that, you colossal fuckup.”
Beth turned around, her mouth agape.
Did I just hear Merrick right? She had, judging by the expression on Lance Ryan's smug face.
That awareness in Ryan’s expression was beginning to leak away.
And Merrick's delivery had been the most comedic of all. He’d spoken as if he were commenting on the weather and had found it fine.
“Let me pass, Merrick. No one wants her to live.”
Beth's eyes met his over Merrick's shoulder. “You'd be doing the world a favor if you took a coffee break right now. Just let it happen.”
Merrick planted his feet, his arms loose at his sides, and regarded Ryan like a bug. Beth had moved into his peripheral vision. She'd also caught sight of an outside streetlamp through the window.
Its glass solar panels shone like a black mirror.
Ryan somehow knows, knows I ready myself. My desperation is plain to whoever searches for it.
Her body bore the scars of his physical bullying. Her mind held them, as well.
Heat climbs, searing her insides, Beth's heartbeat is a whoosh of blood in her ears.
Ryan's eyes snagged on Beth, then with a roar, he surged forward.
Merrick pivoted on his right foot. Already focused on her mark, Beth saw them as only a pinpoint in her vision.
The shining ebony at the crown of the lamp beckoned.
Then she heard the crack of bone against bone, and blood arced up, hitting the ceiling with such force that it rained back down on the men.
The sound stopped everything—her focus, her jump.
Beth stood frozen as Merrick went toe-to-toe with Ryan.
*
Jeb
Honorless fuck.
Jeb was disgusted the guard at Jasper's door had let Ryan through. He was even further disgusted that she’d considered jumping without having sufficient time to heal. Being a sensitive Reflective, he could sense jumping readiness.
During the battle in the coliseum, he had sensed Beth’s jump before anyone else had. He possessed her signature now.
Ryan charged, and something in Beth's expression gave her away. It would be the first thing he would teach her as her partner: a blank face.
Beth didn't have one. A shadow of her every feeling clouded her face. She was, as the people of Sector-Three Earth were fond of saying, an open book.
Ryan was a dirty fighter—no surprise there—who thought to take hold of Jeb and unbalance him.
Ryan latched onto Jeb's wrist and attempted a foot sweep.
Jeb countered, twisting his wrist viciously in the opposite direction of the hold, breaking it instantly as he grabbed Ryan's forearm. He stepped into the fight, not away.
As he jerked Ryan into the circle of reach, he swung his fist into Ryan's jaw.
Always engage, never retreat.
The Reflec
tive motto, he thought with sour pleasure as Ryan moved with him, an apt dance partner in their mutual violence.
Ryan head butted Jeb in a deft, hard move with perfect timing.
It rang Jeb's bell, but his skull was hard, and he spun his cocked fist, driving it a second time the short distance from his hip to Ryan's jaw.
And like perfectly cracked glass, his jaw rocketed back, spraying blood onto the ceiling as his teeth speared his own tongue.
Jeb popped his flattened palms into Ryan's chest as though he wanted to launch him into the wall or stop his heart.
Ryan slammed into the wall, his head smacking the surface
Jeb stalked toward Ryan, his fists like meaty hammers of punishment.
Barely breathing, Ryan slid down the wall, his eyes at half-mast.
“Are we done here, Ryan?” Merrick asked.
Ryan gave the smallest nod possible, his mouth a yawning horror of blood and gore.
Merrick turned to check on Jasper.
The sun's final rays backlit her, bathing her in red light like a watercolor of blood. It ran down her arms, accentuating her delicate build, and instead of looking sinister, it did the opposite.
She seemed terribly fragile.
“Merrick!” Beth screamed.
He dropped down and spun.
Ryan was above him, a small dagger in one hand, coated with blood.
His own blood.
His fingers found the wound and came away slick.
Merrick saw red.
“You fucking pussy,” he hissed.
Ryan smiled through a mouthful of his own blood and spit it to the side, where it splattered like dumped paint on the pure-white tiles.
“I'm a pussy that just fucked you.”
“Not yet,” Merrick said.
Fuck it, I’ll heal on the way. He’d kept his gift a secret, though Ryan would be enlightened forevermore.
As light as a feather, a smooth rectangle of paper-thin mercury-coated ceramic slipped out of his specially made pocket in Merrick’s pants. He tossed, and it landed on top of their mixed blood on the floor.
It provided a single destination jump.
Ryan's expression showed true fear as Merrick punched the blade from the younger man’s hand. It hit the floor with a jarring clatter of metal against ceramic.
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