Ryan reacted as all instinctual Reflectives would have—he ground his fist into Merrick's knife wound.
But Merrick was already on point.
His eyes held on the flat surface of the locator even as he winced in pain.
He grabbed Ryan's collar, fisting the material tightly.
They jumped—only one did so willingly.
Merrick could hear Jasper calling his name down the tunnel the Reflectives traveled.
*
Jeb had found himself a dandy of a slope, his fist still attached to Ryan, where it continued its brutal hold.
Jeb went ripping down an embankment of sharp prairie grass that sliced and poked as they mowed through it, finally landing on their backs at the bottom.
He'd thought of Thirteen—and that’s where they'd landed.
Merrick was, of course, in perfect health, having healed completely during the jump. The glory in that was Ryan was yet unaware of Jeb’s mended state of affairs.
Merrick jumped to his feet and immediately kicked Ryan in the ribs.
“I swear to Principle I will leave you in this place if you do not retire your vendetta against Beth Jasper.”
Ryan spit more blood into the pasture grass that speared his back. “What… you want the half-breed?”
Jeb said nothing. Fool.
Ryan looked up at him.
“She is assigned to me, and she is injured. I can't help who I get partnered with any better than you can. I will not stand by and let you kill another Reflective because of your jealousy.”
“I am not jealous of that mongrel,” Ryan growled, coming to his hands and knees.
“I suffered through her inclusion for the past fifteen years,” he offered as a lame excuse.
“No.” Jeb gazed at the worthless Ryan. “I'm sure the reverse of that is true.”
“Earth lover.” Ryan spat at his feet.
Jeb rolled his eyes, pegging his hands on his hips. “Yes, I do enjoy Earth. Your point?”
“My point is she could be anything… she is not fully Papilion. Does that not bother you?”
“I am not looking to breed her but to partner her.”
“That is all females are good for.”
This is useless. Ryan was a lost cause, but Jeb could teach him caution. He did not wish to look over his shoulder for the next five years while partnered with Jasper.
Ryan stood, wisely keeping a respectable distance from Merrick.
“Where the hell are we?” His eyes narrowed on Jeb. “Where did you bring me?” He whipped his head around, taking in the faraway opaque dome-shaped structures.
A great forest stood to the north of their position.
“Sector Thirteen,” Jeb replied coolly.
Ryan's face paled. Jeb imagined that took some doing.
He grinned.
“This is the most dangerous sector you dick.”
Jeb shook his head. “Not the most dangerous.” No one traveled to One by choice—that was a death wish.
Jeb noted that he was not the only Reflective who had picked up the local Earth dialect with some precision.
Ryan lowered his voice as though anyone could hear them in the middle of the wilderness of this world.
A whisper of cloth against wheat made Merrick turn.
How wrong I was.
Things instantly went from teaching a lesson to survival, as was often the way of a jump.
A group of men of various sizes, ages, and bearing circled Merrick and Ryan, just out of striking range.
“Who the hell are they?” Ryan asked, suddenly less combative toward Merrick than he'd been moments before.
“The Fragment,” Jeb answered, sliding his remaining dagger out of the weapons pocket of his trousers.
Made of ceramic, it was designed to survive a jump, as metal could not survive Reflective journeys.
The cold porcelain was smooth, with a specially arced tip. It was serrated on only one side.
One of the men in the group called out, “Join us or die.”
Ryan said, “I don't know this dialect. I have only used the high language of Thirteen.”
“Just another reason why Jasper should remain.”
“Fuck me—why?” Ryan asked, one eye on the group, which was closing in, and the other on Merrick.
“She is fluent in all sectors.”
Jeb moved forward, hoping to injure enough men so that he could escape. They did not want to find themselves buried within the knot of the Fragment.
They took no prisoners.
*
Beth
Rachett tore into the hospital room, and Beth nearly climbed out of her skin.
The air still rippled with residual disturbance from Merrick's jump.
“Where is Ryan?” Rachett barked.
Beth took a deep breath. “He jumped with Merrick.”
Rachett's jaw moved back and forth. “No… Merrick would not take a jump with Ryan.”
“I don't think it was voluntary.”
They looked at each other.
Rachett seemed to notice Beth was in a hospital gown, flashing her backside to the window behind her.
“The residual still remains,” she said quickly, throwing her palm toward the shimmering air pocket between them.
Rachett studied the area, locked onto something and drove his palm through it in a slicing gesture that ended in his cupped fingers bringing the air back to his nose.
He waved that little bit he'd collected back and forth in front of his face.
“What signature?” Beth asked, moving to stand in front of him, her eyes on his hands as he smelled the air.
His face fell into grim lines. “Sector Thirteen.”
Rachett turned to Beth. “You're so damn hot to jump, jump that.”
Beth took a step back. “But… I'm a female. I don't have clearance for that sector.”
Everyone understood how treacherous that sector was. It had a terrible shortage of females, an estimated one to every fifteen males.
She would be delivering herself into the lion's den.
“Afraid?” Rachett taunted.
Beth stared at him. “I've never been afraid a day in my life.”
Anxiety is not fear.
“That's my girl. Now”—he touched her shoulder so briefly that Beth thought she imagined it—“get Ryan back. We have somewhere he needs to go.”
Beth paused then hit the affirmative decisively. “Yes, sir.”
He laid the universal locator on the hospital bed. Its sheen reflected the spattered blood on the ceiling. Rachett’s eyes followed hers.
When they lowered to meet hers again, he made no comment.
Rachett never asked once if she was well enough to jump… or if she wanted to.
Beth was Reflective, and that was answer enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
Beth
Unaware of Merrick’s gift, Beth traveled the tailwind of his jump with ease.
Truly not jumping was harder than jumping. It was unlike any other compulsion that Beth had ever known. She forced herself not to give reflective surfaces more than a passing glance.
Reflective surfaces were banned in some places, but no one could ban the water or tell the drops of rain where to fall.
Pools of water existed as proof of moisture falling, and lakes were made to swim in and harbor the fish that her people ate.
It was how it had always been.
Of course, there were those stories of Reflectives borne outside the net of The Cause, unfortunate enough to grow up without knowing what they were.
They were doomed to jump without knowledge, by pure instinct alone… to wherever their gift led them.
Legends even told of young ones flinging themselves along the pathway of travel to Sector Thirteen—or One.
Beth shivered inside the tunnel of fire and ice, spinning so quickly that she closed her eyes against the vertigo as she free fell.
Beth was glad the jump was always brief. To think
of more than a few seconds of that sensation was the only true fear she ever experienced. The thought of being stuck in the jump—always moving, never landing—was a hiccup of pure terror.
Just as the thought solidified, she was spit out of the transport pathway, and with a spinning somersault, she came to an abrupt halt, her spine a raging nightmare of pain
One knee was planted in stiff grass; the other, bent in preparation to stand. Both palms were embedded in an unyielding plant-like material with light-blond stalks. They rustled in a hot breeze that shot across a flat plane of land.
Beth raised her head and met fifteen pairs of hostile eyes.
She stood slowly, ignoring the worst of her injuries, and hoped she'd healed sufficiently to run.
She knew what people these males were: Fragment, the most dangerous contingent of Sector Thirteen. Merrick had spoken of the Band.
The Band might have been reasoned with.
The Fragment would not be.
Beth barred her teeth and charged them, pulling her two ceramic blades. Holding them expertly, she used their small weight for balance. Beth's senses traversed the uneven landscape while the men were shocked into a standstill, circling two Reflectives.
Merrick and Ryan reacted to Beth's diversion.
Merrick unleashed his blades on the four Fragment members who approached him. Kneeling as he got close to the first two, he severed their hamstrings.
He rolled between the shrieking pair as they clutched their wounded legs. He drove the daggers in an arc toward the next pair, slicing their femoral arteries near the groin.
They had seconds before their lifeblood would soak the ground beneath them.
Probably not soon enough for Merrick's taste.
Beth moved into the Fragment’s tight group, where her diminutive height was perfect for her to cut their throats. She closed her eyes against the spray, as she'd been taught to do, turning her face away to breathe.
Her head swung like a pendulum as they bore down against her and she navigated through their ranks. Through her peripheral vision, Beth glimpsed a strike and blood spatter as a blade sang past her face. She noted the smell of the Fragment's metal, which she’d been trained to detect.
Reflectives never used Fragment metal, though they had been trained to use and recognize the native weaponry of foreign sectors.
She leaned away from the air pressure of the swipe and opened her eyes. Blood soaked her lashes like macabre glue.
Ryan was her attacker.
She acted on reflex, suspending her disbelief that he would still pursue his agenda of murdering her while they were under attack.
She struck him with her four knuckles in a straight stabbing punch to the throat.
Ryan staggered backward and fell to the ground on his backside.
She exhaled raggedly as two of the Fragment leapt over Ryan’s body to get to her.
Relentless.
Ryan would get up momentarily; he was as skilled as she.
Her eyes flicked to the advancing Fragment.
Beth dropped to her haunches and crisscrossed her blades at the crotches of the men intent on hurting her.
She defended Ryan, though he deserved nothing.
He might not believe in The Cause, but Beth Jasper did.
She was born to Reflect.
Beth was not pureblood—she hailed from a combination of unknown genes—but she believed she was meant for a higher purpose. At that moment, it was killing Fragment.
They did not pose a long-term threat to The Cause. Their technology was primitive, but she needed to survive another day to save those cultures that depended on the Reflectives, though they did not know it.
Much of the Fragment was comprised of the criminal leavings of Sector Three, courtesy of two corrupt scientists and their misguided genetic manipulations. Beth had read the file. She knew what Merrick had inferred, but she’d kept it to herself.
She'd also lost sight of the battle, thinking about things left to a time when she wasn’t actively engaged.
One Fragment member reached her, taking hold of her braid. She'd been warned about her hair. It was her one concession to femininity, but this criminal had laid hold on the one weakness she’d given him due to stubbornness.
He jerked her around, and Beth used the momentum, stabbing upward underneath his jaw in quick succession. A second white mouth of flesh opened.
She turned her head before the spray, and he released her into the arms of his cohort. Beth fell backward and spoke in clear Fragment: “Fire!”
Merrick and Ryan heard, Fi-rah!
It was the one word that all cultures immediately understood to mean danger.
It was more effective than stop, help, or any other word.
It had Beth’s desired effect. Her assailant paused, still cradling her armpits, loosening his grip. She shifted the hilt of her dagger in her hand and punched it backward at whatever flesh she could strike.
The sound of her hard blade striking an eyeball was unmistakable.
She rotated and sprung up, seeing that her blade had indeed embedded in his eye socket. She jerked it out smoothly then dropped to the ground. Beth began tumbling down the ravine, the edge of which they’d been been perched on. She tucked the blade against her chest and crossed her arms as she rolled.
When she came to a complete stop, she unfolded her body and stood. Bodies littered the ground. Ryan stood, staring down at her, and his very countenance reeked of his hatred for her.
Beth sheathed the blade against her thigh. How she wished for a stimulator. But that handy weapon wouldn't have made the journey to Sector Thirteen.
On powerful legs, Merrick began to descend the small knoll. Beth took a moment to admire him in motion. A thing of beauty, his sandy-colored hair was almost blond in the bright glare of this world's summertime. He came to stand in front of her, barely breathing after the fierce battle
Neither said anything about Ryan’s attempt to kill them. The other Reflective stayed at the top of the hill, not acknowledging what had happened after Beth's escape down the small decline.
Merrick didn't say anything for a few moments, and his eyes were like stranded storm clouds in the blood that covered his face.
He reached out, and Beth flinched. Merrick ignored her and scooped something off her face.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He put his finger up, and a piece of gray clay the size of a pea stared back.
“Brains,” Merrick said casually, flicking it off his thumb.
Beth had a case of the quick swallows, fighting her rising gorge.
Then she caught Ryan smirking down at her like the king of the hill.
She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
“Let's go,” Beth said instead.
Merrick hid a small smile as they mounted the hill and began to weave between the dead bodies.
Beth noticed the different modes of dress; some were of a modern Three origin. Actually, she saw clothing from every sector.
The sectors occupied different times and parallel existences, but all were still Earths of varying degrees.
“Those interfering asshole Zondoraes…” Beth muttered, and Merrick's brows rose. She couldn't help thinking that Thirteen would be so much safer if those criminals hadn't dumped Three scourge there. The worst insult: they'd fashioned a pathway that non-Reflectives could travel in, but not without health consequence.
“Yes, we'll be dealing with them shortly.”
“What does it matter? They're not bringing the technology here. They're just dumping the criminals.” Their scientists were bent on advancement to the detriment of their own world and the one the Reflectives stood in.
Of course Ryan wouldn't see any problem with it. He must have thought it was such fun to engage with the Fragment.
He was an efficient killer. After all, he had almost killed her.
Merrick turned slowly to Ryan. “Before we jump, I am putting you on notice.”
; Ryan's eyes slimmed down on him.
“Because of you, I missed a fine rut with a female Reflective of worth. You had to go and make the final play for another inductee and make it personal.”
Beth couldn't believe this was about sex. She narrowed her eyes on Merrick with blatant disbelief.
“So”—Ryan stabbed his own chest with a thumb, and Beth smiled when she caught sight of the nasty row of bruises on his throat he hadn't managed to heal—“you think I'm a cock-block?” Ryan snorted.
Definitely a fan of Sector Three Earth idioms, Beth noted.
“I don't think. I know,” Merrick answered.
“That's just great that Ryan's attempted murder of me got in the way of your humping agenda.”
Beth stalked off, leaving them to diminish the value of her life to an inconvenience.
Merrick's voice stopped her. “We're jumping. I'm senior. Toss me a locator.”
Beth's lips twitched. She hurled the locator.
No tossing involved.
Merrick smoothly caught the sphere. Only the tightening of his eyes let her know it had hurt.
She raised her middle finger. “Sit and spin, boys.”
They weren't the only ones that had a handle on foreign language. She was female, after all.
Everyone knew females were the great communicators, regardless the sector. Beth was not going to be shut down by anyone.
Especially Lance Ryan and the cock-blocked Jeb Merrick.
Merrick put the sphere at their feet and turned to Beth, but she was already gone.
She'd jumped before he set it on the ground.
Unlike most, she didn’t need the locators to be still for her to travel.
Her partner and his murdering sidekick could follow the end of her Reflective tailwind.
*
“Jasper!”
She kept walking, Jeb Merrick could screw off. And? If there was any confusion, she had the map for him to find his way.
“Hold on—Jasper!”
Without actually losing dignity with a full-on jog, he was catching up. The bastard was well over six feet tall.
She whirled around, and Merrick nearly plowed into her. His gold hair was curling along the ends, his fair complexion a ruddy slap against his cheekbones.
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