“Which is why getting KARA up and running is top priority,” Shawn’s father, Roy Vallen, stated as he looked toward me.
As the director of the Department of Justice and the Grand High Councilor, he was the leader of the Grand Council and the Central Six in Alex’s absence. Though with my new title of viliyata, it was really a toss up as to who out-ranked whom. However, I wasn’t about to point that out since every time I remembered that I was in charge of anyone—let alone a whole department—it kinda made me nauseous.
“What’s the status on that?” Ashley Hutchenson asked me with narrowed eyes, unable to fully hide how much she didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual, and had been since I had been about nine. And trust me, it hadn’t gotten any better since I had been named the director of the Department of Technical Research and Development, and she had realized that I was now her peer instead of a child she could punish and boss around.
“I can probably get her up and running by the end of the week. And then fully integrated by the end of the month,” I said without needing to look at the tablet of notes Akiko had provided me. I knew exactly how far off from completion we were. I had basically been measuring my days by that for weeks.
“Up and running? I thought she was already functional,” Ashley asked with a patronizing and mocking tone to her voice that made me want to set loose a flock of pigeons in her office again.
I swallowed and took a steadying breath. “There was an…unforeseen security risk and portions of KARA’s code had to be rewritten,” I admitted reluctantly. Or basically, a Kakodemoss agent hacked her and locked me out.
Ashley opened her mouth to speak, but Kiskei cut her off before she got a chance. “There were also the modifications to the biometric scanners that needed to be made.”
“Modifications?” Johannah asked as she turned toward Kiskei.
Instead of looking at her, Kiskei looked at Roy. “The data markers for the K1-2012 mutation had to be added in,” he stated. And there it was again, the weird emotions coming off of him like the ones I had felt coming off him in his office.
“What mutation?” Ashley asked with narrowed eyes. As the director of Health and Daemon Services she should have been one the first to know about any health risks, and it probably irritated her to no end that others knew before she did.
Kiskei and Roy looked at each other, and then at me before Kiskei turned back to Ashley. “When Patrick Galathea was exposed to the daemon retro-virus through the blood transfusion and underwent the Change, the daemon retro-virus also underwent a change—a mutation. We have labeled it the K1-2012 mutation. Patrick then later passed this mutated retro-virus on to the Arius Nualla and she to Travis Viliyata.”
At the last part everyone’s eyes darted to me, and Tylia arched her eyebrows. Apparently it wasn’t only teenage girls who were aware of the speculations that Secrets magazine was making about my and Nualla’s relationship.
“Not like that,” I said sarcastically as I folded my arms, and leaned back in my seat. “It was through an injection of blood.”
“Is the mutation dangerous?” Johannah asked with large eyes.
“Dangerous? No, it’s not dangerous. Though, I must admit that we don’t fully understand it yet,” Kiskei replied as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I can’t believe you are treating this so lightly, Kiskei! This mutation could endanger all of Karalia! He could be infecting us as we speak! We should quarantine them to an observation lab for study until we can develop something to counter the effects of this mutation,” Ashley squawked as she glared at me in disgust. Leaning away from me, and spitting out the word mutation as if she thought I was a diseased rat.
And that was when I finally lost it.
“The K1-2012 mutation is the only reason you’re all not dead right now,” I snapped through clenched teeth as I slammed my hands onto the table.
I trudged into the living room of my apartment sometime after seven o’clock, and flopped onto the floor in front of the futon couch because Patrick was stretched out across it.
I had lost my temper again. Let Ashley bait me into snapping. Again.
After I had shouted at them, Kiskei had explained that the mutated retro-virus was only passed through blood or other “bodily contact.” A.k.a sex. And that one of the benefits of the mutation was the immunity to titanium that had allowed me to not die when I had gone out into the titanium-filled halls.
Instead of letting it go, Ashley—proving how much of an ungrateful bitch she was—said we should come up with a new designator for the three of us since we were no longer Kalodaemons. At that, I had nearly lunged across the table to throttle her. But Roy—who seemed to have better restraint, even though he also looked like he wanted nothing more than to deck her—had said that he would bring up the matter with the Chancellarius because we had more important things to worry about than labels at the moment.
“You’re home way late,” Patrick pointed out as he paused whatever show was on. Some anime with a girl in a white and red outfit and a boy in a black outfit running around with swords.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” I groaned as I flung my arm over my eyes. “Just please tell me we can do something constructive tonight, like punching pixilated sheep?”
“I think you mean destructive,” Patrick said with a smirk to his voice.
“Whatever, I’m tired of being an adult for today.”
“Why, what happened?” Patrick asked, concern tinting his voice.
I pulled my arm from my eyes, and looked at him.
Where did I even start in answering that question? I didn’t want to bring up the stuff with Chan-rin and his apparent secret memory stealing ability. Or that I was beginning to suspect that Nualla’s memories of the night we had shared together had been stolen, maybe even by him. And I sure as hell didn’t want to bring up the stuff about KARA and the fact that I didn’t even know what fucking species we were anymore. So I settled for the only thing left in my craptastic day: Parker.
“I have the social graces of a horny teenage boy,” I said as I dropped my arm back over my eyes.
Come as You Are
Tuesday, November 6th
TRAVIS
It had been eating at me all day, and by three o’clock I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I quickly marched down to Parker’s office, and pushed the door open.
“Hey, Parker, about what happened between us yester—” I stopped, the person standing in Parker’s office wasn’t Parker. “—day.” My assistant Akiko was standing in front of Parker’s desk, her black-blue eyes looking out at me from her pair of special thick-framed cat-eyed glasses.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out as I just stood there frozen.
Akiko looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows. “I came to get today’s set of genetic profiles to add to KARA’s database. You know, like you asked me too.”
“Right…” I agreed as I shifted my weight uneasily. It would have been more than easy to just transfer the profiles wirelessly. However, since that would leave KARA potentially vulnerable to infiltration by the Kakodemoss, I had insisted that the data be placed on flash drives and secured in a safe until Akiko or myself personally carted them back to the tech labs. It might have been a little extreme and paranoid, but this time I wasn’t about to take any chances. Not with how easily KARA had been hacked before.
“Um…where’s Parker?” I asked nervously.
“You just missed her, she just headed off to her lab,” Akiko replied as she pulled a collection of flash drives out of a safe next to Parker’s desk. As she straightened back up she asked with a smirk, “So what happened yesterday?”
I just gaped at her, unable to stop the blush spreading across my cheeks. “That’s—cough—personal.”
“I’m sure it was,” she said with a crooked smile as
she pushed the safe door closed. “I’d be careful with that one, she’ll eat you alive,” Akiko advised as she walked past me, still grinning like she found the whole thing unbelievably amusing.
I turned to follow after her. “I’ll have you know, I’m well practiced with that kind of gir—” I stopped mid-step. “Why am I even telling you this?”
“Because you babble when you’re nervous,” she answered with a snort as she walked out of the room.
“I do not!” I called after her indignantly. But she was right and I knew it.
I slumped into the chair that was against the wall, and ran my hands over my face. Maybe I just should have stayed in bed today.
Eventually, I got my nerve up enough again to go talk to Parker and tried to walk through the labs as casually as I could. But I was fairly certain I was sweating bullets.
“Hey, Travis,” Parker greeted me as she eyed me uncertainly, but I really couldn’t blame her. I’d basically been throwing her mixed signals since we’d made out in my room two and a half months ago. One, because I was so frakking confused about everything. Two, because she kinda scared me. And three because, well, I wanted her so very badly.
Parker leaned back over the microscope, her beautiful wavy blond hair twisted up into a bun with a pair of pale blue chopsticks shoved through it. My heart started to beat faster as I watched her, remembering how her hair, her skin, her lips, had felt against my fingers.
“Did you need something? ‘Cause you know you could have just sent Akiko to come get anything you needed,” Parker stated without pulling her eyes from the microscope.
But I like coming here, because then I get to see you, I stopped myself from saying aloud.
“Are you busy?” I asked in an unsteady voice as I shoved my hands into my pockets of my white lab coat, and leaned against the table.
She finally pulled her face away from the microscope, and looked around the lab. “Well, yes actually.”
“Oh,” I said, and couldn’t help the tone of dejection that crept into my voice.
Parker just continued to watch me, waiting for me to either say something or leave.
Just fucking ask her already, you wuss! “Will you go out with me?” I blurted out loudly. Parker seemed more than a little taken aback so I amended it quickly. “To dinner. Will you go out with me to dinner tonight?”
“Like on a date?” she asked cautiously.
“Yeah…” I answered uncertainly as I shifted my weight again.
A shy smile pulled at her lips. “Sure. You can pick me up at seven, okay?”
“Seven is perfect,” I agreed quickly before she had a chance to change her mind.
“Do I have to dress nice for this place we are going to dinner?” Parker asked, the smile spreading across her lips. Lips that I was dying to press mine against.
I looked at her and couldn’t stop myself from tracing her form with my eyes. The slate-gray pencil skirt she was wearing hugged the curve of her legs like a second skin. Really, I would be more than thrilled if she wore what she was wearing to dinner. Or anything really. Or nothing.
I swallowed hard, and took a steadying breath before I said or did something really stupid. “Um…uh…wear whatever you like.”
Dark Places
Tuesday, November 6th
TRAVIS
As I walked past the couch, Patrick leaned over it, and looked at me. “Where you headed?”
“I was going to—” He looked bad—really bad. There was death on the other side of those eyes. The destruction left behind by a raging storm. And I knew I just couldn’t leave him alone. Especially when I saw what he was flipping through on his phone. Pictures. Pictures of him and Nualla. Pictures of him and Nualla at their wedding. And then I noticed the mostly empty bottle of alcohol resting on the floor next to him.
Frak.
“I was going to go get some food,” I half lied.
“Oh,” he said with a heavy sigh.
“Did you want to come?”
He looked at me for a moment and then at the door. And I knew what he was going to say. He was afraid to run into her—Nualla’s doppelgänger who had turned out to be her previously-believed-dead cousin. Kira. So afraid because although she was Nikki’s twin, Kira was nearly a perfect copy of Nualla. And though I didn’t know the whole story, I was also fairly certain he had loved her once. And that the part of Aku that was still inside him might love her still. And now she was living in the same apartment building as us. Three floors below and four doors down. Which was why I had only convinced him to leave the apartment a few times outside of his required assessments with Kiskei.
But what scared me more than his reluctance to leave the apartment was that he hadn’t been drawing. Not one thing in over two months. Which, if it were anyone else, wouldn’t have been so alarming. But with Patrick… Well, he was the type of person who had to compulsively draw nearly every second he was awake. And the fact that he hadn’t picked up a single pencil or pen since the day he woke up in that hospital room terrified me. Because I had absolutely no frakking idea what to do about any of it.
Patrick was in such a dark place. A place I had been myself so many times before. And I knew just how hard it was to claw your way out of it. And I didn’t think he had the will to even try.
“No, I’m not really hungry,” he said as he looked away from me.
“You’ve got to eat something, Patrick,” I pleaded with him. “You look like death warmed over.”
“I feel worse,” he said morosely as he rolled over on his side, and curled into a ball.
I sighed, and ran my hand over my face. “I’m getting pizza.” He didn’t answer. “Chinese?” Still nothing. “Japanese?” He stirred a little and I knew I had him. I leaned against the bookcase the separated the living room from the entryway. “Chicken katsu with rice and extra soy sauce?”
“Fine…” he finally relented with a heavy sigh.
I walked down to the elevator before I called Parker.
“Hey!” she said cheerily into the phone. “I’m running a little late so if you’re already waiting outside my door, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, about that… Um, I can’t make it tonight,” I said as I pushed the Lobby button. And the second the words left my mouth I wanted to kick myself for doing this to her. “Patrick’s…not doing so good. And I think… I think I should stay home with him tonight. I’m really, really, sorry.”
She was quiet for so long I thought she might have hung up on me. “No, it’s okay, I understand,” she finally said in a defeated tone.
“You are so unbelievably awesome,” I breathed into the phone, and I meant it.
“I’m letting you slide this time. But next time, I get to pick the place and activity, and you don’t get to say no.”
“There’s going to be a next time?” I blurted out in complete and utter disbelief. “I’d have thought by now you would have given up on me and gone for someone who was actually worth it.”
“What can I say, I’m stubborn,” Parker said with a huff. “Oh, but by the way, if you cancel on me next time, they will never find your body.”
“Duly noted,” I said with a nervous laugh, because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she was joking.
Hidden Doors
Wednesday, November 7th
PATRICK
Sometime at oh-my-gods early, I threw up the chicken katsu. And the alcohol. And then I just curled up there on the floor, because getting back up just wasn’t worth the effort. And I let my eyes slide shut again.
Sometime after that, I opened my eyes again to see Travis standing in the doorway in a ratty old Firefly t-shirt and gray pajama bottoms.
He walked into the bathroom, and put his back to the wall as he slid down to the floor. “Hey,” he said as he looked down at me.
<
br /> “Hey,” I replied weakly.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked as he draped his arms over his knees.
A time machine. A do over. A blow to the head, the voice said sarcastically.
“Do we have any ginger ale?” I asked as I sat up slowly, my head spinning.
Travis gave me a knowing smirk. “Let me go check the hangover emergency kit.”
The wind whipping across the roof swirled and twisted Kiskei’s hair around like a basket of black snakes. He was standing out in the open, his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat, just staring out at the city. The wind rushed past him, lifting the bottom edges of his coat up into the air behind him like it was a cape. And there was something in the way he was standing that told me that if I wasn’t there, he might have stretched his arms out to the sides and let the coat rise up, unhindered.
I turned my head away from Kiskei and peered through the stained glass down into the temple. Even though I had spent a few months living at The Embassy after I had been shot in the chest, it hadn’t occurred to me that there was roof access. I mean sure, now that I thought about it, of course there had to be for maintenance reasons. But unlike a lot of places at The Embassy—or almost all of it really—I got the distinct impression that this roof didn’t get a lot of foot traffic. Mainly because the door to the roof wasn’t sitting out in the open, and it wasn’t labeled either. It was tucked away at the end of a corridor that was far from impressive.
There were no windows along the corridor; in fact, the only thing that decorated the plain white walls was a single glass case with a fire extinguisher and a few doors labeled Storage.
The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) Page 9
