“Who was your Amurai Protectorate before,” I asked with narrowed eyes.
“Josh acted as our primary Amurai Protectorate, mainly because his skills in that field were unmatched,” Kiskei answered without flinching. “However, I’d prefer to keep the roles of Amurai and Amurai Protectorate separate if you don’t mind,” Kiskei finished with an edge to his voice.
“Unfortunately, even though we are there to rescue them, we will have to treat all the test subjects as a potential threat. Even if they seem compliant, do not arm them, we don’t know when they could be switched back on. However, do not, under any circumstances, use deadly force—that’s what your TranqGuns are for,” Kiskei informed the group in a loud, clear voice.
After a few brief introductions, he had launched directly into bringing everyone up to speed on the situation. And throughout the whole thing I tried to catch Parker’s eye. But she seemed bound and determined not to look at me. That, and the fact that she stood as far away from me as was possible, really sent a clear message: I hate you a lot right now, and I might just punch you if you talk to me.
“Sadly, this goes for Patrick and Nikkalla as well,” Kiskei finished with a heavy sigh.
“What?” Shawn said suddenly, the first word he had said since we’d entered the room, really.
Kiskei raised his eyes at me, and gestured to Shawn with a jerk of his head. I just looked at him in disbelief—so he was going to make me tell Shawn about Nikki. Well, that was just frakking perfect.
I took a deep breath, and turned to Shawn. “According to the files, they have already inducted Patrick and Nikki into the program.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Shawn asked with an edge to his voice.
I swallowed hard. “They’ve been chipped, and they could be forced to turn on us at a second’s notice.”
Shawn looked like he was about to be sick.
“Which is precisely why I’m not sending you in, Shawn,” Kiskei stated with that annoying emotionless calm of his.
Shawn whipped around to face Kiskei. “Excuse me?”
“I’m assigning you to guarding the Bus.”
Shawn took a few steps closer as he stated, “If you think I’m just going to sit out while my—”
“That’s exactly what I think you are going to do, Shawn Vallen,” Kiskei countered firmly. “I am your kaptaya, and I’m assigning you to guard the Bus.”
“Oh come on, Kaptaya, it’s clear she’s his One,” Simon tried to reason with Kiskei as he came over the join them.
“That is precisely why I’m not sending him in,” Kiskei stated as he turned to Simon. Clearly unaffected by either of their pleas. “He’s going to be distracted knowing she’s in there, and being distracted gets people killed.”
At that, the room drifted to a deadly quiet which was broken a moment or two later by the creak of a floorboard and a thick Kaigan Midorain accent. “You guys started without me?”
We all turned our heads quickly in his direction. It was Damian. He looked a bit like death warmed over, but at least he was standing.
“What are ya doing here?” James asked as he stormed across the room toward his brother.
“Same as you,” Damian said with a smirk, clearly amused with how angry his brother was.
“Damian, ya were bound for the pyre!” James pointed out indignantly.
“Pssh, for a mere five tics of the clock,” Damian replied shrugging it off.
“It was five minutes, Damian. You were dead for five bloody minutes!” his brother shouted at him furiously.
“Well I ain’t now, so lay off me,” Damian said dismissively.
He had died? He had died trying to protect my brother…and he was back for more? I just stared at Damian in disbelief, trying to decided if he was unbelievably reckless, or just brave. Or both.
“Did they clear you to return to duty?” Kiskei asked, interrupting their brotherly argument.
“I may or may not have beguiled a nurse into releasing me early,” he admitted unapologetically.
“Oh, really?” Kiskei said as he folded his arms, and arched an eyebrow.
“She seemed deadly willing to let me prove I was in a fit state,” Damian said with a mischievous crooked grin as he leaned against the wall, and folded his arms easily.
My eyebrows shot up, and my mouth kinda fell open when I realized exactly what he was insinuating.
“So what’s the plan, Kaptaya?” Damian asked, and when we all just stared blankly at him his smile grew. “You lot didn’t think I’d leave ya to have all the fun, did ya?”
“Okay people, over the next few days you need to be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice if a window of opportunity presents itself,” Kiskei stated as everyone started to move toward the exit.
I hurried to catch up with Parker as she walked out of the room.
“Parker!” I called out to her as we left the temple, but she ignored me.
“Parker, please just listen to me,” I pleaded as I ran after her.
“Parker, we need to talk about—”
She whipped back around to glare at me, silencing my words. “Yes?” she asked harshly, arching her eyebrows.
I reached out for her, but the look in her eyes made me pause. I returned my hands to my jacket pockets, the circle of metal and chain bumping up against my fingers. “You can’t go on the mission,” I answered in a low voice so no one but her would hear me.
“Why the bloody hell not?” Parker snapped defiantly, her British accent becoming more prominent as it always did when she was angry.
I darted my eyes back to the temple doors, but no one was there. “You know why,” I said, taking a step closer, my eyes dropping to her belly.
Her head jerked back, her eyes widening. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“No, you’re right, I wouldn’t,” I agreed. “But you can’t seriously be thinking of going on this mission in your current condition.”
Parker’s eyes filled with fire, and she stood taller. “I may be a woman, but I’m Amurai and I will do my duty,” Parker growled dangerously before she turned on her heel, and stormed off.
“Parker!” I called out as the door slammed behind her.
Oh this is a frakkin’ disaster.
I turned around and stopped dead, Kiskei was standing in the doorway of the temple.
I swallowed hard. This was probably about to go from fucking terrible to potentially deadly. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to know that my daughter is currently pissed off at you for some reason,” Kiskei replied with narrowed eyes.
I let out a heavy breath. He didn’t know.
“Well don’t pretend like you aren’t happy,” I stated sourly as I folded my arms, and scowled at the water.
“I’m not,” he countered as he moved toward me. “As much as I hate to admit it, Parker apparently loves you.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, looking up at him sharply.
Kiskei gave me an unbelievably dubious look. “A child could see that.”
We continued to glare at each other until Kiskei finally sighed. He put a hand on my shoulder briefly before he passed me by. “Whatever you did, fix it. Because not everyone gets a second chance.”
As I followed him out to the car I should have told him Parker was pregnant. That she shouldn’t be about to walk into a deadly battle, because she was no longer risking only her life. But I just couldn’t get the words past my lips. Because somehow telling Kiskei felt like a betrayal of her trust. And that was just something I wasn’t willing to do.
Not Everything Lost is Gone Forever
Saturday, December 29th
TRAVIS
Fifteen frakking blocks. The Kakodemoss facility was less than fifteen city block
s from The Embassy. To know they were so close this whole time made my stomach churn. That, and the fact that so much evil had come from a nondescript seven-story gray building.
I looked at the clock in the right bottom corner of my monitor. We had been at this for about twenty-four hours and we still weren’t any closer to coming up with a plan that wasn’t going to get most of us killed in the process. Storm the facility. Dead. Cut the power to disable the doors and cameras and probably alert the Kakodemoss. Dead. There had to be a way to get our people in there that wouldn’t get them slaughtered. I just had absolutely no frakking clue what it was, and we were running out of time.
I ran my hands down my face, groaning in exhaustion. Gods, it’s already eleven o’clock. Then I froze as I looked at the date just below the clock on my screen.
12/29
I sat up quickly. “Akiko, is it really the twenty-ninth?”
“Last time I checked,” Akiko answered with disinterest, apparently too exhausted for sarcasm.
I just burst out laughing. I had it—a way to do this without us being massacred. Akiko just looked up at me like she was afraid I might have finally cracked. “Travis, are you okay?”
“It’s perfect,” I said, still unable to get my hysterical laughter under control.
“What’s perfect?”
I turned to her with a manic, sleep-deprived grin plastered across my face. “I know how we are going to get into the facility without dying!”
“Travis, what are you going to do?” Akiko asked uneasily.
“I’m going to rig the whole section of the city surrounding the Kakodemoss facility to blow the power grid at midnight on New Year’s.”
Akiko just blinked at me. “What?”
“Just think about it, with all the parties raging that night, the Kakodemoss won’t suspect us to be up to anything. Especially if we’re throwing our own Astari Tahara celebration at The Embassy.”
Akiko just gaped at me before stating, “You know something, you really are just a step away from being a menace to society.”
“People have been telling me that for years,” I said with a slightly unhinged grin before I raced out the door.
AKU
I opened my eyes. My head was pounding, and I didn’t know how long I had been out. It could have been moments, or days. I blinked my eyes a few times, and realized I was laying on the floor of my room. The cold linoleum pressed to my cheek. And then I noticed something carved into the wall under my utilitarian twin bed.
8+6=14
And below that familiar message was something new.
Don’t forget who you are.
Who… I—? A blinding surge of pain like a lightning strike ripped through my mind, and I clutched my head between my hands, curling into a ball. It hurt so bad, worse than anything I had ever felt in my life. So painful I saw black, and then white, and then red.
Let me out! a voice in my head screamed. A voice that sounded like my own.
The pain surged again, and I curled tighter into a fetal position. I was going to be sick. I held my body rigid, trying to fight against the pain. But it was too much—much too much. And finally it won out. I let go in a tormented whimper and gave in to the pain. And everything went black.
PATRICK
I heard a whooshing sound that got progressively louder. And a few moments after that, I realized that it was my own heartbeat I was hearing.
I sat up slowly—breathing hard, black dots still flashing across my eyes. I rubbed the back of my skull as I looked around the small room I was in. There was something unsettlingly familiar about it, which probably meant—
Aku? I felt a little stupid calling out within my own head to myself, but being alone would be worse.
Yes? Aku replied uncertainly.
Where are we? Maybe I should have said where am I, but it just felt too weird. Really this whole thing was strange enough as it was.
We are in our room at the Demoss facility, he answered in a voice that sounded unbelievably tired.
I looked around the tiny room in alarm. Seriously?
Unfortunately, he replied, not sounding any more happy about it than I was.
Do you know how to get out? I asked, the panic running rampant through my body.
He paused for a very long moment. So long I thought that maybe he had been a figment of my pain-addled imagination. Maybe.
So how do we get out? I asked as I looked down at what I was wearing. White exercise pants, a white and black raglan long-sleeved shirt, simple white shoes, and long white gloves. Same as what Chan-rin had been wearing when she ran into me at The Embassy, except for the gloves.
We need someone to open the doors.
I looked away from the white gloves and at the door to my cell skeptically. And how do you suppose we do that? Or do you have a magic skeleton key lying around somewhere that I don’t know about?
There was a short pause and I might have been mistaken, but I was fairly certain Aku was laughing.
TRAVIS
I pulled up to the gate in a ridiculously good mood considering Parker still wasn’t answering my calls, and my little brother was being held captive and experimented on in a Kakodemoss facility. Probably mainly due to the fact that I always got a bit of a high from solving a complicated problem. Or the fact that I had had next to no sleep since Christmas Eve.
As the Protectorate officer walked out of the gate house and up to my Porsche, I rolled down my window.
“Director Centrina Viliyata,” the Protectorate breathed, a bit taken aback.
“Is the Chancellarius here?” I asked as I beat a cheerful rhythm on my steering wheel.
“Yes,” he replied, looking a bit uneasy at the huge grin on my face. “He, Grand High Councilor Vallen, and Director Kirihara are inside.”
“Perfect.”
The Protectorate just continued to stand there.
“Were you going to let me in?” I asked as I stopped drumming, and arched an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, uh, right away, Sir.”
I took the stairs two at a time and darted down the hallway until I was just outside Alex’s study. Then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pushed the door open.
The three of them—Alex, Roy, and Kiskei—all turned to look at me in alarm. The concerned look on their faces not disappearing when they noticed the large grin on my face, and the wild look in my eyes.
“I figured out a way to rescue them without us all winding up dead,” I informed them excitedly.
Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, really?”
“Yep,” I replied, my grin getting even larger if that was possible. “I need you to throw the biggest Astari Tahara celebration Karalia has ever seen.”
As I finished explaining my plan, Alex, Roy, and Kiskei just stared at me, their mouths hanging open.
“When I asked you to figure out a way to get our people in, this was not what I had in mind,” Kiskei said as he ran his hand across the back of his neck.
“Well I—”
“This is far better,” he said with a grin.
Alex stood abruptly, and started pacing his study. He stopped, and held up his finger like he was going to say something. But instead he looked back down, and continued pacing. Then he stopped again, his hands coming up to his mouth. He turned quickly, his eyes wide, and slowly lowered his hands. “Travis, if this works, I’m going to have to think up a new honor to award you.”
“Please, don’t. I can’t even really manage the one I’ve got,” I sighed with exhaustion. Anytime I tried to explain just how heavily the honor weighed on me, no one except Nualla seemed to get it.
“Besides, there’s only one honor I want, and you can’t give it to me,” I mumbled as I looked away from him. Fingering the small piece of ci
rcular metal, and chain in my coat pocket.
“What?” Alex asked in confusion.
“Never mind,” I said with a sigh as I looked back at them. “Look, do you mind if I make use of that guest room again? I’ve been up for over thirty-six hours straight, and I’m not positive that I could make it back home without causing an accident.”
“Of course.”
“That’s probably also my cue to go. I have to prep the Amurai for the amended mission. And some of them are not going to be too happy about it,” Kiskei announced as he stood.
He walked over to Alex and gave him a hug, whispering something to him as he did. Then he pulled away, and looked over in my direction. “Keep your phone close, I may need you to answer a few questions.”
“At least give me six hours, that’s all I’m asking,” I groaned.
“I can do six, more might be pushing it,” he said, a small crooked grin tugged at his lips before he walked out of the room.
I followed Kiskei out the door shortly after that, on my way to some much-needed sleep.
“Travis—” Alex called out when I had made it halfway down the hall. I stopped, and turned to look at him. “Now that you know the whole story, do you understand why I always had to keep you at a distance?”
I did. Really I did. I had always been so bitter about growing up in the orphanage. But now that I knew the truth, I finally understood why it had been necessary. It had been to keep them safe. To keep me safe.
I nodded.
“And…” Alex looked away for a moment before looking back at me. “I want you to know that no matter what happens, you are part of our family, now and always.”
The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) Page 34
