The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3)

by Alicia Kat Vancil

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, and nodded again.

  We stood there silently in the hallway for a long time before I asked something I hadn’t ever had the courage to bring up before. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? That I look like him.”

  Alex smiled at me weakly. “Only a little,” he admitted and then continued, “His hair was longer.”

  I nodded again, and turned to go.

  “But it also makes me glad.”

  “Glad?” I asked, turning back toward Alex.

  He nodded. “That even though your eyes are Mi’s, I can still see so much of Josh in you. And it reminds me that not everything lost is gone forever.”

  Count Down till Midnight

  Monday, December 31st and Tuesday, January 1st

  TRAVIS

  I leaned against the wall, pretending to sip my cider, and tried to look “festive.” It was really surreal standing among the masses of people decked out in Astari Taharan formal wear as modern music played with traditional instruments filled the huge banquet hall, knowing that any moment now we were going to have to execute a rescue plan I had designed. I should have felt like James Bond. Instead I just felt sick to my stomach with anxious, flesh-eating butterflies.

  “You actually wore it,” Nualla said with a bit of surprise coating her voice as she came to stand next to me.

  I looked down at the Medal of Valor that hung on its blue grosgrain ribbon around my neck. I hadn’t wanted to wear it, but it would have been more than dishonorable not to.

  As I looked back up at her, the déjà vu of the moment hit me full force. Nualla was wearing a deep, midnight-blue dress that blended to a lighter blue at the bottom like drifts of fog sliding over the nighttime city skyline. Silver beads flowing down the dress in lines like falling stars—or tears.

  It was the same dress she had worn last year for Astari Tahara, I was certain of it. Because the moment I had seen her in it was one I would never forget. Because it was the night I had almost proposed to her. Right then and there in the middle of hundreds of people. And that moment colliding with this one threw me off balance in such a way that I almost began to believe that this was a dream. But the absence of those overwhelming feelings for her that had been my constant companion for years made me certain that it wasn’t. It was startling how much our lives had changed in the last year. So much so that they were nearly unrecognizable. That the Travis and Nualla we had been less than twelve months ago were somewhere lost and faraway.

  I shrugged, trying to push away the ghosts of the past. “The gods felt like honoring me, and I felt like not pissing them off.”

  Nualla looked at me with a hint of a real smile that disappeared nearly as fast. Like clouds drifting across the moon.

  “Are you…are you nervous?” she asked in a quiet voice as she leaned against the wall beside me. The beads of her crown clacking into each other with the movement.

  Nualla, along with Loraly and Skye, had been told what we were going to do tonight. That we were planning to cut the power, break into the Kakodemoss facility, and rescue Patrick and Nikki. But we hadn’t told them the details, where the facility was, or anything about what had been done to Patrick and Nikki. One, so they would be believably surprised when it happened. And two, because the things the Kakodemoss had done to them…well, it was something you could never forget once you knew.

  “As hell,” I admitted before I pretended to take a sip of my cider. Normally, in the given social situation I would have been downing the stuff like water, but tonight… Tonight I needed to be ready for anything to go wrong, because it probably would.

  Nualla looked up at me, her eyes glassy and threatening tears. I reached my hand out toward her, and hooked my pinky around hers. “We’ll bring them home—both of them,” I promised, even if I’d have to die to make it so.

  Nualla squeezed my pinky tighter. “You better.”

  NUALLA

  I pressed my fist into my teeth, and held in a sob as I heard someone else enter the bathroom. I should have been completely alone here. I had especially chosen to come here because it was so far from the party. So far that no one would wander in accidentally and hear me crying. But apparently I was wrong.

  I had been okay. Well, as “okay” as anyone could be with their husband and cousin being held in a Kakodemoss facility and probably being experimented on. But then some stupid person had asked where Patrick was. And then it was all I could do to get somewhere private before I broke down.

  The intruder entered the stall next to mine and I held my breath, rethinking my decision to separate myself from everyone. I raised my hands up as silently as I could, and wrapped my fingers around the metal bars of my crown, careful not to bump any of the beads. My crown wasn’t weapon sharp, but it was better than nothing. But then I heard the distinct sound of a garment bag being zipped open, and then a moment later a sparkly dress hit the floor.

  I looked on in rising confusion as the person in the stall next to me slipped on tight black pants, and sleek, sturdy flat-soled boots like the ones the Protectorate wore. Maybe it was a female officer preparing for a late shift? But if that was true, why wasn’t she using the Protectorate locker room?

  I stood statue-still as she continued to change outfits. And several minutes later, she pulled the sparkly dress from the floor and rezipped the garment bag.

  Her stall door banged open, and black boots moved with cat-like silence across the stone floor to the wall of sinks. My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I slowly opened my stall door, peering out.

  A perfect replica of myself stood in front of the long row of sinks and mirrors. She pulled her black and lapis-blue streaked hair into a ponytail, a long black ribbon in her mouth. As she held the fistful of hair in one hand and pulled the ribbon from her mouth with the other, Kira finally noticed me watching her. She paused for only a second before she pulled the black ribbon tight.

  Kira was dressed from head to toe in a Protectorate uniform. Flat-soled, black knee-high boots, tight black pants, a black kimono top, and long black undersleeves, the unusual sheen of the SteelSilk fabric making the outfit look strangely beautiful on her. But it was the parts that weren’t Protectorate standard issue—the wide hood, the black obi sash around her waist, and the cuirass adorned with an intricately embroidered dark gray lotus on it—that reminded me immediately of—

  “You’re an Amurai,” I blurted out in shock. But of course she was, and of course she was one of the ones going on the rescue mission tonight. Because she was the only one who had been there before. Because she had been one of the Kakodemoss’ test subjects.

  Completely ignoring me, Kira flipped the large hood over her head and reached for the garment bag. Flinging it over her arm, she turned and started toward the bathroom door without acknowledging me whatsoever.

  I rushed quickly forward, and grabbed her wrist. She whipped back toward me, and glared at me with angry, guarded eyes. “What?” she spat out, her chin jerking up a tiny bit as she said it.

  I looked down at our hands, running my teeth over my bottom lip, and then I looked back up at her. “Please, bring him home.”

  Kira’s expression seemed to soften and harden at the same time, and I released my hold on her wrist. “I will do my best, Arius.”

  She started toward the exit again and I called out, “Nualla.”

  “What?” Kira said, turning back to look at me.

  “Please, call me Nualla,” I clarified.

  Kira looked at me for one silent moment before she nodded. “Okay, Nualla.”

  TRAVIS

  I was going to do it. I was going to ask her, and I didn’t care if everyone and the gods was staring at me while I did it.

  Without actually thinking about it, I downed the glass of cider I had been pretending to drink all night, and started toward Parke
r. She and Skye were about a hundred feet away, talking to a few Karalian officials and trying their best to seem cheerful. But I only made it about ten or fifteen feet when I felt someone tugging on the sleeve of my Astari Tahara haori. I looked back and was startled to see Chan-rin standing there.

  “Chan-rin! What are you doing here?” Ms. Cowens had taken the children back to the orphanage over twenty minutes ago, and Chan-rin had been among them.

  She didn’t answer, just handed me a piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” I asked as I looked down at the folded slip of paper.

  “Key,” she answered.

  “A key?” I repeated in confusion.

  “For the doors.”

  “What doors?” I asked with growing concern.

  Chan-rin looked terrified, but also very determined. “The doors in the bad place.”

  My heart shuddered and skipped a beat. It was a trap—a safe guard. The Kakodemoss had rigged the building to be impenetrable even if the power was cut. Of course they had. If we had gone forward with the plan they still would have been alerted—we all would still have died.

  I swallowed hard. “Chan-rin, where did you get this?”

  “From Aku,” she replied as she stared up at me with large eyes.

  “Is this how you escaped?” I asked as I held up the folded piece of paper. It was stupid, we had asked her so many things about where she had come from, and what it was like there. But as far as I knew no one had asked her how she had escaped.

  Chan-rin nodded.

  “Thank you for warning us. They will have changed the code since then, so this is useless now, but thank you for telling me. Now at least I won’t be sending them all to their death.”

  Chan-rin furrowed her brow. “Aku did not give this to Chan-rin before.”

  “What?”

  “Aku gave this to Chan-rin and Chan-rin came here to Big-Big Brother.”

  I froze, my heart screeching to a halt. “You can still talk to Aku?”

  Chan-rin nodded. “Chan-rin has to…concentrate, but Chan-rin can hear Aku, if Aku is very loud.”

  I just looked at her, and then at the passcode on the paper, then back toward where I had been going. Parker was nowhere to be seen, but Skye was still there.

  “Chan-rin, I need you to wait right here.”

  “Ah, Director Centrina Viliyata,” Jordan Vass, one of the council members on the new Grand Council, said with a slight bow of his head.

  “Pardon me, but I need to borrow Kyria Skye for a moment,” I replied with what I hoped was a reassuring smile plastered on my face.

  “Yes, of course,” Councilor Vass said with a grin before he turned to an exotic woman in a brilliant blue sari standing next him and answered her question in Daemotic.

  Skye let me lead her a short distance away before she asked in a low voice, “What do you need, Travis?” Then she looked like she was about to have a heart attack. “Oh gods, has something happened?”

  “No, not yet,” I said quickly before she jumped to any conclusions.

  “Then what—?”

  “I need you to watch Chan-rin for me.”

  Skye blinked at me in confusion. “What?”

  “Please, all you have to do is keep her with you until this is all over,” I said, darting a glance at the large clock on the wall across from us before I looked back at her. It was almost time for us to head out.

  Skye looked over at Chan-rin where she sat at a table folding silver strips of paper into stars.

  “It will really help me concentrate if I don’t have to be worrying about her, too.”

  Skye looked back at me, and nodded once. And then she did one of the last things I was expecting—she threw her arms around me and hugged me fiercely. “You bring them home,” she whispered, nearly in tears, into my ear.

  “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure they do,” I promised.

  Skye squeezed me a little tighter. “And don’t do something stupid to get yourself killed in the process.” It was such a motherly thing to say that it stung just a bit.

  “I’ll do my best,” I said around the lump in my throat.

  Skye pulled away, and then narrowed her eyes at me. “And there’s one more thing.”

  “Which is?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

  “If you don’t ask that girl to marry you, I will never forgive you.”

  I just blinked at her. “What?”

  Skye shifted her eyes to either side before she looked back at me. “I know she’s pregnant, and I was under the assumption that it was yours.”

  I couldn’t help it as my jaw fell open. “How did you—?”

  Skye gave me a don’t-be-stupid look.

  “Right…of course…um, I was already planning on it,” I babbled as my hand went unconsciously toward the ring in my haori pocket. “There just hasn’t been a good time to…”

  Skye let out an exhausted sigh, and looked off across the dance floor. “There never is. But a bad time is better than never getting a chance to.”

  “Where’s your uniform?” I asked Kiskei as I followed him into the elevator on our way down to the garage level. Though I had spent every spare moment I had looking for Parker after I talked to Skye, I hadn’t found her before Kiskei found me.

  “As far as the Empire knows I am not, nor have I ever been, part of the Protectorate. So mine is in the Bus, along with Parker’s, Akiko’s, and yours,” Kiskei answered as he pushed the G on the elevator wall panel.

  “Mine?” I said in confusion. “You can’t seriously be thinking of sending me in—”

  Kiskei huffed out a sigh. “Of course not. But I’m also not going to leave the two of you in the Bus unprotected.”

  I just stared at him. “I thought that’s why you were leaving Shawn with us.”

  “In case Shawn’s not there,” Kiskei stated as he shifted his eyes sideways toward me.

  “You’re expecting him to disobey orders,” I said in surprise.

  “No, but I’m not betting against it, either,” he replied as he slipped his hands back into his haori pockets. The silver stars embroidered on the bottom of the dark blue fabric shimmering when they caught the light.

  The elevator dinged and slid open, and Kiskei stepped out into the harsh light of the overhead LEDs.

  As I followed after him, something occurred to me that made my heart skip a beat. “Wait, you said the two of us?” Had Parker told him?

  “Yes, you and Akiko,” Kiskei called over his shoulder.

  “Oh. Right.” So she hadn’t told him.

  I continued to follow Kiskei as he made his way toward a large black tour bus that was alongside a few others. “Kiskei, there’s something I need to tell you about—” He paused next to one of the big black buses and looked back at me, and I lost my nerve. “—there’s a security code on the doors.”

  Kiskei nodded as if he had expected it. “That is why you are blowing the power.”

  “No, I mean one that won’t go down when the power does,” I clarified and his mouth dipped into a frown. “But I have the code. I just wanted you to be aware that there might be more traps,” I said quickly in case he was considering abandoning the plan.

  “The thing you have to understand about me, Travis, is that I always expect it to be a trap,” Kiskei said before he pulled the door of the black tour bus, and held it open for me.

  I walked up the steps in front of him, and realized that we were the last to arrive. And that “the Bus” was most definitely not your standard issue SF tour bus. I mean sure, it had a few seats along one side, but it also had a state-of-the-art computer station, a weapons wall, and a uniform rack.

  I turned back, and glared at Kiskei. “This is not a bus.”

  An amused sm
irk spread across his lips. “Of course it is,” he said as he passed me by. “On the outside.”

  NUALLA

  “Five…four…three…two…!”

  As everyone cheered I held my breath, blinking back the tears, a strained smile plastered to my face. It was hard to be cheerful when the people who meant the most to me could be dead by morning.

  Someone put a hand on my shoulder, and I turned, just as there was a loud voom noise and the banquet hall rolled into blackness. My heart squeezed in panic for a moment before I realized that this was just Travis’ plan launching into action.

  “How are you holding up?” Alex asked with an amused smirk as he looked around the darkened room.

  “If I have to keep pretending like everything is fine, I might just lose it,” I admitted flatly. “I hate this—this standing around and waiting to see if—” I couldn’t finish.

  “I’m not too fond of it either,” my dad agreed with a slight frown.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” I said with a heavy sigh as I looked at the Protectorate that had stepped in to assure guests that we were not under attack.

  “It isn’t easy, and it never will be. But you’ll learn to do it well, just like every Galathea that has come before you.”

  “But why? Why does putting on a brave face matter so damn much?”

  Alex considered this for a long time before he answered. “Because your courage in the face of insurmountable odds gives others the strength they need to carry on.”

  “So basically you’re saying we’re the only thing keeping the region from burning itself to the ground?” I asked with an ironic smile as the backup generator kicked in.

  Alex barked out a short laugh. “Yes, I guess we are.”