by Sara King
That can’t be real, she thought. This is a lie.
But then her eyes were drawn to one final picture, one pinned half-hidden under the rest. It showed an odd device inside Orion’s chest, something that caught her eye, made her stop and frown and look again, her heart beginning to pound wildly out of control…
“Hey!” Patrick said, “I just found a key under the mat, here!”
“No don’t!” Natalia cried. “The door’s trapped!” She quickly went over to the drawing of Orion and the object in his chest. She’d seen that technology before, embedded in the chest of Emperor Giu Xi Triton III.
“Oh you fucking bastard,” she whispered, her fingers tightening into a fist over the picture in her hand. She dropped it to the ground and ripped the picture of Orion off the wall, her hands shaking with rage. “You bastard!” she screamed.
“I’m coming!” Patrick cried. “Just a second!”
“No!” Natalia screamed, drawing Ootaka Sama out of reflex. The room flared with the crimson glow of her blade. She was shaking all over, unsure who to trust, where to turn, desperate to see the rest, yet terrified of someone else seeing the same…
Then, before Natalia was ready, she heard the key cylinder slide into its receptacle and the door popped open. Patrick ducked his head inside and gasped. “Hello?”
Instantly, horrified by what Patrick would see—and what Orion would see after him—the connections they both would make, Natalia activated Ootaka and swiped her through the room, putting as much power through the superconducting metal as she could, exhausting herself as it ripped the pictures from the walls and shredded them in a rush of chaotic, crackling red energy. Then, her systems failing from the sudden drain, Natalia cried out and fell to her knees in the rush of paper particles suddenly drifting down from the walls, somehow finding the presence of mind to return her sword to its sheath as she collapsed.
He’s killing them, she thought, as she shivered on the floor. He took the device and he’s killing them…
“Listen, you drooling old man,” Patrick snapped, “I am this close to leaving you in the fucking jungle. You hear me?!”
Wideman had gone quiet, peering up at Patrick with something akin to…irritation? Probably because Patrick had thrown his zucchini across the room when, after trying to shoot Natalia in the back, Wideman had simply sat back down and pulled out a vegetable to carve on.
“You almost killed her,” Patrick yelled. Never in his life had he wanted to hit someone as badly as right now. His entire life, he had been the one given babysitting duties. He’d been forced to listen—and take notes—to Wideman’s incoherent babblings. He’d been tasked with making sure he didn’t run into traffic or slice on a random stranger girl. He’d been the one who got yelled at if Wideman ever ran out of vegetables. He’d been the one changing the bastard’s diapers. His whole life, David Landborn seemed to delight in telling Patrick he was nothing but a glorified babysitter for a demented idiot. You’re not a warrior. Wake up and stop acting like a fucking sheep. The only reason we’re letting you stay is because of your brother. You think an artist is going to win this war? It’s gonna be guys like your brother who save the human race. You’re just support squad…if you even make the cut.
“You are this close,” Patrick whispered in rage. He held up a hand and showed Wideman the tiny space between thumb and forefinger. “This close.”
But, instead of Wideman just kowtowing and going back to babbling, like he usually did when someone yelled at him, Wideman shouted, “Burns, Patty. Guns burn.” He slapped his side.
Patrick frowned, then glanced back at Natalia. He’d thought he’d seen her get hit.
Except Natalia was no longer there. The door was closed, but Natalia was gone.
Wideman slipped into another crazy burst of laughter and started nodding and slamming his balled fists on the rock walls like he’d just seen something utterly fucking hilarious.
Disgusted, Patrick left him there and went over to the wall. “Hey, Natalia!” he called, leaning his ear against the stone. “You okay?! I saw you get hit!”
“I’m fine,” Natalia called, sounding almost rushed. “It missed me.”
Patrick hesitated. “You sure? I was pretty sure I saw it burn a hole through your pants!”
“Just the pants,” Natalia said, sounding rushed, almost sounding like he was harassing her. “I’m fine!”
Patrick frowned and glanced back at his father.
The creep had stopped laughing and was back to examining the contents of the gun crate.
“Damn it!” he cried, as he rushed back to stop him. “No touch!” He yanked the smaller man away from the guns and shoved him back across the cave again, forcibly shoving him onto his ass in a corner. “You stay there, or I’m gonna go find that zucchini and shove it down your goddamn throat, okay Dad?”
“Zucchiniiiiiiiiiiiieeeeee!” Wideman screamed, the last ending in a shrill giggle that left Patrick’s spine tightening with pent-up frustration and rage.
“You know what?” he said softly, “I’m not your babysitter. I don’t care if you blew your load in my mom. You mean nothing to me.”
Wideman grinned and nodded, mouth open, eyes wide with insanity.
“I hate you,” Patrick whispered, so enraged he could barely speak. “My entire life, I’ve been babysitting you, wiping up your messes, cleaning your damned diapers, pampering a lunatic, yet everybody sees you as a hundred times more important than me. But you’re just nuts—and I’d fucking know. I’m the only one who’s been willing to put up with your shit.”
Wideman continued to nod.
Patrick narrowed his eyes. “You know what, Dad?”
His demented father kept nodding.
“I’m done.” Patrick went over, yanked a gun out of the crate, then grabbed his father by the front of his shirt and yanked him onto his feet. Then, as Wideman stumbled, he hauled him to the front of the cave and shoved the gun into his hands. “You wanna go shoot yourself, you go afuckinghead and do it.” He shoved him towards the jungle. “Go!”
Wideman sobered a bit, and looked up at Patrick like he was sorry. He tried to drop the gun.
“Oh no,” Patrick said, laughing with rage, “you wanted it so bad, you’re keeping it.” He rammed it back into Wideman’s arms and shoved him toward the jungle again, this time violently. “Get out of here!”
Wideman stumbled a few more feet, totally sober now. He gave Patrick a curious look, then glanced down, and bent to pick up the zucchini that Patrick had hurled out the front of the cave. His scrawny body bent, he grabbed it, and then offered it up to Patrick like some sort of apology.
Patrick slapped it out of his hand and shoved him again. “Go, you little creep. I’m done wiping your ass for you. Go see if you can find Milar.”
Wideman perked up a bit. “Miles?”
“Yes,” Patrick said, nodding emphatically, “go find Miles, Pop.” He gestured at the jungle.
Wideman gave the jungle an uncertain look, probably trying to figure out how hard it would be to find Milar in there and rat Patrick out for yelling at him—if the old fart even had enough synapses to fire for that.
After a moment, though, Wideman seemed to straighten, taking the gun firmly in his hands like a fresh recruit. Spine rigid, he started marching his tiny body off into the forest as jungle animals called around him.
Patrick watched him go a few minutes, feeling guilty, but remarkably little aside from that. Knowing he’d just have to go find the little prick later, he shook his head in disgust and turned back to the cave to find Natalia.
After quickly determining she hadn’t gone wandering to other parts of the cave, he went back to the rock wall of David’s secret room. He got down and put his ear to the crack in the floor, and heard the unmistakable sound of paper shuffling.
“Hey, the door locked behind you!” Patrick called, getting to his feet. “Can you let me in?”
“Hold on, I’m looking for a latch!” Natalia called
back, though she seemed distracted by something.
Frowning, Patrick went looking for a way in. He checked the two recesses on either side of the door—the ones that held candles when David was feeling generous enough to provide them—for hinges, then ran his hands along the recessed stone lip above the door, one that had been carved irregularly in order to hide the fact it was an artificial construction.
Finding nothing, he stepped off the rug—a thin mat of woven grasses that grew along one of the ponds nearby that he and Magali had made in their youth to avoid the war games—and kicked it aside.
A glossy black peg lay in a recessed crack someone had carved in the stone floor to hold it.
“Hey!” Patrick said, stooping to pick it up, “I just found a key under the mat, here!”
“No don’t!” Natalia cried, sounding panicked. “The door’s trapped!”
Patrick frowned, pulling away from it. “Trapped how?” he called.
He got no response.
“Natalia?” he called, leaning in to listen again.
“Oh you fucking bastard,” he heard her say softly. “You bastard!” she screamed.
It was that scream that jolted him into action. “I’m coming!” Patrick cried. “Just a second!”
“No!” It was a high-pitched, terrified sound.
Realizing she was probably trapped in there with somebody, Patrick stuck the peg in the lock and pushed.
As soon as the door was open, Patrick froze.
The walls of the room were covered in drawings.
But not just any drawings. His drawings. Thousands of them. Patrick, having only remembered drawing a handful, forgot to breathe. One in the center back drew his eyes—a picture of a Nephyr talking to four others hunched around a stainless steel operating table bearing a moldy, shredded zucchini. The lead Nephyr had red and black dragons scrawled across the energy-barrier of his chest, mirror-opposite to Milar’s, and was hunched forward, looking down at the squash. It was the dragons that caught Patrick’s eyes, but it was the face that made his heart stop. As his eyes fell upon his own image, Patrick remembered.
“You should be more like your brother. At least he doesn’t pull creepy shit like this!” Patrick had been staring off into space when David had said that, a colored pencil still fisted in a white-knuckled hand. Slowly, he had turned to look at Landborn. David had a picture of a Cobrani in his hand, one that Patrick didn’t remember drawing. David looked scared. He had fisted the picture in his big hand and shook it under Patrick’s nose. “You shouldn’t have this. No one should have this.”
In that moment, Patrick remembered the numb fugue that had followed every episode, remembered just staring back at David Landborn in a stupor. He remembered hearing himself say, “My son is more dangerous than you will ever be, David. Be gentle with him, or you, above all, will regret it.”
Landborn had hit him, then, breaking Patrick’s jaw and sending the pencil set flying across the room to shatter against the walls. Nearby, as Patrick sobbed on the floor, holding in his own teeth, Wideman Joe went into a seizure, white foam frothing from the corners of his mouth.
The present came crashing back to him when the room exploded in what looked like a crackling, electric tornado of crimson energy, knocking him backwards as everything inside exploded into a suffocating mass of whirling, shredded paper.
“What was that?!” Patrick cried, heart hammering with the knowledge that the explosion had been created by a technology he’d never seen before.
“A trap,” Natalia croaked. She was curled in on herself on the floor, having fallen into a fetal position.
Instantly, Patrick felt ashamed for rushing in without thinking. The strange surge of energy had grabbed and shredded parts of his leather jacket, but whatever it had been, she’d been standing in the middle of it. “Sorry!” he cried, rushing to drop beside her. Her own leather clothes were likewise shredded, but he couldn’t see any visible evidence of wounds. “You okay? You need a doctor?”
She just shook her head, panting. “Just had the wind knocked outta me. You…” she looked up at him, appearing weaker than he’d ever seen her before, “…see what was in here?” She grabbed him then, and Patrick got sudden, odd tingles up his arm, almost like a static shock that connected them.
“Pictures,” Patrick said, frowning down at her hand where it grasped him like a vise. “All those pictures I used to draw. Guess this is where Landborn was keeping them.”
“Why’d…” Natalia swallowed again, “you stop?” Her hand was still gripping his arm, and Patrick had the odd feeling it wasn’t for stability. He was getting goosebumps up and down the left side of his body—the side closest to her—and he had the weirdest urge to yank himself away and rub his arms.
Then Patrick remembered the time Landborn had broken his jaw and his face darkened. “David had issues with it.” He remembered, after Landborn’s wife had helped him reset his jaw with nanos, taking his colored pencils outside and burning them while Milar watched. A few days later, while Patrick had been delegated to the kitchen to make dinner for the ‘warriors,’ Wideman had offered him his very first mangled carrot…and he’d gone into a fugue of a different kind.
Natalia’s brown eyes sharpened, and the weird tingle where she touched him increased. “Where is Wideman?”
Patrick froze, remembering sending the old man off into the jungle to die. Oh crap. He cleared his throat. “Look, if you’re okay, I’ve gotta go find my father,” Patrick said, realizing his father could easily have made it across the continent by now.
“Okay, go,” she said, releasing his arm as if she had actually been dictating his actions. “He’s probably still looking for Miles.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said, already feeling bad for losing his cool. “Shit.” He jumped up and went looking for him.
Patrick was already out of the cave and searching the jungle for his father when he realized he’d never actually mentioned sending Wideman after Miles to Natalia. He was frowning and turning back to find her when a Nephyr stepped out of the woods in front of him, surrounded by four of his friends.
“Hello, beautiful,” the Nephyr said, grinning as they fanned out around him. The cyborg cocked his head with a curious frown. “Where’s the drooling twit?”
“I offed the old man,” Natalia said, joining them in the jungle. Patrick’s world came to a halt when he saw her come to a halt with the Nephyrs, no fear on her face whatsoever. Natalia gave Patrick a cold look. “The gibbering idiot shot me.” She showed the Nephyrs the burn in her pants leg.
“What about the beacon?” A big man asked from behind the Nephyrs, tall and blond and oozing old confidence.
“It wasn’t here,” Natalia said, holding Patrick’s gaze. “The whole thing was just a training area and weapons stash.”
The big man seemed amused. “Mind if I look for myself? Considering your…” He lazily looked Natalia up and down. “…history?”
“Go for it.” Natalia was still holding Patrick’s gaze as he stood there in horror. “Don’t got anything to hide.”
Grunting a laugh, the man turned to give Patrick an appraising look…and changed. His skin color shifted, his eyes shifted placement, his hair fell out, parted, and regrew. In less than twenty seconds, Patrick found himself looking at…himself.
“I’ll be back in ten,” the man said, behind Patrick’s face, using Patrick’s voice. Then he turned and casually walked past Patrick, back towards the cavern he had left behind. “Get him on the ship. We’ve got plans for him.”
Four Nephyrs stepped forward, two of them taking Patrick by the arms. “Let’s go, sonny,” one of them chuckled. “You got a date with the humidifier.”
As Patrick’s heart was starting to pound, Natalia glanced at where the man wearing Patrick’s holograph disappeared, then stepped forward and touched his shoulder. “Remember who you are,” she said softly.
Then the Nephyrs were yanking him away, towards his destiny.
CHAPTER 21: Sibl
ing Rivalry
24th of May, 3006
Smuggler’s Run
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Magali was seated outside their ship at yet another quick, on-the-go fuel-stop at a tiny illegal jungle depot called Smuggler’s Run, her r-player discarded to one side. She’d neglected to turn it off, so it continued to show images of Patrick’s ongoing torture at the hands of Nephyrs.
A glittering hand—much like the hands that now cut apart her ex-boyfriend—reached down and turned the r-player off. “There’s nothing you can do,” Jersey whispered. “They’re just trying to get to you.”
Magali swallowed and looked away. Her eyes caught on the rest of the camp, a motley gathering of a few dozen ships, mostly smuggling vessels, the majority of which didn’t even have basic armaments. They’d liberated a total of eight out of thirty-six Yolk facilities before the Coalition had sent every Nephyr it had to lock the rest down. Now her ‘rebel army’ was milling around in the jungle, trying to find some reason to stick around aside from the fact that all their faces had been on the waves and they were looking at a slow, painful death the moment they went back home.
Turn yourself in, the feed continued playing, over and over in her head, or your friends and family will continue to suffer.
Somehow, it meant more to her that they had Patrick than the fact they had Anna. Patrick was, for the most part, innocent. Anna was…a beast. The accident on the Marquis Sovar had forever changed the little freak, and then their father had only made things worse, grounding her upon her return, rather than welcoming her back with loving arms.
Stop empathizing with her, Magali thought. She doesn’t deserve it.
“Mag.” Jersey was squatting beside her, holding her hand. Magali frowned down at it, wondering how it had gotten between his fingers. “What do you wanna do now?”
