by Sara King
How can Milar not see that?! Jersey thought, swallowing as their eyes met.
If anything, Patrick seemed to enjoy the looks Jersey was giving him. Almost like he was taunting him.
“Ship’s incoming! Patty, let’s go!” As the ship descended and Milar grabbed his brother and made a run for the gangplank, Jersey forgotten, the answer to why Milar wasn’t noticing Patrick’s behavior was obvious—Milar had thought his brother was dead, and now his brother had been returned to him. He wasn’t thinking about anything else.
Kind of like a pawn with its sights on a rook…
Jersey was so creeped out he almost didn’t get on the ship with them. Almost. What finally propelled him up the gangplank to join the twins in the belly of their ride, however, was that he knew, deep down, that something was wrong, and that he was the only one who was going to be able to do something about it. Granted, he hadn’t seen Patrick since he was sixteen, back when Patty had followed his twin to the chess matches between Jersey and Milar, but he knew that the man walking with Milar wasn’t the same shy kid that had been a quiet wallflower, the gentle spirit who idolized Milar and followed him everywhere, the one who had almost reminded Jersey of himself.
Jersey sat down across from the brothers in the cargo bay of their extraction ship, watching carefully. Indeed, when he thought nobody was looking, there was something sadistic in Patrick’s expression, something dark and dangerous. Ambition and confidence seemed to leak out of him like a carbon monoxide through a pillowcase. What was even more chilling, the few times he caught Jersey watching him, Patrick only gave him a smug smile, like he didn’t even care that Jersey knew something was wrong. Like he was daring him to say something.
Anna Landborn, Jersey thought, getting chills all over. He was getting the same creep-out factor he got when sitting across from Anna Landborn.
Extraction from the base didn’t require the aerobatics they had been expecting, the coaler pilots pretty much giving them a straight shot back to the Tear, which only made Jersey’s stomach knot further. Melly Bandera, a young smuggler from Magali’s personal team because KayKay had gone missing right before she was supposed to fly them on this mission, flipped on the comm once they were free of Camphor. “Looks like we made it, guys!” she cried, her excitement palpable. “How is everybody?”
Jersey couldn’t bring himself to respond because now he was thinking about how KayKay had gone missing, and how something was horribly wrong with Patrick. He desperately tried to figure out what it could be. Brainwashing? A mental break?
“Alive,” Milar said, looking at his brother’s tattoos.
“So cool!” Melly cried. “Where we headed to, Miles? Still want a drop-off with Captain Eyre? Sure you guys don’t want to go see if Magali made it first?”
It was the way Patrick’s smug smile grew when Melly mentioned Captain Tatiana Eyre that spurred Jersey to interrupt. “Take us to the old Brackett homestead,” he said, before Milar could say otherwise. “I need to pick something up.”
Immediately, Patrick’s head jerked around and his smug facade faded, replaced by that same unnerving murderous vibe.
“You don’t get to give orders, Glitter,” Milar growled.
“Technically, as Magali’s second-in-command,” Jersey reasoned, “on a ship under Magali’s flag, I do.”
That ruffled Milar’s feathers, because it was true. “I can’t fucking believe this,” he growled. “We just rescued my brother, you shit. He needs a bed and some good food and rest.”
“He can do that after I grab what I need at the old farmstead,” Jersey replied, utterly evenly. To Melly, he said, “You get that?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. Brackett,” Melly replied quickly, overly polite. She, like almost everyone in the Rebellion, treated Jersey like a vicious, barely-controlled dog. “Want me to radio it in, sir?”
“No,” Milar growled, at the same time Jersey said, “Yes.” Then, when Milar scowled at him, Jersey said, “Get Magali on the waves and patch her through to me.”
Milar reddened, but he didn’t push. He just muttered something to his brother, pulled out his bloodied knife, and started cleaning the sticky crimson off the blade.
A moment later, Melly said, “Sorry, Mr. Brackett, but Miss Landborn is unavailable. Would you like to leave a message with her pilot?”
Glancing at Patrick, Jersey hesitated. “Tell her the raid went too smoothly and I’m suspecting something isn’t what it appears to be, and to be careful.”
Melly blinked, but dutifully relayed his message.
For his part, Patrick was watching him much too closely. As he caught Jersey’s glance, the man smiled, and it sent chills across Jersey’s entire body.
Inwardly, Jersey realized he’d won some sort of minor victory, a bishop downed by a knight. He also knew that, whatever game he was playing with Patrick, he had to keep the man away from everyone else until he figured out exactly what the stakes were.
Patrick, meanwhile, continued to ooze that unnatural confidence, smiling at Jersey from across the cargo bay as he chatted with Milar about Tatiana and her ‘issue.’
Half an hour into their flight over the Tear, Patrick gave Milar a brotherly shoulder-squeeze and excused himself to go to the bathroom, toward the front of the ship. Milar seemed perfectly content to sit in the cargo bay, cleaning and sharpening that ever-present hunting knife like it were some sort of sacred relic. Because his gut was screaming at him they were in danger, Jersey got up to follow Patrick to the bathroom.
“You fuck with my brother,” Milar said softly, without looking up, “and you’re gonna end up in a bog.”
Jersey swallowed and glanced at the front partition separating the cargo bay from the rest of the ship, his nerves humming. “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom.”
“Wait your turn.” This time, Milar did look up, and there was cold promise in his eyes.
Jersey glanced at the partition again, his instincts totally on fire. “Look, dude, I’ve got no argument with you—”
“Just my brother.”
Because he felt like he was running out of time, Jersey snorted and brushed past Milar.
A charged EMP rod stopped him cold, only an inch from touching his nose.
“Back up,” Milar commanded, still holding the wand out in front of him. “Sit down, Glitter, or I swear to Aanaho, I’ll use this.”
“Milar,” Jersey said, swallowing hard, “look, I think your brother is—”
“Sit!” Milar roared.
Jersey glanced again at the front of the ship, realizing he was at another one of the biggest decisions of his life. Something about Patrick was wrong. No, worse than wrong. Evil, and he was the only one who could see it. He could feel it like tar clinging to the skin of an apple—Patrick was tainted, and he needed to figure out how.
The chessmaster in him, however, knew that Milar wasn’t going to back down, and Milar was easily dangerous enough to kill him, even without EMP.
“Milar, I don’t want to hurt you,” Jersey said softly. “But I really need to talk to your brother alone.”
Milar’s yellow eyes were filled with that old hate. “He’s had enough attention from shitheads like you. Sit down.”
Hurt a friend, save a war…
Jersey hesitated. He knew whichever move he made, he was not going to be able to take it back. Milar was blinded by love, so he obviously couldn’t see the difference. But Jersey knew every ounce of rapport he’d built with the colonist would be irrevocably destroyed the moment he used brute force to win this argument—an argument only winnable by brute force.
Go with his gut, or sit back down. Harry a rook, or go after the king…
Jersey took a deep breath, mentally apologized, then, harnessing as much speed and strength as he could muster, moved.
Even as Milar’s eyes were widening, Jersey broke the arm holding the EMP rod and, shoving the colonist’s wrist backward on its own forearm, he kicked out, hurling Milar across the ship to slam heavily aga
inst the far wall.
“Don’t follow me,” Jersey said, as Milar collapsed against the opposite side of the ship. Jersey picked up the fallen EMP wand and snapped it in half. Then, grabbing a box of nannites and medical supplies off the shelf, he threw it at Milar and went to find out what was going on behind the partition.
Jersey had no sooner locked the partition behind him than he found the bathroom door was open, the stall itself unoccupied. Seeing that, Jersey had to fight down a growing dread. The crew quarters door was closed, but when he carefully opened it to look inside, it was empty. That left the stairs down to the mechanics room, the kitchen…and the cockpit.
Moving faster, now, Jersey scanned the kitchen, found it empty, and, using thermal imagery, located Patrick’s faint footprints passing the stairs, headed straight to the cockpit. They hadn’t even hesitated at the bathroom.
“Fuck,” Jersey whispered. Behind him, Milar shouted and slammed into the partition locking him in the cargo bay. Ignoring him, Jersey moved carefully forward, heart hammering. He could only see one heat source in the cockpit behind the door, and it was at the console.
Jersey reached for the door to the cockpit, found the knob, opened it.
Inside, Melly Bandera sat huddled over the console, blood soaking the floor beneath her.
“Shit, Melly?” Jersey hurried forward to help. The moment he got a good view, however, he slowed. Her chest, Jersey realized in horror, had been torn apart. Her heart was cradled in her lap, and her head was lolling, her body still strapped in with the crash harness. The console was covered with crimson smears where someone had worked the screen and set the ship to autopilot after murdering Melly. Jersey immediately lunged forward and attempted to change course, but that same someone had locked him out. When he queried, the ship showed the destination as being the auto-course designation of the coordinates to Milar’s tent on the mountainside.
But why…?
Jersey suddenly got a wash of cold chills, remembering the footage of an entire section of Rath falling down, never to get up. Tatiana Eyre. They wanted Tatiana. The man’s disguise, the casual questions to Milar about his new fiancée, the coordinates…Jersey stumbled backwards toward the cargo bay, his breath coming in ragged pants.
“Hello there, snugglepuss,” a man said, from thin air. A moment later, a smug, grinning Patrick shimmered into existence beside him, having been totally invisible to his heat sensors a moment before. His left fist was completely covered in glistening blood. Jersey froze, seeing it. He had crushed her ribs and ripped out her heart with his hand. That was triggering something within him, something he’d carefully buried…
Seeing Jersey’s horrified stare, Patrick shrugged. “I needed to get her to take me somewhere, and she wasn’t cooperating.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. “So why did you switch sides, son? You were just one step from making the Division.”
The Division. Oh God… It all suddenly made sense to him—the odd looks, the way he’d often felt watched, followed… Jersey still vividly remembered the short, stocky man who had butchered three of Jersey’s comrades with a glowing silver bō staff—a staff—then had casually pulled up a chair and sat down across from him to chat.
Nice day today, the man had said, sliding his silvery, four-and-a-half-foot staff back into nothingness in the middle of his back. This seat taken? Jersey’s three Nephyr friends had been dead in instants. A few seconds at most. From a staff. That had been as mind-boggling as anything else. The man had only been five and a half feet tall, with one of those stout body types where you couldn’t tell if it was muscle or fat. His long hair had been swept back into a waist-length braid, and, while his hair had been peppered with gray, his face had been ageless.
No sir, Jersey had said, because it had been the only thing he could say.
Thanks. Jersey remembered feeling his heart pound as the man had poured himself a drink from one of the bottles that Jersey’s companion had ‘acquired’ from the bartender, before handing the cringing waitress that Jersey’s friends had been groping a sack of palladium nuggets ‘for the bottle and her trouble’ and sending her on her way. For like fifteen minutes, all the man had done was sit there, drinking his whiskey, watching Jersey over the table in silence.
I suppose you’re wondering why you’re still alive, he’d finally said.
Jersey just nodded, paralyzed by horror.
I was a friend of your father. I told him I’d watch over you. The guy downed another snifter and he glanced at the floor, brown eyes finding the now-still corpses of Jersey’s friends with a complete lack of regret. They were a bad influence.
Oh, Jersey had managed.
The man spent another twenty minutes sipping his drink, examining him carefully, and all the while, Jersey had felt like a flea under a microscope. Then, after what seemed like an eternity of silence, the man had set his drink down. You’ve got promise, the man said. Hang in there. Then he stood up, dropped another sack of palladium on the table, and started to walk away.
Who are you?! Jersey had blurted, as the man left.
He’d hesitated, then slowly turned back to face him. Sirius Vant. And when my brother comes calling, tell him I know what he did to Giu Xi.
Sirius Vant. The legendary founder of the AlphaGens, whose name had been whispered in the darkest corners of the Nephyr Academy like some sort of unholy monster. Even the instructors had been terrified of him, because he seemed to make unpredictable passes through the Core, killing Nephyrs seemingly at random and kidnapping others before disappearing again. And his brother was…
Jersey blinked at the memory, looking up at ‘Patrick’ with newfound horror. “You’re…” Jersey swallowed hard. “You’re…Orion.”
“Of course I am,” Orion said. He smiled, still using Patrick’s chiseled face, but his yellow eyes were cold as ice. “What did my brother say to you, boy? That cunt Kestrel stripped the camera sound.”
Jersey swallowed. “He sat there for almost an hour and didn’t say anything at all.”
“After!” Orion snapped. He reached forward, blindingly-fast, and yanked Jersey forward by the front of his shirt to snarl into his face, “What did he say after? When he smiled at the camera and mouthed my name, you little shit.” As he yelled, his skin started to eat the light, his eyes taking on a dim golden glow. “How do you know him? Why did he meet with you?”
Jersey remembered watching Sirius look directly at the bar security camera, mouth something, bow deeply, then walk away. He swallowed.
He also realized that the moment he told Orion of his brother’s simple message, he was dead. A messenger that was no longer useful.
Chess, Jersey thought. Life is a game of chess. In a rational section of his mind, the one that allowed him to drop into total solitude and put the Aashaanti pictures within pictures, he looked at Orion’s skin and eyes and considered what he had seen KayKay do when in a similar rage. He calculated his chances of escape, his chances of warning Milar, of crashing the ship, of calling for help. He calculated the rivalry between siblings, the way Sirius had so casually and intentionally provoked his brother. He calculated every possible way to avoid this particular checkmate with a stalemate.
The only set of variables that didn’t result in his and Milar’s deaths was to tell the truth.
“Your brother told me he knows what you did to Giu Xi,” Jersey said. “And he knows how to do it better.”
Truth…with a twist.
Orion immediately thrust him backwards, looking startled.
Got you, Jersey thought.
In that same moment, Milar bust through the door, one arm in a sling, the other holding a gun, which immediately lifted to Jersey’s head.
Milar stopped, saw his brother’s light-eating skin, the pilot’s corpse, the still-bloody fist, and the confrontation between Orion and Jersey. His eyes slowly came up to meet Patrick’s face…
Milar slammed the door on them and ran.
Orion snarl
ed something under his breath and drew a sword from between his shoulder-blades. Immediately, the rippling blue-black tovlar came alight in Orion’s hand. Unlike his brother’s staff’s clean, illuminated silver glow, however, this one was darker, almost bronze, and seemed to roil with something that Jersey could only describe as a taint.
Jersey totally forgotten, Orion started after the colonist.
Jersey pushed his leg in front of the man’s stride and shoved, tripping him violently into the wall. Then, when Orion went down, he stomped on his head with every ounce of strength he had.
His foot went through the man’s skull and the floor beneath it, his boot getting stuck in the grating of the ship. When he yanked his foot free, pieces of Orion came back with it. He kicked them off, then kicked the man’s sword away from his twitching fingers, gagging at the weird smell of ozone and formaldehyde. That, Jersey thought, his heart pounding wildly out of control, is not human.
Somewhere on the ship, a distress beacon started going off. Jersey, who was patched in to local waves on background subprocessors, tuned in and heard, “…you warned me about has my fucking brother. If you’re out there, you better well the fuck do something!” Then, seeing that Orion’s crushed skull had started to crawl back together, Jersey picked up the discarded tovlar sword and started hacking at the body with it, knocking chunks of floor and body parts aside until he couldn’t take the smell any more. Throwing the sword aside, he went to the bloody console and started trying to bypass the ship security, to no avail. The fucker had made Melly give him captaincy rights before he’d killed her. Jersey was crawling under the console and had just started to do a manual bypass when something impossibly strong grabbed him by the leg and yanked him out from under the controls.
Orion was completely whole again, and it had only taken seconds. He gave a snarl and yanked Jersey completely off the floor, holding him up by the throat, his shimmering fingers sinking through Jersey’s matter-retardant skin and grabbing him by the very meat of his neck. Jersey let out a strangled scream as Orion’s fingers ground into raw muscle.
