Without warning, the door burst open.
Merrick jumped from mid-lean, tossing the chair out of the way.
Lance Ryan entered, slapping the door against the wall.
*
Beth slithered out of the bed, lightly touching her toes on the cold tile of the hospital floor.
She scanned the room for anything to use as a weapon or possible escape.
Damn, her weapons were hung neatly from a new uniform at the back of a chair in the corner.
Of course they were.
Who needs weapons when there is an armed Reflective at the door? Beth narrowed her eyes. The guard had been bought and paid for by Ryan, obviously.
Beth's gaze bored into Merrick's muscular back, and her heart stuttered. Merrick would never go against Ryan.
They were most likely in cahoots. That was probably why Merrick had been so cavalier, feeding her and taking care of his injured partner as they were required to do in the event of mishap.
She was doomed.
Maybe not.
She took a deep breath, contemplating the unthinkable. Beth's eyes roamed the four corners of the room, trying to locate anything reflective.
But the hospital had been scrubbed of anything that could refract.
“Well, hi ya, Ryan,” Merrick greeted him like an old friend, still in full Earth dialect.
Ryan frowned.
“Get out of the way, Merrick.”
Beth backed up, moving toward the window, glancing outside.
She was at the metaphorical cliff again. She wasn't healed fully from the last jump. Her injuries would certainly be worse if she jumped again.
So few held Beth in any regard that it might have been her only free pass that Merrick had been sent to collect her.
No one would come a second time. Her jump would leave her trapped in a foreign sector void of her people, unable to travel decisively without locators.
Jumping was dangerous without a focus sphere.
She could end up anywhere… or any time.
Beth shuddered. But she supposed that fate was better than death.
“Nope, can't do that, you colossal fuckup.”
Beth turned around, her mouth agape.
Did I just hear Merrick right? She had, judging by the expression on Lance Ryan's smug face.
That awareness in Ryan’s expression was beginning to leak away.
And Merrick's delivery had been the most comedic of all. He’d spoken as if he were commenting on the weather and had found it fine.
“Let me pass, Merrick. No one wants her to live.”
Beth's eyes met his over Merrick's shoulder. “You'd be doing the world a favor if you took a coffee break right now. Just let it happen.”
Merrick planted his feet, his arms loose at his sides, and regarded Ryan like a bug. Beth had moved into his peripheral vision. She'd also caught sight of an outside streetlamp through the window.
Its glass solar panels shone like a black mirror.
Ryan somehow knows, knows I ready myself. My desperation is plain to whoever searches for it.
Her body bore the scars of his physical bullying. Her mind held them, as well.
Heat climbs, searing her insides, Beth's heartbeat is a whoosh of blood in her ears.
Ryan's eyes snagged on Beth, then with a roar, he surged forward.
Merrick pivoted on his right foot. Already focused on her mark, Beth saw them as only a pinpoint in her vision.
The shining ebony at the crown of the lamp beckoned.
Then she heard the crack of bone against bone, and blood arced up, hitting the ceiling with such force that it rained back down on the men.
The sound stopped everything—her focus, her jump.
Beth stood frozen as Merrick went toe-to-toe with Ryan.
*
Jeb
Honorless fuck.
Jeb was disgusted the guard at Jasper's door had let Ryan through. He was even further disgusted that she’d considered jumping without having sufficient time to heal. Being a sensitive Reflective, he could sense jumping readiness.
During the battle in the coliseum, he had sensed Beth’s jump before anyone else had. He possessed her signature now.
Ryan charged, and something in Beth's expression gave her away. It would be the first thing he would teach her as her partner: a blank face.
Beth didn't have one. A shadow of her every feeling clouded her face. She was, as the people of Sector-Three Earth were fond of saying, an open book.
Ryan was a dirty fighter—no surprise there—who thought to take hold of Jeb and unbalance him.
Ryan latched onto Jeb's wrist and attempted a foot sweep.
Jeb countered, twisting his wrist viciously in the opposite direction of the hold, breaking it instantly as he grabbed Ryan's forearm. He stepped into the fight, not away.
As he jerked Ryan into the circle of reach, he swung his fist into Ryan's jaw.
Always engage, never retreat.
The Reflective motto, he thought with sour pleasure as Ryan moved with him, an apt dance partner in their mutual violence.
Ryan head butted Jeb in a deft, hard move with perfect timing.
It rang Jeb's bell, but his skull was hard, and he spun his cocked fist, driving it a second time the short distance from his hip to Ryan's jaw.
And like perfectly cracked glass, his jaw rocketed back, spraying blood onto the ceiling as his teeth speared his own tongue.
Jeb popped his flattened palms into Ryan's chest as though he wanted to launch him into the wall or stop his heart.
Ryan slammed into the wall, his head smacking the surface
Jeb stalked toward Ryan, his fists like meaty hammers of punishment.
Barely breathing, Ryan slid down the wall, his eyes at half-mast.
“Are we done here, Ryan?” Merrick asked.
Ryan gave the smallest nod possible, his mouth a yawning horror of blood and gore.
Merrick turned to check on Jasper.
The sun's final rays backlit her, bathing her in red light like a watercolor of blood. It ran down her arms, accentuating her delicate build, and instead of looking sinister, it did the opposite.
She seemed terribly fragile.
“Merrick!” Beth screamed.
He dropped down and spun.
Ryan was above him, a small dagger in one hand, coated with blood.
His own blood.
His fingers found the wound and came away slick.
Merrick saw red.
“You fucking pussy,” he hissed.
Ryan smiled through a mouthful of his own blood and spit it to the side, where it splattered like dumped paint on the pure-white tiles.
“I'm a pussy that just fucked you.”
“Not yet,” Merrick said.
Fuck it, I’ll heal on the way. He’d kept his gift a secret, though Ryan would be enlightened forevermore.
As light as a feather, a smooth rectangle of paper-thin mercury-coated ceramic slipped out of his specially made pocket in Merrick’s pants. He tossed, and it landed on top of their mixed blood on the floor.
It provided a single destination jump.
Ryan's expression showed true fear as Merrick punched the blade from the younger man’s hand. It hit the floor with a jarring clatter of metal against ceramic.
Ryan reacted as all instinctual Reflectives would have—he ground his fist into Merrick's knife wound.
But Merrick was already on point.
His eyes held on the flat surface of the locator even as he winced in pain.
He grabbed Ryan's collar, fisting the material tightly.
They jumped—only one did so willingly.
Merrick could hear Jasper calling his name down the tunnel the Reflectives traveled.
*
Jeb had found himself a dandy of a slope, his fist still attached to Ryan, where it continued its brutal hold.
Jeb went ripping down an embankment of sharp prairie grass that sliced and poked as the
y mowed through it, finally landing on their backs at the bottom.
He'd thought of Thirteen—and that’s where they'd landed.
Merrick was, of course, in perfect health, having healed completely during the jump. The glory in that was Ryan was yet unaware of Jeb’s mended state of affairs.
Merrick jumped to his feet and immediately kicked Ryan in the ribs.
“I swear to Principle I will leave you in this place if you do not retire your vendetta against Beth Jasper.”
Ryan spit more blood into the pasture grass that speared his back. “What… you want the half-breed?”
Jeb said nothing. Fool.
Ryan looked up at him.
“She is assigned to me, and she is injured. I can't help who I get partnered with any better than you can. I will not stand by and let you kill another Reflective because of your jealousy.”
“I am not jealous of that mongrel,” Ryan growled, coming to his hands and knees.
“I suffered through her inclusion for the past fifteen years,” he offered as a lame excuse.
“No.” Jeb gazed at the worthless Ryan. “I'm sure the reverse of that is true.”
“Earth lover.” Ryan spat at his feet.
Jeb rolled his eyes, pegging his hands on his hips. “Yes, I do enjoy Earth. Your point?”
“My point is she could be anything… she is not fully Papilion. Does that not bother you?”
“I am not looking to breed her but to partner her.”
“That is all females are good for.”
This is useless. Ryan was a lost cause, but Jeb could teach him caution. He did not wish to look over his shoulder for the next five years while partnered with Jasper.
Ryan stood, wisely keeping a respectable distance from Merrick.
“Where the hell are we?” His eyes narrowed on Jeb. “Where did you bring me?” He whipped his head around, taking in the faraway opaque dome-shaped structures.
A great forest stood to the north of their position.
“Sector Thirteen,” Jeb replied coolly.
Ryan's face paled. Jeb imagined that took some doing.
He grinned.
“This is the most dangerous sector you dick.”
Jeb shook his head. “Not the most dangerous.” No one traveled to One by choice—that was a death wish.
Jeb noted that he was not the only Reflective who had picked up the local Earth dialect with some precision.
Ryan lowered his voice as though anyone could hear them in the middle of the wilderness of this world.
A whisper of cloth against wheat made Merrick turn.
How wrong I was.
Things instantly went from teaching a lesson to survival, as was often the way of a jump.
A group of men of various sizes, ages, and bearing circled Merrick and Ryan, just out of striking range.
“Who the hell are they?” Ryan asked, suddenly less combative toward Merrick than he'd been moments before.
“The Fragment,” Jeb answered, sliding his remaining dagger out of the weapons pocket of his trousers.
Made of ceramic, it was designed to survive a jump, as metal could not survive Reflective journeys.
The cold porcelain was smooth, with a specially arced tip. It was serrated on only one side.
One of the men in the group called out, “Join us or die.”
Ryan said, “I don't know this dialect. I have only used the high language of Thirteen.”
“Just another reason why Jasper should remain.”
“Fuck me—why?” Ryan asked, one eye on the group, which was closing in, and the other on Merrick.
“She is fluent in all sectors.”
Jeb moved forward, hoping to injure enough men so that he could escape. They did not want to find themselves buried within the knot of the Fragment.
They took no prisoners.
*
Beth
Rachett tore into the hospital room, and Beth nearly climbed out of her skin.
The air still rippled with residual disturbance from Merrick's jump.
“Where is Ryan?” Rachett barked.
Beth took a deep breath. “He jumped with Merrick.”
Rachett's jaw moved back and forth. “No… Merrick would not take a jump with Ryan.”
“I don't think it was voluntary.”
They looked at each other.
Rachett seemed to notice Beth was in a hospital gown, flashing her backside to the window behind her.
“The residual still remains,” she said quickly, throwing her palm toward the shimmering air pocket between them.
Rachett studied the area, locked onto something and drove his palm through it in a slicing gesture that ended in his cupped fingers bringing the air back to his nose.
He waved that little bit he'd collected back and forth in front of his face.
“What signature?” Beth asked, moving to stand in front of him, her eyes on his hands as he smelled the air.
His face fell into grim lines. “Sector Thirteen.”
Rachett turned to Beth. “You're so damn hot to jump, jump that.”
Beth took a step back. “But… I'm a female. I don't have clearance for that sector.”
Everyone understood how treacherous that sector was. It had a terrible shortage of females, an estimated one to every fifteen males.
She would be delivering herself into the lion's den.
“Afraid?” Rachett taunted.
Beth stared at him. “I've never been afraid a day in my life.”
Anxiety is not fear.
“That's my girl. Now”—he touched her shoulder so briefly that Beth thought she imagined it—“get Ryan back. We have somewhere he needs to go.”
Beth paused then hit the affirmative decisively. “Yes, sir.”
He laid the universal locator on the hospital bed. Its sheen reflected the spattered blood on the ceiling. Rachett’s eyes followed hers.
When they lowered to meet hers again, he made no comment.
Rachett never asked once if she was well enough to jump… or if she wanted to.
Beth was Reflective, and that was answer enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
Beth
Unaware of Merrick’s gift, Beth traveled the tailwind of his jump with ease.
Truly not jumping was harder than jumping. It was unlike any other compulsion that Beth had ever known. She forced herself not to give reflective surfaces more than a passing glance.
Reflective surfaces were banned in some places, but no one could ban the water or tell the drops of rain where to fall.
Pools of water existed as proof of moisture falling, and lakes were made to swim in and harbor the fish that her people ate.
It was how it had always been.
Of course, there were those stories of Reflectives borne outside the net of The Cause, unfortunate enough to grow up without knowing what they were.
They were doomed to jump without knowledge, by pure instinct alone… to wherever their gift led them.
Legends even told of young ones flinging themselves along the pathway of travel to Sector Thirteen—or One.
Beth shivered inside the tunnel of fire and ice, spinning so quickly that she closed her eyes against the vertigo as she free fell.
Beth was glad the jump was always brief. To think of more than a few seconds of that sensation was the only true fear she ever experienced. The thought of being stuck in the jump—always moving, never landing—was a hiccup of pure terror.
Just as the thought solidified, she was spit out of the transport pathway, and with a spinning somersault, she came to an abrupt halt, her spine a raging nightmare of pain
One knee was planted in stiff grass; the other, bent in preparation to stand. Both palms were embedded in an unyielding plant-like material with light-blond stalks. They rustled in a hot breeze that shot across a flat plane of land.
Beth raised her head and met fifteen pairs of hostile eyes.
She stood slowly, ignoring the worst
of her injuries, and hoped she'd healed sufficiently to run.
She knew what people these males were: Fragment, the most dangerous contingent of Sector Thirteen. Merrick had spoken of the Band.
The Band might have been reasoned with.
The Fragment would not be.
Beth barred her teeth and charged them, pulling her two ceramic blades. Holding them expertly, she used their small weight for balance. Beth's senses traversed the uneven landscape while the men were shocked into a standstill, circling two Reflectives.
Merrick and Ryan reacted to Beth's diversion.
Merrick unleashed his blades on the four Fragment members who approached him. Kneeling as he got close to the first two, he severed their hamstrings.
He rolled between the shrieking pair as they clutched their wounded legs. He drove the daggers in an arc toward the next pair, slicing their femoral arteries near the groin.
They had seconds before their lifeblood would soak the ground beneath them.
Probably not soon enough for Merrick's taste.
Beth moved into the Fragment’s tight group, where her diminutive height was perfect for her to cut their throats. She closed her eyes against the spray, as she'd been taught to do, turning her face away to breathe.
Her head swung like a pendulum as they bore down against her and she navigated through their ranks. Through her peripheral vision, Beth glimpsed a strike and blood spatter as a blade sang past her face. She noted the smell of the Fragment's metal, which she’d been trained to detect.
Reflectives never used Fragment metal, though they had been trained to use and recognize the native weaponry of foreign sectors.
She leaned away from the air pressure of the swipe and opened her eyes. Blood soaked her lashes like macabre glue.
Ryan was her attacker.
She acted on reflex, suspending her disbelief that he would still pursue his agenda of murdering her while they were under attack.
She struck him with her four knuckles in a straight stabbing punch to the throat.
Ryan staggered backward and fell to the ground on his backside.
She exhaled raggedly as two of the Fragment leapt over Ryan’s body to get to her.
Relentless.
Ryan would get up momentarily; he was as skilled as she.
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