Ryan's face became granite at the mention of One.
“You say you're smart? Then act like the IQ you have rather than your boot size.”
Ryan's expression soured.
“You're not my lead. I don't have to show you anything but pat civility. You lead with Jasper.” Ryan took an irritated swipe against where his inhibitor timepiece disc lay beneath his skin.
Jeb stepped into his personal space. As tall and muscular as Jeb was, Ryan was his equal in size.
Ryan didn't put his finger on Jeb's chest, but it hovered there.
“Stay out of my fucking way, Captain Merrick.”
Using the heel of his palms, Jeb slapped Ryan's chest, knocking him backward. “You get off my dick, and stay away from my partner, or we're going to have words.”
Ryan leaned toward Jeb, a vein throbbing in the fair skin over his temple.
“And it won't be the talking kind.”
Ryan had all the contained violence of a Reflective on high combative alert.
Then he trained that vision on Jasper. “Stay out of my fucking way, mongrel.”
“Thanks for the love.” Jasper fluttered her fingers at him.
Ryan cursed and spun on his heel, diving off down the ancient main street. His back straight, his uniform without a wrinkle, he looked back as he got farther away.
Jasper release a breath that sounded suspiciously like relief.
“Don't incite him.”
“He brings out the best in me.”
Jeb stared at her.
“I don't think so—no.”
*
Jeb walked beside Jasper, a companionable silence stretched between them. Ryan had gone, and they made their way without hopping, just enjoying the casual exercise.
Autumn had rolled in seemingly overnight, and the deciduous trees’ leaves bragged their flaming colors of orange, scarlet, and burnt yellow along the sidewalks of the Barringer district.
“Just tell me, Jasper.”
Her silent answer was long enough that Jeb slowed, but she spoke, and he kept walking, his eyes on the old buildings. The Cause Headquarters towered in the distance.
“We were young ,and I was sparing with the other candidates.”
“How many cycles?”
“I'm a year younger than a lot of the males.”
“For Principle's sake—why? Why would Rachett put you forward early.”
“I tested in.”
Jeb did stop then. “At five cycles?”
She nodded. He whistled. “Damn—that's young.”
“Yeah,” she answered, blowing a strand of hair out of her face that had loosened from her usual braids.
“So,” she continued, looking at him sideways, and Jeb noticed her eyes were nearly black. Her irises hid her pupil like an ebony watercolor. Most people of Papilio were fair-complexioned, with light eyes. Beth’s combination of dark hair and eyes was unusual. Jeb decided that Jasper's looks had grown on him. The more he was around her, the more interesting she became.
“I was twelve cycles, and he, thirteen.”
Jasper had switched to Latin, seemingly without realizing. She liked the Three dialect so much that she often spoke it on Papilio, even when she wasn’t practicing for jumps to Sector Three.
He suspected she had digressed into Latin under stress. The memory alone had visibly shaken her.
“He took me aside—kissed me.”
Jeb felt his face tighten. Obviously, no Reflective pairing would ever be tolerated. They would have been very aware, even then.
“And?”
She slowed then stopped walking. “I reacted badly. I slapped him. He tried to convince me we could be something. Something secret.”
“Ah.” Merrick gave her a sideways glance. “He thought to have a little black-sheep booty?”
Jasper faced him. He'd just stepped in a pile of shit. His words had been ill-chosen.
But she surprised him. “Yes. As crude as your understanding is—that was exactly it. I am—”she waved her palm around—“an enigma.”
Jeb palmed his chin. “He wanted a go at the forbidden. And you told him no.”
Her dark eyes grew impossibly darker.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly.
They began to walk silently toward TCH.
Jasper said nothing for a time, then, “I had rejected him, and I'd let it pass. But he'd not forgotten.” Her eyes met his then slid away. “He was chosen to spar with me, and I didn't understand…”
She held her breath and Jeb answered for her, “His potential for cruelty.”
She exhaled in a rush.
“I was hospitalized for three days.”
Jasper turned to him and lifted the bottom of her uniform shirt. The tail of her button-down navy-blue blouse came untucked, and she rolled up the hem to reveal a vaguely heart-shaped scar.
Jeb could feel his heartbeat pulse at his forehead.
They stood like that in the middle of Main Street with her shirt raised to expose skin like alabaster, unmarred except for the puckered scar tissue, now a faint pink.
“What is that?” Jeb asked quietly.
Jeb turned away when he saw water fill her eyes but heard her answer nonetheless.
“His heel.”
Her words etched their way across his soul, never to be forgotten.
The knowledge undid him.
*
Jeb
Jacky and Madeline watched the sparring with wide eyes as Jeb dove for Jasper's legs. She flung him on his back, and the wind sailed out of his lungs as if he were a beached whale.
Damn, she’s good at defense. But her offense needed practice.
He fought without breathing, which was never an easy task, then jerked her against his body easily and rolled over on top of her.
The soft mat cushioned her against true injury.
Protect. He fought his caution so that he could spar with her like a partner ought.
She took advantage of his hesitation and nailed Jeb in the stomach with the hardest part of her body, as she'd been trained to do, driving her elbow deep into his gut.
Jeb doubled over as she stood, confident in his loss.
Despite his shortness of breath and bruised ribs, his hand snaked out, latching her ankle and jerking it from underneath her.
“Jasper!” Madeline shrieked.
“Shut up, Maddie. I wanna watch.”
“No! He'll hurt her.”
“No, he won't—don't be such a girl about it.” Jacky’s undertone of uncertainty gave Merrick pause.
Jasper landed on her back, slapping her palms on the mat to soften the fall. She kicked him with her free leg, and Jeb captured that ankle, twisting it. She countered, rolling in the direction of the twist and sitting up and forward as she did, then punched his shoulder to dislodge him.
Pain exploded from the strike, all knuckles and speed, aimed for that vulnerable part where the shoulder dips into the arm.
He simply scooped her up and tossed her.
Jasper shrieked, landing hard on the mat, no arms fast enough to catch her fall.
Jeb strode to her, and she struggled to stand, gasping.
“Get up,” Jeb said.
She did. But she was canted oddly.
Jeb didn't hesitate, hitting her shoulder to take her down again.
She collapsed.
Even when Jasper began to crawl, Jeb dragged her back mercilessly, her sparring uniform dragging up to breast level, and he lifted his foot.
He saw the mark from Ryan and landed his boot beside it.
Jasper shrieked, her cracked ribs making a noise like twigs snapping. Blood dribbled out of her parted lips.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Jeb growled.
“You'll kill her!” Maddie wailed.
“Stop—you’re no better than that dickhead Ryan!” Jacky said.
Ryan.
Jasper lay beneath him like a beaten, broken doll. Black hair had untangled from her b
raids. Her dark eyes were lipid pools of obsidian fire. The blood from her injuries pooled like red gems of condemnation.
“You're just like the rest,” she accused from a full mouth lined with blood from his fists.
No I'm not.
“I'd never harm you, Beth,” Jeb promised.
He reached out to touch her face, wiping away the blood he put there and she jerked away from him.
The scene bled away to vague mist.
*
Jeb sat straight up in bed, the linen clutched to his chest. His heart still hammered like the hooves of a galloping horse. He hit the pulse clock with his thumbprint, and numerals flared on his ceiling.
3:48 a.m.
He fell back against the bed, convulsively swallowing. He wiped his sweaty palms on his coverlet. What is happening to me?
“What's going on?” Jacky asked from the open doorway.
Jeb sat up again. “Nothing.”
His voice sounded like stone, not a tremble or vibration to prove that he'd just had the worst nightmare of his life.
“’Cause you were yelling for who?” Jacky asked, though he knew. “Beth.” Jacky's eyes were like an adult's.
Must have been a trick of the light.
“You said something like you'd never hurt her or something.”
“I wouldn't,” Jeb responded.
“Then why did you dream about it?” His accusatory gaze tracked Jeb's reactions like a hawk.
Jeb didn't answer right away. He wasn't sure why he'd dream that. Was it because of her confession about the ax Ryan had to grind?
What Jeb understood was that he needed to get his ass into medical and get a full pulse diagnostic. He knew his timepiece was degrading, which was normal for Reflectives so close to the end of their term of service. But what if something more serious was going on?
Why had he let Jasper's sad story affect him? Why was he having sadistic dreams about killing her?
Pent-up sexual tension manifesting as violence.
He needed to get laid—and fast. That would distract him from the strange turn his life was taking.
“I don't know,” he answered.
“Better figure it out.”
“Why?”
“Because this middle-of-the-night scream session? It's killinʼ my beauty sleep.”
Jacky walked back to his bedroom.
Jeb fell back, lacing his fingers behind his head.
It was a long time before sleep took him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Beth walked into TCH, and all talking ceased.
Madeline started when she saw Beth, a loose knot of the gossiping tribe of female Reflectives falling away from her.
As Beth strode in, they turned their noses up in the air and walked away from Madeline.
Beth reserved a special cold stare just for panty-dropping Daphne. What an alley cat.
Maddie asked, “You and Jeb leave tomorrow?”
Jeb now, eh?
Beth chastised herself. In the week that Madeline had been her houseguest, she'd been nothing short of perfect. She gave Beth space when needed, she was sweet, and she kept things far neater than Beth would have.
In a word, she was the perfect Reflective female: docile, accommodating, a phenomenal jumper, and beautiful. Only her dark hair marred her shell of perfection. Yet, her unusual eye color and hour-glass figure eased the males’ pain.
However, an interesting phenomena had reared its ugly head. Madeline could certainly jump around Three and from Three without surface reflection. But not in Papilio.
In Papilio, Madeline was reduced to using mirrored surfaces to jump.
Beth couldn't say she was too broken up about it.
It wasn't typical for her to be such a horse's ass in her internal ramblings.
She blamed Merrick: he had set her on edge.
He'd come to sparring warm up as tense as she'd ever seen him and had refused to spar with her—his own partner.
A deliberate snub.
Then he'd made a beeline for that slut Daphne.
Beth understood the male Reflectives’ needs; they never bothered to hide it, as though it were their unspoken right. However, as Beth watched Daphne slink around in the bowels of TCH, she couldn't help but be offended for him.
Merrick could do better.
And what about that soulmate? His timepiece was disintegrating every moment, and then he would be the lucky one—wide open to find the One, not that it had stopped Merrick from sampling the local wares of the female Reflectives before.
He'd been neglectful of the boy, and he'd grown surly. Understandably bored and guarded closely, Jacky had thought it wise to stir up the hornet's nest—until Beth had asked if he had parents.
As it turned out, they had dissolved their union after his older brother's untimely death the year before.
Sector Three called it “divorce.”
After the divorce, Jacky had been shuttled between two parents, who by Jacky's account, had lost sight of the one thing remaining person who was still vitally important.
Him.
Jacky hadn't told her these things. Beth had easily read between the lines.
After losing his own family, he’d adopted his peer group as his pseudo family, and he got by on what he coined “the aura-reader juju.”
Loosely translated, when someone’s aura appeared tainted, he steered clear. It had saved him some scrapes with the criminal element.
The time had come for his return. Madeline was beginning to integrate, and Jacky could not remain. He was not Reflective, and there was nothing for him on Papilio.
“Are you going now?” Madeline asked, and Beth started.
She'd been so deep in her head that she was still trying to swim out of the well of her own thoughts.
“Yes. Merrick will meet me here, and we'll travel from the jumping room.”
Madeline's brows scrunched together across her perfect forehead. It would remain perfect for many years.
On Papilio, things like aging crawled to a standstill.
No one had explained her near-immortality to her yet. Information about her new life was best delivered in increments.
“It's… it is where we jump from, so that's what we call it.”
“That's funny. Does it have a fancy name like all the other places here?”
“Not really… well, come on. Let me show you.”
Beth was early for her rendezvous with Merrick—Jacky tagging along; she could afford to show Madeline the parts of her job that caused her soul to stir.
They came to the jumping room.
It mimicked the entrance to TCH, but had been built on a smaller scale.
Two marble columns with heavy fluting flowed up to the top and were crowned with cylindrical ends. A small pediment anchored the pair together, where two gallery doors nestled in between moldings of matching apricot-colored casement and jambs.
“It's so fancy!” Madeline said, stroking the smooth surfaces. The quartz within the bed of marble shimmered like snow blanketing Papilio hillsides on a rare cold day, when the sun caused it to glitter like a million diamonds.
Madeline was right. It was beautiful. It was also a serious place.
Above the entrance, the name of the order was etched into the marble:
Salire verum.
“Jump true,” Madeline translated, her eyes roving each scrolled letter. “Latin?”
Beth's brows lifted. “It looks like English?”
Madeline gave a bemused shake of her head. “I'm not really sure. I think I just understand it as it is, without knowing it's different.”
Just then, Jacky and Merrick walked up, and Beth stepped away from the entrance.
There were deep circles underneath Merrick's eyes. Beth would have asked the reason if they had been alone.
Madeline's anxious eyes tracked Merrick's every move, and Beth immediately understood that she had a schoolgirl crush on him.
However, for all her beauty, Merrick didn't
seem to notice. His eyes were on Beth.
“What?” she asked him.
He rocked back on the heels of his All Star tennis shoes, which were still all the rage after an apparent one-hundred-year-plus popularity run on Three.
Beth had dressed herself in super-tight denims, a type of flat shoe with a small bow, and a top that had sleeves that ran too long; and elastic band held her hair. After their arrival, she would have to take it out later and roll the band onto her wrist—also some kind of fashion statement.
Beth hated conceding jumps without her typical braids, but they were odd on Three.
“Nothing,” he answered. “Just anxious to take off.” Merrick had switched to the English of Three.
“Me, too. This place!”
“Jacky, come on,” Madeline said, reprimand clear in her tone.
He ignored her. “It's B.O.R.I.N.G.”
“And him…” Jacky pointed to Jeb. “Never home.” Jacky's hair flopped around as he shook his head.
“Too busy getting his swag on.”
Merrick's neck reddened, and he gave Jacky a glare, which the boy ignored. It seemed like a pattern.
Booty calls, as Merrick was so fond of calling them. Beth was not enamored of the colloquialism.
They had never discussed how Ryan had put her in medical all those years ago. Or how likely it was to happen again.
He hadn't seemed to want to talk about it. That was fine by Beth. Telling him wouldn't change the outcome. Ryan hated her because he saw her as beneath him. The ultimate degradation would be for her to give into him in every way. Then she would stop being a threat.
Males were fairly transparent. As far as she was concerned, Ryan had Small Penis Predicament.
Beth didn't realize she was smiling when Merrick posed the sharp question of what she was thinking.
“Nothing,” she answered, shaking her head and not meeting his eyes. Suddenly, Beth remembered something.
“Did you get checked out by medical?”
She checked off the list of crap he could have—a host of untreatable STDs, for starters. Those had not been an easy thing to cure on any sector. They were stubborn and pervasive.
Merrick's chin kicked up at the expression on her face.
“What's wrong?” Madeline asked, searching the stern planes of his face.
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