Jeb couldn't deny that he agreed with Ryan about Reflective females in combat. He also remembered Rachett's words when he'd balked at the pairing.
*
“The Reflective can't help being a warrior.”
His eyes nailed Merrick to where he stood. “The Principle decides, Merrick. And It has decided that Beth Jasper is a warrior. Hades…”
Rachett raked a hand through graying hair.
He was nearing a thousand years old.
“In all my years as Commander, I've never seen one jump like she can. Even for an unbeliever, it means something.”
Jeb agreed.
But a female in combat? “You remember what happened to our last female Reflective in combat.”
Rachett's chin dipped. “Yes.”
The ensuing silence possessed the horrible quality of knowledge too terrible to speak of. Yet, Merrick spoke.
“How many Reflectives died trying to save her?” It was Jeb's turn to plow fingers through his hair in frustration. He had grown it long in preparation for the jump to Sector Three.
“Too many.” Rachett exhaled in a rush.
Jeb leaned forward, capturing his Commander's steely gaze. “Exactly. We are instinctively protective of females. She was a seasoned warrior… but what they did to her… our males died because they could not stand what was happening.”
Rachett's gaze did not flinch. “I was there.”
“Then you know.”
Rachett nodded.
“Better than most.” They stared as quiet bloomed between them. “I should know—I killed her.”
Shocked, Merrick stepped back from Rachett.
“What? Why? I thought her injuries were too grievous…”
“They were.” Rachett stood straighter. “They had wrecked her in a way she could not heal from.”
“Yet you sent Ryan to Sector One.”
Rachett nodded grimly. “He'll heal.”
“He'll hate you.”
Rachett shrugged. “He should have thought about that before he tried to kill Beth Jasper.”
“Why her? Why not keep her safe, let her live out her term as… like Daphne.”
Rachett's lips quirked, and Merrick understood that he knew about their roll in the sheets.
Swell.
Merrick opened his mouth to defend it all, and Rachett raised his palm.
“Don't bother. I know males have needs. I am one, remember?”
Jeb wasn't likely to forget. Rachett was the most brutal male he'd ever known. He'd seen everything… and done everything.
“Beth Jasper is my absolution.”
Jeb's chin jerked back. He searched Rachett's face, gleaning nothing.
“The female Reflective that I killed as a mercy was Beth's mother.”
Jeb staggered back, shock running through his body like the electric current of the past.
“Does anyone else know this?”
“Just you.”
“Principle, I wish I didn't.”
Rachett shrugged.
“Jasper is important to The Cause. She could not have survived the training without the blessing of the Principle.”
True. “What of the father?”
Rachett turned away from Jeb, pacing to the window inside the office and plucking the gauzy drape aside.
“He is Sector One.”
Jeb sat down on the closest horizontal surface that presented, his breath leaving him like air escaping a deflating balloon.
It just keeps getting worse.
“Those fucking creatures…” Jeb spit into the room.
“Clearly not all.”
“She was raped,” Jeb stated, struggling to reconcile why any female would couple with a Sector One inhabitant.
Rachett shook his head as he gazed outside at the vineyards on the distant emerald hills.
He turned to Jeb.
“No. Not by her lover.”
Jeb paused.
He recovered. “Then what?”
“They were as enraged about the union as we were.”
Jeb sucked in a breath, standing.
“It was revenge?”
Rachett nodded. “Yes.”
His gaze hardened on Jeb.
“That is why we must never divulge Beth's true lineage until we are bound to do so at her twenty-first cycle.”
“I would never, Commander Rachett.”
“I know that, Jeb.” Rachett clapped him on the back.
“But the information in the wrong set of hands ...”
“Because they have jumpers.”
Rachett nodded. “They're not always as skilled as our Reflectives, they don't have the training, and are very rare.”
“That might be why Beth is ...”
“Such an anomaly. Such a wild talent.”
Jeb palmed his chin.
“Yes,” Rachett sighed.
“It has come to our attention that there are powerful jumpers in the sector. A primitive, volatile, and barbaric society that believes in survival of the fittest as its modus operandi. However…” He hesitated, plowing his fingers through his shorn hair again. “I think there's a simplicity to their Reflection. They use it sporadically, without gaining control because it's not something they rely on, but something buried within the basest fabric of their genetic composition.”
“So Beth is the product of a Reflective female and a Sector One male.”
Rachett nodded.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I met him.”
“No fucking way!”
Rachett scowled at Jeb’s use of Earth language but Jeb continued unabated.
“What happened?”
“He cradled her mother’s body like a man broken.”
“Why did he not defend her?”
“He did not come in time.”
Rachett looked away again, his mind seemingly on memories that Jeb couldn't see and didn't really want to.
“Maybe that wasn't Beth's father,” Jeb said, stumbling over the title.
“He was.”
“How can you be sure?”
Rachett tapped his fingertips on the edge of his desk.
“She's his spitting image.” He gave a short laugh, more like a bark.
Jeb didn't think anything could be funny right then.
“Then there was the matter of the rain… it fell… and the male rose from her dead body.” Rachett continued to stare at Jeb, though he appeared to look through him at another scene, at a different time.
“The water washed his black hair into his face. His skin was like marble. He was a hard male, a big one. He howled into that dark storm like he was a part of it.”
Rachett's eyes fell on Jeb's.
“Then he was.” Rachett finished quietly. “He had jumped through the storm, leaping between raindrops.”
Amazing.
Terrifying.
A Reflective buried in that uncivilized Earth, surrounded by savagery.
“He took her with him.”
It shocked Jeb out of the moment. “He—what?”
“I didn't say? He stood with her in his arms and bellowed his anguish into the sky and jumped with a dead Reflective through the water as it fell.” Rachett's voice went low, and Jeb leaned forward to catch the last word.
Moments filled with nothing but the sound of their breathing ticked by.
“Do you understand the importance of this?”
“If he knew of Beth…” Jeb said.
“He would come after her.”
“And leave a tailwind for every Sector One to follow.”
Rachett smiled, the first real one of the conversation. “Precisely.”
As they said on Three: no pressure.
“And, Jeb?”
He turned back, his hand on the old brass knob.
“She could be important.”
That bit of Sector One blood could be harnessed to allow Reflectives to jump through theoretically anything.
Jeb tried to
wrap his mind around someone jumping through the rain, with no locator, while holding a dead body.
He couldn't. That kind of raw ability would be… dangerous.
Jeb thought of Beth jumping through mist. However, she'd been solo. Her father had carried another with him, who was not living. Jeb certainly had food for thought.
*
A swift jab to the ribs brought him back to himself in a hurry.
“What in the Hades, Merrick?” Beth glared at him angrily.
He shook off the memory with effort. “Sorry, got lost for a second there.”
“Way to instill the faith, Merrick.”
“Okay,” Jeb nodded at Jasper, and she withdrew the sphere, placing it on the pedestal.
They were in the jumping room. Jeb had always found the title humorous, as if the room were bouncing around rather than being the location the jumpers leapt from.
The small sphere stood dead center in a niche perfectly formed to accept the locator.
Its deep-pewter luster shone under their gazes.
The scientists of Papilio had studied the senses of the Reflectives and found them fifty times more acute than non-Reflectives’.
Their sharpened eyesight allowed the partners to narrow their vision on the sphere, tuned to Sector Three by their guidance.
There was windows of non-reflective glass that bordered every wall and the moon slanted inside, white-washing the ancient floors to a pure carpet of low sparkles like ice.
“Ladies first,” Jeb mocked, knowing it would get a rise out of Jasper.
Beth raised her middle finger, so ladylike and violent at the same time Jeb chuckled.
He had never really analyzed her jumps.
She folded her hands like a high diver on a cliff above a deep pool of water.
Jasper dove, and a riptide of energy tore at Jeb.
He had jumped many times, and each Reflective's “signature” was distinctive.
Beth’s feminine energy was a kaleidoscope of meshed color that ripped through the room, fracturing the moonlight into shards of shining rainbows.
Jeb almost missed his cue.
He went from a standstill to a sprint, the last of her departing ribbon snapping out of existence just as he leapt after it.
Then he was hurtling into the nothingness of the pathway the Reflectives traveled.
*
Principle—what the Hades is that damn word?
Ah yes! Déjà vu.
“Beth!” Jeb hollered hoarsely. He possessed just enough wherewithal not to lose his diction on Three and slip into Latin.
Jeb didn't believe that it was spoken in Sector Three, except for in some religious temples. As least they were not in Thirteen again, though Principle knew, jumping with Beth felt like a do-over. That odd sense of doubling swept through him again, then she answered him.
“I'm right here. Stop braying like a sheep.”
Relief poured through him when he heard her trademark sarcasm.
Beth studied his expression and frowned. “What is that face for?”
He needed to be more careful to school his expression around her. The information about her father was not to be shared with anyone, especially her.
It was in her nature to be curious.
Jasper would be better off being curious about things that wouldn't get her killed.
“Rough landing.” He shrugged, sliding his eyes away.
Beth looked at him a heartbeat longer. “Seemed smooth to me, but whatever.”
She was already using Three lingo. He needed to shake off his archaic speech. Jeb had adopted some Three vernacular, but it wasn't where his talents lay.
Beth slid her pulse out of her tight denims and swiped it with her thumb to initialize. Her first and last names appeared. But instead of her home world of Papilio, it read:
Quadrant: Kent, Washington—Greater Quadrant, America—Year 2030.
Jeb switched dialects, moving smoothly into English.
“How are we doing?”
Beth rolled her eyes at him. “We hit the target quadrant and year.”
He frowned. “Okay, so why are you making faces?”
“You're using British English. We're trying to blend, doofus.”
“I am?” Jeb asked.
Beth nodded. “Snap out of it. We're way west, pal. You'll stand out like a turd in a punchbowl with that Greater Quadrant upper-crust lingo you got going on.”
Jeb began to grin. “You've really studied this?”
She put on her familiar bored, I'm-superior look.
“Ah-duh. We're here to recon, and we can't do it with that stick-up-your-ass Brit accent.”
Jeb was offended. He felt—and thought he sounded—smooth.
“I mean”—Beth put her hands on her hips—“that's fine if you want to stay here and listen to yourself talk, which might please the hell out of you.”
Jeb laughed.
“But we do have an objective.” Beth raised her eyebrows.
“Principle, you're a bossy thing.”
“Stop using Principle… it's God here.”
Jeb frowned.
In the most recent past, Jeb had been partnered with an adept linguist. Allowing him to speak for the pair had been easier. Jeb had always taken over with the physical work.
Jeb threw his hands in the air. “I give up. You do the talking.”
“Yes,” she hissed, leveling a fist by her hip and popping it straight up into the air.
“What the Hades is that move?”
“Victory.”
Jeb made a non-committal noise, which sounded suspiciously like a grunt, and followed Beth.
“The targets?” she asked.
Jeb had his pulse at the ready. “Gary and Joe Zondorae.”
“The geneticists?”
“Yeah.”
Beth threw a glance over her shoulder. “Better.”
“Yup.”
She grinned.
Sector Three was easy. Reflective surfaces abounded. Jeb was unaware of any other jumpers, so the two of them bounced from one surface to the next, Jeb leading with one leap and she the next.
Finally, they came to their meeting point.
Thank Principle this world was rife with humans of paranormal ability. That made it easier for them to seemingly pop out of thin air and have the ones they would meet barely bat an eye.
The weird had become an everyday occurrence.
Beth tumbled in behind him at their destination
Across town from their permanent locator. Pioneer Reflectives of exploration had established unobtrusive markers in every sector, across many different quadrants. Those permanent place markers were a clean jumping point back and forth between worlds. Jumping across the small Kent Quadrant had been simple because of the abundance of surfaces.
Jeb smiled to himself; the place was so dreary that it was littered with mud puddles that reflected the gray clouds roiling continuously above them. He understood it was the region, not the sector and made a mental note to stay in his quadrant forever.
Jeb caught Beth's wary eyes. Plenty of puddles for jumps, large trees for cover, and markers for graves. Remote, quiet and a good point for fast escape.
Beth pulled a face.
“What's the problem?”
“Not a fan of corpse gardens.”
Jeb shrugged. It didn't matter to him, fewer people were better in his opinion. This world had overpopulated, and disease had taken them down like flies.
His empathy for Three was at an all-time low.
“They have AftDs here.”
Jeb's mind rolled through the paranormals found here, and he didn't immediately remember the acronym. Oh yes—Affinity for the Dead. Corpse animators.
“So?”
The Pyros, Telekinetics, and Manipulators were the real problem.
He told her that.
She nodded.
“True, but do you want to see their dead walk around, scratch their ass, and shake your hand?”
<
br /> Jasper had a point.
“Look.” Jeb jerked his chin in the direction of a man and woman who appeared from behind the stand of trees then walked toward them.
Stealthy, Jeb thought, bracing himself.
The female spoke first. “I'm Amanda, and this is Chris.”
Jeb and Chris assessed each other as males do.
Jeb knew who would win a bare-handed fight.
Chris turned his attention to Jasper. “Who's she?”
Jasper's face tightened. Her offense at his dismissal was obvious.
“My colleague,” Jeb replied, and he heard the breath leak out of her, but not her anger.
Chris's eyes flicked to Jeb. “You talk funny.”
Damn.
Beth took over, smoothly shifting gears, but not before giving him a look.
Jeb's teeth came together with a snap.
“We have the product,” Beth said.
“I wanna see,” Chris strode forward, and Jeb folded his arms, legs planted, as the first fat drop of rain landed on his forehead. It chilled instantly against his skin.
Beth pulled the coded, self-eroding fingerprint strips out of a small slim reticule specially designed for jumps.
She began to pull it open to extract the paper-thin counterfeit pads when Chris snatched it away.
Jeb smiled.
Beth moved with the surety of practice. She slid her palm out in a slap that was aimed at his inner forearm. It was delivered with hard precision, and it did what she expected it to.
It flung Chris’s arm wide, and she made a grab for the bag.
Beth gracefully plucked it out of his hand.
She tossed it to Jeb. Males of the sector, especially the Greater Quadrant of America, were known for their aggression, and Chris charged Jasper as Amanda and Jeb watched.
It was fine entertainment.
Chris moved toward her like a bull after a red flag, all momentum and some skill. Jasper stood still, letting his own weight and speed ruin his attempt.
He reached out, and she grabbed his forearm with both hands then swung out her foot as she let his continue right by.
Chris tumbled to the ground sans bag, having lost the fight to a woman he outweighed by one hundred pounds.
He glared at Beth.
Jeb completely understood the smear of rage across his face.
Could he take her?
“I'm going to kick your ass.”
“Chris, we don't have time for this bullshit.”
His eyes flicked to Amanda then away. “Shut up.”
Chris got up, his desire to see through force, what he'd buy on the black market was gone.
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