by TylerRose.
She stopped flipping her hand back and forth, gasping as a searing pain struck through her abdomen like a burning hot ice pick.
“Pain’s back,” she managed.
Shestna took her hand and teleported her to her own room. Appearing in the middle of it, the pain gone, she became aware of an odd presence. Something small, crouching behind her dresser.
“Landra Ahr, do you find anyone or anything out of place here?” she asked, heading for the warm sensation.
He performed an intense scan of the room. “I find nothing.”
She reached a hand behind the edge of the dresser, finding a metal lump and ripping it off.
“The fuck! Son of a god damn bitch,” she said, showing it in her palm.
Landra Ahr took it to examine more closely.
“That is a K’Tran listening device,” Shestna recognized it.
In a flash of anger, the device flared in flame.
“Femina, stop it!” Shestna said, reaching out to give her shoulder a shake.
The flame went out and she stared up at him with hard eyes. “You have no right to call me that. You will not use that word again.”
He smirked. “Now there is the Tyler I knew. I had been missing her these few hours. Into bed before the next pain comes.”
She made it just in time. He sat beside her as he had before, ignoring her event while he prepared the fresh needle and measured the dosage. One third more this time, not pleased with how quickly the first dose had worn off. Chen had arrived and prepared a small dish of tea.
“Drink this and you won’t be as aware of his needle.”
“Where’s it going?” she asked, and drank.
“Same place it went last time,” Shestna said, and pulled up her shirt. “Three abdominal muscles.”
She succumbed to another of those all-consuming pains, sinking as it ended into the comforting embrace of the strong herbal compound. And the familiar heat of Jerome’s energy. Satisfied she would be oblivious, Shestna administered the muscle relaxer and neuro-analgesic.
“This is a larger dose,” he said, rubbing the medicine in with fingertips. “It should last until the pains would normally end. Four or five hours perhaps. Then she will deal solely with the addiction itself.”
He disassembled the syringe and packed up his kit.
“There is a late session of Council. I can remain no longer.”
Jacket on, he bent to kiss her forehead, whispering something in Voranian before rounding the end of the bed toward the windows. Jerome rolled off to stand, extending his hand to Shestna.
“Thank you for coming to help. I know you didn’t have to.”
Shestna grasped the hand firmly. “I have always and will always do anything I can for her. I will come to see her in a few days if you are not adverse to the idea.”
Jerome made a fast decision. “You are welcome in my home.”
Shestna nodded his acceptance and glanced toward the door. “I will see you later, Julian.” He was gone.
“We found a listening device,” Landra Ahr said, the appropriate opportunity finally presenting itself.
“Where?” Jerome asked.
“Tyler found it on the back of her dresser.”
“Where is it? Let’s see it.”
“She incinerated it on accident,” Landra Ahr had to say. “The point is that someone entered this property without our knowledge and planted a device.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed to scrutinize that sentence. “With your sensors and the telepathic firepower in this house? No way. The device was probably teleported to its place with a micro-sized scan inhibitor already activated so you wouldn’t notice it.”
“Which means Solomon was listening to everything last night and getting his jollies from it. We should look for more,” Jerome said.
“There won’t be others,” Julian said. “One device where he could hear her suffer for a few hours and that’s it. This is just part of his game. Part of his obsession. I tell you now that this,” he gestured to her on the bed. “Is so not what he wanted. I guarantee you the person responsible for this has paid for his mistake with his life.”
“I don’t care what the asshole wanted,” Jerome interrupted. “It will end here. Soon as she’s well enough, we’re going hunting.”
Julian clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I wish you excellent hunting and a most satisfying kill. I must be going as well. I’ll come back when I can.”
“I’ll be back after I lock down the building,” Jerome told Landra Ahr, and went down to his own room for a hard workout and a fresh shower.
Chen left as well, needing to rest from the long day and night, and utilizing the one empty bedroom in the whole place. He turned the light off at Landra’s request and Landra stood in the silence to analyze energy fluctuations for the last two days. He finally spotted the pattern that had been the beginning of her Widening. It had started when she tried to teleport and Jerome had contained her.
His internal clock marked one in the morning Earth time. Jerome had not yet returned. He registered a new energy source. A cloaked figure appeared next to the bed. Readings that were Tyler but much older.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The cloaked hood turned to him, eyes aglow with emerald sparkling in yellow-white fire. Left hand rose, center of the palm glowing bright enough to illuminate the room. She did not have a right hand. The hood pushed back and he saw the faint outline of her Third Eye.
“When one is taken out of the flow of time and a course of action suggested, one tends to do as they are told. You made several armors.”
Female voice, his words.
She was beyond ethereal in her beauty, skin nearly transparent. The palm rested on the sleeping Tyler, that glow spreading through her chi. A deeply drawn breath, a sound of distress, and Landra watched as the visitor grew a new right hand. The palm glowed intensely as the fingers flexed.
Fist clenched, she looked at the hand as if having found a long lost friend. She looked to him.
“Her addiction will be tolerable; but you must monitor her much more closely than you are now.”
He caught a small metal cylinder she whipped across the room.
“Have her drink that as soon as I leave.”
“When are you from?” he asked.
She may have been going to answer but Jerome burst into the room.
“Who’s here?!”
He saw her and stopped. She smiled, both palms and the outline of third eye brightening with her joy.
“Tyler? What?” Eyes darting down to the bed and back to her.
“They are the same person,” Landra Ahr said.
She reached for Jerome, stepped over to press herself into his arms and kissed him. Hand reaching to the back of his neck, pulling him closer for a deep, loving kiss. Her eyes, radiant and sparkling, were fathomless. He could have sworn he was seeing the Universe through them as they parted.
“Hmmm,” she sighed. “I have missed the taste of you.”
“Missed? Did I die? Where are you from?”
She only smiled and stepped back from him.
“Remember this: The most painful choice is not always the correct choice. Sometimes you must put your foot down and not let her talk you into what you know is not correct. Sometimes you must choose who suffers. I named you Death for a reason.”
“You mean something specific. Just tell me.”
She only smiled and faded to swirling transparency. “She will come to you soon.”
The second she was gone, Landra Ahr was opening the cylinder and sitting Tyler up enough to drink the contents. It was only a tablespoon of liquid. Barely enough to swallow.
“What is that?” Jerome asked.
“I don’t know. She told me to administer it and I am.”
“Without knowing anything about it?”
“This is not the first time a future Tyler has told me to do something, Jerome. I don’t question her. And now I know what this is. It’s nanobots. I cr
eated them. They’re setting up in every major organ and activating. I can now monitor her every system from anywhere. They transmit to me as frequently as I want.”
“Manipulative fucking bitch,” Jerome scowled, and stripped to his unders to lie with her even if he couldn’t sleep. “Do we tell her?”
“Absolutely not. We keep this between ourselves for as long as possible.”
Tyler woke with a start at 8am, wide awake and feeling much better. Well enough to join Roc for breakfast and help load the dishwasher. They watched the Price is Right then the news at noon.
“A horrific discovery on the steps of the police station. The dismembered body of a man was found in a trash bag late last night. Bruce Reynolds, a resident of Point Place, had been missing since Thursday. His body had been cut into over thirty pieces after he apparently killed himself. Police are investigating but no motive or suspect has been uncovered as of yet. Bruce Reynolds was thirty years old.”
“My word,” Roc said. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Solomon.”
Roc stared wide-eyed at Tyler. “Why?”
“He put the Rovan into my drink. He’s the guy I busted trying to pass a bad check. Solomon did this as punishment for disobeying the orders he was given.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Oh yes. No one is allowed to hurt me except him. He’d try to kill Jerome if Jerome punched me and he knew about it.”
“That’s…twisted,” Roc said.
“Yup. I’ll be back later.”
She teleported to see Father Jim, her soul in need of an unburdening.
Much more at peace when she returned, she prepared two roast chickens for supper with several breaks to sit down and rest between tasks. She needed to sit at the table to cut vegetables. Demetrius came to the meal. After supper, exhausted as she suddenly was, she excused herself and went to bed.
“You okay?” Jerome asked, catching her hand as she bent over to kiss him. “Want me to come up with you?”
“I’m fine. Just tired. Shoot some stick with Meechi.”
She went up to her bedtime routine and changed the sheets on her bed. Climbing in, she turned off the lights with a thought and gave in to her fatigue. She slept all of four hours.
Waking at midnight with the cacophony of sound in her head, she gave up on sleep. Hugging a small pillow, she curled up in a blanket in the window seat. A thousand voices praying to their god and she heard them. The begging of a young woman that she find the strength to survive her husband and escape him. A hundred prayers to win the lottery, find a better job, be well again or have a family member be well.
If this was what the others had heard, she really couldn’t blame them for taking on the roles of gods and answering a few prayers here and there. At what point did it become a criminal act? Was it the fulfilling of the prayer? The belief by the one asking? Or did they have to believe themselves that they were god?
She reached out and a particular journal came to her along with her small reading lamp. She flipped through pages until she found one with only one sentence on the left side.
Any mortals who call themselves god
cannot maintain a Just Cause.
Closing the book, turning off the lamp, she sat and stared out into the night while running the statement around and around in her mind. She had never called herself a god. Others sometimes said she was already a god. How many times had someone in her previous life called her a goddess? Tried to convince her she was one?
Was she still mortal at all? The body might have been, but if the Rovan hadn’t killed it, she had to wonder.
The energy inside was not mortal. Did that make her a goddess? She’d always flatly denied it, unless agreeing served her purpose. Gods created worlds. She did not want anyone to worship her. That future was still an eon away.
Her eyes became damp with the strain of the noise and her helplessness to do anything.
Eventually she fell asleep there against the window. Landra Ahr moved her to the bed and took up his post again.
She woke shortly before noon, dressed and left, returning at midnight. Physically exhausted but with her mind continuing to churn, she conversed briefly with him when he came to her room to take up his post. She lay in bed for two hours, awake as ever, rolling this way and that to try to get comfortable. The gnawing in her belly would not go away. Not so much a pain but a craving. Like one would crave chocolate. But no chocolate would help this. Nothing would ever help this.
Suddenly the craving did turn to pain. She was up, sliding feet into slip-on shoes and teleporting her jacket to her hands and teleported up to the roof. She walked the perimeter, keeping a good ten feet inside from the edge. She was on her third round when she felt Jerome come up the stairs. He waited there for her to come around and intercepted her with strong arms that insisted she stay put for him to hold close.
“Rough night, babe?”
“Yeah. It hurts.”
“Walking makes it feel better?” he asked.
“Some.”
“Then let’s walk.”
In silence for half an hour before she stopped at the Heatherdowns Road end of the building. She let out a burst breath of relief that told him it was better. He walked her down the inside steps to the bedroom floor, kicked off his shoes and jeans to lie down with her, and spooned in close to hold her until she could fall asleep. She would talk a bit, start to drift and then jerk awake in his arms, even with his Staff Power tight and dense around her.
What a cost she had to pay for coming back to save this little shit planet.
He left her at seven to go on his jog, stopping at Landra Ahr in the corner by the door and speaking low so he wouldn’t wake her. Eye glaring hard up the foot height difference between them, Landra Ahr’s sensors spiked with the human’s anger.
“You will not ever allow her to suffer alone like that again. If she’s not asleep within half an hour of lying down, you call me.”
“She is almost never asleep within half an hour, Jerome. An hour is not uncommon. She had slept the night before last night, for three solid hours. Then was awake and could not return to sleep.”
“My order stands. Obey it,” Jerome said, and walked out with his jeans and shoes in his hands.
Changed and ready to go, he found Starbird in the kitchen finishing up her breakfast.
“What are your plans for today?” he asked her, pouring a glass from the pitcher of juice on the table.
“I was going to give the Torino’s computer system an upgrade. Landra Ahr has finished the parts he was making.”
“That can wait. Spend the day with Tyler, please. I can’t. I have meetings I cannot put off.”
“She still in that bad of shape?” Star asked.
“It’s not about the addiction. It’s about her psionic abilities. Just being within arm’s reach of her, you will help to dampen them out for her. Imagine if I had the stereo going every minute of every day at top volume. That’s what she hears. We thought it was bad for her before, it’s a thousand times more intense now. So until she gets used to it and can tune it out on her own, I think you and I should do what we can to help.”
Star thought about it a moment, tried to imagine, and ended up nodding. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Dishes in the machine, she went up and peeked in. Tyler was still asleep.
“Let me know when she wakes up,” she whispered to Landra Ahr.
That wasn’t until noon. Text sent to her phone, Star went up and knocked on the door. Tyler almost never came to the door. The latch clicked and the door opened. They sat together in the window seat and shared a bowl, the flame of the lighter flashing six inches tall when Tyler sparked it.
“Damn it,” she muttered, letting go the ignition tab and trying again.
She managed to light it on the third try, with Star biting her tongue to not offer to do it for her.
“What did you want to talk about?” Ty asked, handing the pipe over.
&nb
sp; “Nothing in particular. I thought it would be a good day to stay in and watch movies. What would you recommend?”
“Lemme think about it while we toke.”
She selected Labyrinth and they sat in the same chair with the foot up. Starbird tolerated the blanket for Tyler’s sake, and was going to ask a question about half an hour in, but Tyler had fallen asleep. She watched the movie, very much enjoying the story and costumes. Tyler woke as the credits were rolling.
“Are you up for a drive and a walk in the mall?” Star asked. “A change of scenery would do you some good and I’m wanting one of those gyro things.”
Which meant Northtowne mall. A distraction shopping excursion did sound good and Roc came along as well.
“You look better,” Jerome said to her at supper.
“I feel better,” she smiled back.
But that night come midnight, she couldn’t even lie down to sleep. She sat in the window seat with that same journal she’d left there the other night, reading that line periodically while she resisted the temptations.
[May I see you?] she heard inside her mind.
Shestna’s voice.
[You may.]
He appeared standing beside her and lowered to sit opposite her. “You are up very late,” he said in Voranian.
“Can’t sleep,” she replied in kind. “I have a question. Can Voran demand the capture and punishment of Solomon for bringing the Rovan to Earth? Or can your father, as the Emperor of Voran? If a dead or alive price was put on his head, Earnol could not charge me with murder when I kill Solomon.”
A wide smile crept across his face. “I will see what I can do.”
“I intend to take his ship so we can more easily leave Earth. I’m going to need a quick re-grouping stop and a place that’s safe until I can have my own ship. Of course the Rosaas will want theirs back. Perhaps they will place a reward on its capture so I have means to live somewhere?”
