by K. T. Hanna
“How do you feel, Sai?”
Bastian doesn’t ask the question the way Dom does. He asks it for a reason. He wants to know if she’s damaged or if she’s clinging to her sanity like he is. Sai can’t honestly answer the question. Dom asked because he was worried. Bastian is asking because, if she’s broken, he will have to “take care” of her.
“Angry, but fine.” It’s the most honest answer she can come up with. She’s angry at everyone who led to putting her in the position of deliberately taking someone else’s life.
But the world is a different place now.
“Anger is okay. Fine—not so much. You need to be able to talk about this. Bottling things up is never good, regardless of what you tell yourself, because in the end it will break you.” He sighs, puts the reader down, and walks over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “So I’ll try this again. How do you feel, Sai?”
His hands are warm, even through the resilient material of her new body armor. She swallows and licks her lips, suddenly parched. Sai looks up and locks eyes with him, choosing her words carefully, her tone tightly controlled.
“You know what? I’m angry! Actually...I am furious! Furious at you for lulling me into a false sense of happiness. Furious at anyone for expecting someone like me, with as much baggage as me, to be okay with taking a person’s life because I owe them my existence. And I am devastated that not only am I expected to do this, but I can do this and I’m good at it.”
Sai takes a deep breath to calm the anger rising in her throat, threatening to make her scream. She glances at her shoulders, watching them shake. “Get your hands off me. I’m not in the mood to be touched, least of all by you.”
Bastian lets go so abruptly she can feel the cold that rushes in to take the place of his hands.
“Don’t you feel better?” he asks, no trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“No.”
He squares his shoulders, the tension in them obvious. “You will.”
“I doubt it.” She bends to grab her backpack and slings it over a shoulder. “Will that be all? Or would you like me to lie on your couch and tell you how I felt when Mommy and Daddy Shined themselves into oblivion and forgot they had a child for weeks at a time?”
“No.” Bastian takes a step back, his facade up once again.
“Shame. It’s not every day someone born to privilege gets the chance to understand what it feels like when your parents’ favorite fantasies don’t include the life they created together.” She turns and leaves, closing the doors gently behind her.
Back in her room, Sai takes a deep breath and leans against the door. If only she could stop the shaking, the shortness of breath. She pulls the uniform off and discards it, cringing at the stiffness where the blood dried on the chest. Not even the hot water washes away the vivid memory.
Sai never cries, and the stream of water makes it easy to keep up the pretense. Even if sobs wrack her frame and leave her throat sore, the water hides it all.
Dry and in bloodless clothes, Sai settles on her bed with her reader and takes a deep breath. Flipping the tablet over, she switches it to receiving mode and creates a locking code triggered by the pattern of her psionic waves.
Recording the images means she’ll have to relive them again, have to force some form of coherence into them. The details come far too easily, and the 3-D render only reinforces her consternation. A laboratory complex. A new type of water-purifying tablet. Family and siblings. Then, celebrations back in the lab. A dead dog in a field. Intricate combinations in beakers.
But nowhere, not even once, is there a glimpse of grenades or adrium.
She puts down the tablet for a moment, confused. Had he really developed a technology that would allow acidity to be directly neutralized in water? Had she killed a genius?
Sai pushes the thoughts from her mind and stands up, making her way to the bathroom to wash her puffy eyes and stay awake. She clears her head as best she can and sits down to continue.
The leftover images remain disjointed, scattered, thoughts interspersed through them all. Happy thoughts and sad thoughts, but one prevails over all others: his dying thought.
They’ll never escape now. Who will free them?
Nothing in his mind hides a terrifying and deadly secret. Did she kill the wrong man? Where did GNW get this information from?
Her head throbs. The reaction headache in the morning will hurt, and she doesn’t have any of Dom’s clear little pills to help. But she did manage to retrieve everything she picked out of his head?
Her eyelids droop, but she locks the reader before lying down. As tired as she is, all she can think about is that you can’t lie mind-to-mind.
This time she knows it’s a dream. The gleam around the edges of her vision and the fact that she’s watching herself are a dead giveaway. It’s strange seen from this angle. She flies in unobserved, slits a man’s throat, and leaves before they react. The scene plays out in her head, over and over.
It’s not horrifying in the sense her dreams usually are, but only because she feels so numb. Ice closes over her and holds her in place while she gets used to watching herself kill on repeat. Desensitization at its finest. Her chest constricts and she gasps for air.
Her body jolts awake. Momentarily disoriented, it takes a few moments to realize why she woke up. The knock on her door is faint, but it’s definitely there.
“Who’s there?” she asks softly as she pads to the door.
“Bastian.”
She frowns as she unhitches the latch, wondering if he can already tell the expression on her face. “What do you want?” she asks sulkily as she opens the door a crack.
“Just let us in.” He pushes gently and is followed into the room by Dom, who keeps his eyes on the ground.
Sai glances down as she closes the door behind them and pulls on her bathrobe before climbing back onto her bed. “Well?”
Bastian brushes a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristic action she’s not seen him do before. “I have your next mission.”
Sai blinks and glances out of the window. From the light coming through, it has to be early. “What?” It hasn’t even been a day yet. The numbness returns.
Bastian holds up a hand and stops her train of thought. “This is forewarning. Spend a day recuperating, and then a day training before you have to head back out. Ms. Janni needs to see you as well.”
“Do we...” Sai stops, not entirely sure how to phrase it. How does she phrase a question that goes against everything she’s learned up until now? Do we trust this source? Are we sure this threat is real?
So many questions run through her head. Instead of asking them, Sai just wishes she did. “Do we have everything?” If she pushes the color of Franklin’s blood to the back of her mind, perhaps she can pretend it never happened.
“Everything you need to know is on there.” Bastian nods to the reader Dom is handing to her. “Get to know all about Johnson. Follow the training directions in there.”
“Same tactics?” she asks quietly. It feels like her dream, detached from herself. The ice encroaches on her heart painfully. She lowers her eyes and stares blankly at the reader in her hands.
“A variation to keep the element of surprise.” Bastian straightens and dusts off his jacket. “Sai?”
She glances up at the sound of her name. Her eyes won’t focus for a few seconds and her response is delayed. “Yes?”
“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me or ask me?”
Sai pauses for a second and really studies him, wondering if she can trust him. “Apart from having killed a man in the blink of an eye?” She shakes her head. “Nope, nothing wrong with me at all. I’m just your perfectly normal ninja teenager. Just the way you like them. All rolled up in obedience.”
It’s the first time she’s ever seen Bastian scowl, but he nods his farewell and heads out of her room without another word.
Dom looks directly at her. “You could give him a break,
you know, Sai.”
For that one moment she can’t breathe, her attention captured by the gold playing back and forth in his eyes.
“He never gives me one.” Her voice is breathy and petulant, like the child she no longer is. She can’t help it. Every time she’s around Bastian, she feels like one. She turns to see Dom pause at the door.
“You have no idea how many breaks you caught when you got him as your mentor. No idea at all. Ask Nimue one day, if you have the guts.”
He leaves the room, those words ringing in her ears.
Sai clutches the crossbow she fought valiantly for and stares sightlessly out of Mele’s window. The weapon wasn’t Bastian’s or Dom’s first choice, but she stuck to it stubbornly. The proximity to her target in the previous mission was unsettling. Any distance is welcome. Armed with bolts that disintegrate shortly after impact, it’s the safest way for her to take out a target close to a city dome.
She pushes down the thoughts telling her to run, asking her why she’s doing this. Instead, she concentrates on the dilemma plaguing her since she absorbed some of Franklin’s memories and had a chance to sort through his thoughts.
What makes these people her targets? Just because GNW says they have information doesn’t make it automatically correct, right? Who is the source? Who is it that decides to end someone’s life on the scrap of a rumor?
This time she’s determined to make sure she knows. Without a shadow of a doubt. If she’s going to kill a man, then she’s going to understand why he has to die.
Killing innocent people, even if GNW decides they’re in the way, isn’t right. Sai takes a deep breath and her knuckles turn white where they clutch the weapon.
She glances around the ship as Mele’s color changes and her contours soften. Sai doesn’t understand the way the vehicle works, but it’s warm and cozy to ride in. It makes her feel safe. Maybe it’s because Dom makes her feel safe, too.
Dom appears much more relaxed when he pilots Mele. It makes the journey less rigid. For a few hours at a time, Sai can almost forget she’s going to take out another target.
“I will not fail. I will succeed. I will not be broken,” she mutters to herself and looks out of the small window again. Even though Dom probably heard every word, he doesn’t act as though he does.
Mele slows. Though Sai can’t see anything beyond the black of night out the windows, she knows they’ve arrived. She shuts her eyes tightly and, as futile as she knows it is, wishes herself away.
Sai cracks one eye open and sighs at the distinct lack of change in location. She pushes herself out of the passenger seat to help with stationing the transport, but Dom waves her back to her seat.
“I can do this perfectly well on my own. We have a few hours to dawn. I’ll wake you in plenty of time.”
Sai nods and closes her eyes again, knowing sleep will be painfully elusive but appreciating the chance to rest anyway.
She goes over the assignment in her head. Every placement and step right up to making sure she grasps the victim’s direct thoughts and memories before he dies. The crossbow means no need for her to be sprayed by gushing blood this time, and a weapon designed to be untraceable. Not that it matters, since GNW sanctioned the execution themselves.
It’s still hard to believe they spared her only to have her take more lives in the future.
The thought makes her nauseous and she sits up to stretch in time to see the first pale rays light up the sky. Heading into winter, the air requires a reduced amount of filtration and the sun’s rays aren’t as harsh. In its own way, the world outside the cities is wild and dangerous, but beautiful nonetheless.
“Perfect timing,” Dom says from behind her. He holds out some water and vitamins for her to take. “You need something and I’m not sure trying to eat food before this is your best bet.”
Sai blushes at the vague memory of vomiting a lot on the way back from her first assassination. That has to mean she’s still human. “At least I can eat food.”
Dom looks at her, face blank. “You realize I can eat food too, right?”
“Yeah. Nervous energy. Wanted something witty to come out.”
He shrugs. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
She wonders if there’s a smile tugging at his lips or if it’s a trick of the rising shadows.
“Are you ready?” he asks softly as she picks up the crossbow, and slings the lightweight quiver onto her back. She pulls the bow up, tests how taut the wire is, and nods, not trusting her voice to come off as steady as she needs it to.
Adrenaline makes her shake in a bad way. It’s difficult to calm her nerves. The crossbow has always been her ranged weapon of choice, ever since she attended the training facility. She knows she’s good at it. She concentrates on that.
The sun spreads its toxic arms further, tingeing the morning a prophetic crimson. Sai shivers.
She can see the slow-moving party on the horizon, on foot and—if the information in her reader is right—on the way out to their own hidden transport. A few seconds more and she’ll have to move. She can barely hear Dom counting down, even though he’s right next to her. The world slows again, nothing but seconds. Nothing but the swirling dirt she’ll disturb in a moment.
Three.
She hears the number and bends down slightly, ready to run, heart beating fast. Sai reaches out with her thoughts, lightly brushing the approaching people.
Two.
Her mind is already in place, and she syncs herself with Johnson’s movements, listening for stray thoughts before her strike. His guards are younger and not psionic, but the man himself seems to have some small ability. The only opening in his thoughts will be on impact.
One.
Sai pushes her frown away and concentrates on breathing as she prepares to launch herself into their path.
Go.
She pushes off, gliding a bit to get her run up and slip into the phase—a beautiful long phase, leaving about a hundred and fifty feet between her and her target.
They’ve still not noticed her by the time she’s cocked the first bolt. Crossbows are more difficult to draw, but the three bolts load in quick succession. If she needs more than three, she’s failed anyway.
She sights briefly, her mind still watching them, giving her better coordinates than her eyes alone could ever hope to. She aims with the same aid and fires three times in quick succession.
While the arrows fly, she focuses on him, her curiosity insatiable. There has to be more to this. Just how much has everyone, including Bastian and Dom, kept from her?
As the first bolt hits, his mind flies open. When the second bolt catches him in the chest, every thought he’s ever had, every memory he’s ever filed away streams across the channel, and straight into the recording centers of her brain.
So much information. Sai stumbles back at the overload, unable to break the link. New and difficult questions bombard her all at once. Her head swims. Her vision snaps. She feels the third bolt thud into his chest as if it were her own, just as the connection severs.
Sai turns, blindly, the need to get back to Mele almost a reflex. Tears stream down her face.
She stumbles and throws herself into the return phase with no true direction and barely maintains consciousness as she skids out of the shift without control, tumbling across the harsh red ground until everything goes black around her.
Bastian glances at his wrist as he heads down to the docking area, concern at Dom’s last communication making him antsy. The twists and turns of the corridors afford him time to think about Deign’s insistence he take care of fixing the odd blackout situation that seems to be affecting all the dominos. It reflects the general fear of another Damascus incident. The fiasco caused by the Damascus stage of the Domino Project is the reason Mid-Am is now the GNW United Conglomerate, governed by GNW instead of the once democratically elected officials.
“They should be back shortly,” Bastian murmurs. The transport won’t be long, and from the so
unds of it, Dom will be carrying a dead weight with him. He may need help juggling things. Supernaturally strong or not, he can’t grow extra limbs.
Bastian knows it for a fact—the scientists tried.
He can’t help feeling uneasy. Setting things up was difficult. Johnson wasn’t an incapable psionic. Whatever he prepared for her might have been too much. The truth can do that. Seeing what you’ve believed to be true your entire life exposed for a lie can destroy a person.
Bastian hears the soft hum of Dom’s sleek vehicle just as it rounds the corner to dock. The faint breeze as it sets down flutters the hem of his coat. Despite the gravity of the situation, Bastian can’t help but smile as Mele’s colors adjust back to adrium’s natural gold-hued grey.
Sai is the first thing he sees when the door opens. She’s paler than he remembers in that black body armor. It doesn’t seem to have done its job as well as it should. Parts of adrium-infused fiber have torn away to show rough abrasions. Blood droplets hang onto the fabric. Her dark hair is splayed out over the floor, and she’s curled up, defensive even in her sleep. She looks as young as she is and more vulnerable than she should.
Dom moves into sight, and Bastian takes a step back. He’s never seen Dom so emotional before. The domino barely even acknowledges him before bending down to scoop Sai up in his arms. He moves slowly, maneuvering her gently out of the vehicle, her head resting against his chest.
“The backpacks are on the passenger seat, Bastian. If you could...”
It’s even rarer that Dom tells him what to do. So rare in fact, that Bastian simply does it and follows his friend back to the office.
The doors open soundlessly, allowing Dom and his burden to pass through. Bastian enters last and seals off the room. Once Sai is safely ensconced in the guest bed, Dom’s face relaxes a little, but his stance is tense.
