Chameleon (The Domino Project Book 1)

by K. T. Hanna

  “You okay, Dom?”

  His friend focuses on him, colors warring with the usually predominant gold in his eyes while he finds an answer. “I’m not entirely sure. I keep having to fight this lethargy. Like there’s something willing me to black out. But I couldn’t leave her like that. You should have seen it, Bastian. I’m surprised she’s alive.”

  “Those suits can take a tumble or five. I know, I tested it.” Bastian leans against the wall. “How did she get so banged up?”

  Dom looks at him and then away for a moment, swallowing visibly before turning back to hold Bastian’s gaze. “She went out precisely as planned. The crossbow did the job. I could feel the transference of his memories and thoughts. That’s how powerful it was. I’ve never seen one so strong in my life. I think that’s what did it.” He closes his eyes for a moment and shakes his head. “You know how the domino communication channel appears if you ‘’search’ for it?”

  Bastian nods.

  “Take that, but thicker, more substantial and powerful. It wasn’t an option for her. Those memories and all that information slammed into her mind, forced her to receive every detail and experience it all at once.”

  Bastian winces, not liking that anyone thought this would be a necessary step in her process. “Maybe we should have found another way,” he mutters glancing down at the sleeping girl. They need to clean her up. But he knows her well enough to realize she won’t appreciate the help or being touched.

  “You would have been proud, Bastian.” Dom speaks softly and pauses. “Not only did she execute everything perfectly, she managed to keep just enough of her wits about her to get out of there.”

  “Then how did she...” Bastian’s eyes open wide in realization, and he clamps his hand over his mouth just in time to prevent himself from swearing too loudly.

  “I’m not sure how fast you travel when you phase, but when she came out of it, all she had was momentum. The minute one foot touched down, she had no control. I think she’d already blacked out when she hit the ground. If she’d not been wearing that stuff...”

  “She’d be dead.” Bastian voices the words Dom doesn’t say. He hopes this hasn’t broken her. “Now we have to wait for her to wake up and hope the damage doesn’t run too deep.”

  “She wasn’t going that fast in the halls. I thought I could catch her when she came out of it, but she traveled farther than anticipated.” Dom studies his hands briefly before fixating back on her face.

  Bastian glances at his friend and sighs. “You seem a bit worse for wear. I didn’t realize that was possible.”

  Dom tears his gaze away from Sai long enough to smile wryly. “Neither did I. I think there’s something wrong with me.”

  Bastian doesn’t have the heart to tell him he agrees.

  It’s a very long night, one Bastian keeps expecting will be interrupted. Ms. Janni trying to hunt her student down, Deign deciding she needs another consultation, or perhaps even Zach needing an outlet. But it’s quiet, especially in Sai’s case.

  For all intents and purposes, she could be fast asleep. The gravel burn all over the left side of her face might have come from falling out of a hovercraft.

  Bastian flips through the report. Although Dom’s recordkeeping is meticulous, he lacks the individual touches Sai always puts into them. He glances at his watch and nudges Dom.

  “Go take care of Mele. Sai isn’t going anywhere. She’ll still be here when you get back, and by the feel of her mind, I doubt she’ll be awake.”

  Dom looks up at him sharply. “You can tell?”

  “In a way. She’s processing everything. Her mind has shut her body down in order to do that. There’s no other way for her to deal with the huge amount of information she received.”

  “Should have hammered those details out a little better, Bastian. Maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe you could have just talked to her.”

  “If I didn’t know better, Dom, I’d say you liked the girl. But that’s not possible is it?”

  Dom’s back stiffens, and he turns to face Bastian. “It’s very possible for me to like people. I haven’t put up with you all these years because of your charming personality.”

  Bastian closes his eyes for a second, reinforcing the shields surrounding the room to their strongest possible. “I doubt you could have stopped this. I didn’t have time to plan. All I knew was these people volunteered as the decoys, and by using them instead of our real scientists when GNW knew something was up, it was a way to get Sai to see the side of them she’d never believe without a blunt lesson. They brainwash them in the training facility. You know that better than anyone, what with how they treat you when they check you.”

  His shields waver briefly, and he holds a finger over his mouth in the classic gesture of silence.

  “Perhaps. I still just think you could have told her...” Dom mutters, his voice softer than ever. He squares his shoulders and lifts his chin. “I’m going to see to Mele,” is all he says before leaving the room without a backward glance.

  Bastian hears the steel doors with their soft swoosh open and close before he sits down in the chair next to the head of Sai’s bed. Holding his shields at their maximum tires him and he lets go.

  He looks at Sai, really looks at her, and wishes they’d had another option. The choices have never been good—not for him, and not for any Rare. How many did he hear screaming, incoherent, when he went down near the laboratories? How many times did he narrowly escape landing there himself? Both are too many to count.

  Maybe she’d see; hopefully she’d understand. It was unheard of for anyone to escape the testing portion of the facility, but they couldn’t watch everything all the time. The staff had worn thin over the years. As Rares were drained to fuel the grids, Zach found new ones to replace the used. The more powerful, the better.

  Bastian sighs and brushes a few stray hairs away from the mess of blood and flesh on her face. He wonders if he can fix it, just a little to avoid bad scarring, without jolting her mind. The basics are theoretically easy. He leans forward, holding his palm about an inch away from her skin and closes his eyes, focusing.

  After a minute or so, he looks at her. Much better. It might even heal properly if she wakes in time to work on the rest. He never got around to telling her that the healing portion of that gift wasn’t his forte.

  Bastian sits back again and suppresses a yawn. Johnson was the right choice for the decoy. He’d been one of the Rares in the testing facility. One of the batteries to charge the thought suggestion grids with every drop of psionic energy they could tap from him. His mind and body were riddled with damage inflicted on him before he could escape.

  And he passed every single memory onto Sai, burning it into her mind. Something a psionic would generally avoid but, in this case, was necessary. Although she’ll always know the experience isn’t her own, there’ll be days she wonders.

  Bastian sighs again and lets his mind wander over all the different aspects and possible outcomes to reassure himself that, while painful, this is the best option they have.

  A while later the doors click, followed by Dom’s sure footsteps. Bastian stands to greet his friend, glancing down at Sai as he does.

  He sees her eyes fly open and stare at nothing as her hands reach up toward the ceiling. She opens her mouth and emits the saddest and most painful scream he’s ever heard in his life.

  Dom arrives in time to see her struggle to sit up. She blinks, her eyes haunted.

  Her brow scrunches in confusion, until her gaze rests on Dom, and her shoulders sag in relief. Sai closes her eyes and tears roll down her cheeks. “So...” Her voice hitches and she clenches her jaw visibly. “So much pain... And you!” Sai opens her eyes and looks point-blank at Bastian. “You’ve known about this all along and done nothing?”

  Bastian sighs. “Not done nothing. To be fair, I did tell you about the facility under us. I just didn’t give you details or history.”

  “I don’t care about h
ow well you managed to omit something, Bastian!” Her fists ball, and her face flushes. Her voice grates like steel on stone. “You should have told me. I have a right to know what I’m getting myself into, a right to know who I’m serving!” Her tone drops to a whisper. “I have a right to know that I’m being used to kill other people like me.” Her eyes scrunch up and the tears flow freely.

  Bastian hides the cringe he feels and moves closer, but Dom, his eyes silver for the moment, beats him there.

  “Sai, breathe.”

  She shakes her whole body and pulls away from him. “You don’t understand. You didn’t see. They... Oh no, is that what they’d do to you? Is that why you dull yourself with Shine? Tell me!”

  Sai watches Bastian, obviously waiting for him to answer. He pulls his chair closer and rests his head in his hands. There really is no way to sugarcoat it now. “Got it in one.”

  “Why don’t you leave, go away from here? Fight them! None of them deserve your help.” The words tumble over themselves in their hurry to get out her mouth. Her face is flushed, and her breaths come short.

  Bastian was expecting a reaction, but not with this much passion. He thinks for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to tell her. A way that might soothe her and help her deal with all the images bombarding her mind, with the things she’ll never forget.

  “If I don’t stay where I am, if I don’t continue to work as I have, who will be here doing what I do?” He pauses for a second, double-checking his wards while he waits for the words to sink in. “All you have to do is sort through things. I’m quite certain you’ll realize...”

  Sai closes her eyes, grips the sheets and Dom’s hand, still resting on the cover. Her expression changes to one of surprise, and she lets out a slight exclamation before looking at Bastian again.

  “How can you? I thought you were so mean. You’ve got so much to lose, Bastian. So much to lose. How can you stand this? How can anyone stand this? Why has nothing been done?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You really think I’ve been doing nothing?”

  Sai has the good grace to blush. “I didn’t mean it like that.” She pauses, and Bastian is relieved to feel some of the hysteria fading, though her eyes dart back and forth while she thinks.

  “How long has this been going on? How many people have they ruined this way? And why did you make me kill someone who got out? He managed to escape. How could you let me take his life under their orders when you knew?” Her tone is accusatory, and her eyes flare with momentary anger.

  Bastian holds a hand out and motions her to wait, to be quiet. “There are things I can’t tell you right now. There’s only so long I can reinforce my shielding enough to be certain no one can listen. And there are some things that, if you know before you leave, others might pick up on, or you may act on regardless of my advice against it.”

  “Leaving?” she asks, surprised. “Who on earth says I’m leaving? They need to pay. From the inside—gutted and drained for decades.” There’s a gleam in her eyes Bastian never hoped to see, and one he’s glad isn’t aimed at him.

  “You’ll understand everything soon enough, but for now you must leave.”

  She gapes at him.

  “You’re not explaining things correctly, Bastian.” Dom pushes himself up and paces for a few seconds before turning back to Sai. “He can’t leave to help from the outside. You have an amazing ability to heal not only yourself, but others. What do you think anyone who manages to escape or be rescued from underneath is going to need?”

  “Healing?” she answers in a small voice.

  “Healing.” Dom smiles that strange half-grimace of his and continues. “Not only can you heal, but you’re lethal. You can protect. Maybe you can show others how to protect themselves. If Bastian can show you how to recognize different abilities, then you can seek those out and aid their training. Do you understand how important that is?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” She looks at them both as if she doesn’t think they’re quite sane. “You do realize I’ve only just turned seventeen?”

  They nod.

  “None of these people will listen to me.”

  “On the contrary,” Dom says in a matter-of-fact tone. “They will listen to you because you survived your last test. Do you realize how rare that is? Since the Psionic Wars and the implementation of the Facilities, each location is lucky to have a handful of graduates a year. It’s how they thin psionic blood and populate the testing facility.”

  Sai holds up a hand, her face pale. “Not everyone fails?”

  “No, not everyone fails.”

  She sits there, still, watching her fingers clenched tightly in her lap. “They pull batteries,” —she spits the word out— “directly from the graduation classes?”

  Bastian shifts uncomfortably. “Yes.”

  “Then how did I get out?” she whispers, clenching her eyes shut.

  This time Bastian leans forward and cups her fists in his hands. “You weren’t meant to.” He watches her swallow as the tears leak out her eyes, before continuing. “But I found you, and I enrolled you and kept tabs on you throughout. I don’t attend every graduation.”

  The moments that pass feel like ages. His neck begins to stiffen in his hunched position before she finally speaks.

  “If you hadn’t come that day, I would have gone to the testing facility, wouldn’t I?”

  Bastian nods.

  “And if you hadn’t come to the exam, I wouldn’t be here either.” She opens those strange, colorless eyes, and a shiver runs down Bastian’s spine. The determination practically radiates off her.

  “Thank you,” she whispers and hugs him fiercely.

  Sobs wrack her tiny frame as she hides her head against his shoulder. Bastian glances up at Dom, whose expression is unreadable.

  After a few moments, she pulls back, wiping her eyes. “They’re kept under here?” Her voice is hesitant.

  Dom answers softly. “Kept. Left. Discarded. All three work.”

  “Leaving takes me to the Exiled? And they can help?”

  “They can.” Dom pauses for a moment. “We can’t afford to give up the benefits we gain by Bastian being here. Since he cannot leave, the logical choice is you.”

  “Do you come with me?”

  Dom shakes his head. “Not yet. There are things I’m still needed here for.”

  Sai’s shoulders slump slightly. “How do I get out?” Her voice is soft and unsure.

  Bastian smiles. “I thought you’d never ask. We don’t have that long. I’ll have to give you brief points and make sure you remember them. Are you sure you’re feeling up to it, Sai?”

  She nods and clenches her fists.

  Bastian runs a hand through his hair as he watches the sun set from his bedroom window. He can hear Sai turning pages of an old text he loaned her. She’s determined, horrified, and shocked at what she’s learned in such a short period of time.

  It’s not possible to lie mind-to-mind. She’s listed every image she ran across, every experiment Johnson went through, and all the pain endured for the psionic extraction process. All these emotions belonging to a different person cause her pain to take in.

  She’s stronger than he thought. Bastian smiles and lets himself hope they might have a chance of instigating some change, that maybe his father’s untimely death was for a reason. He has so many strings to pull and so much he needs to set up from within. Knowing there’ll be backup on the outside is pure relief.

  Dom walks into his quarters and stops. Bastian turns to see his friend shaking and his eyes going through a myriad of colors, some Bastian didn’t even know existed. He steps back and watches, unsure if he can nudge Dom out of whatever fit he’s having.

  Then the adrium colors shift and mold to every variation in the room. It’s eerie to see just how inhuman Dom actually is. Bastian’s grateful he has the foresight to mind-record the incident so Sai can hand it to Mathur for further study and hopefully help stop it.

&nbs
p; The rainbowing lasts a full five minutes. It worries Bastian, and he’s pretty sure if Dom realizes even half how bad it is, he’ll probably be scared, too.

  Eventually Dom comes out of it, eyes blinking as he tries to reorient himself. “Dammit.”

  “You know when that happens then?”

  Dom shakes his head. “Not during. Only after.” His eyes remain silver, and he taps his ear several times before gold hues rain across his eyes as he reestablishes the tenuous connection with the others. A brief wince furrows his brows, and he stumbles. “If I were a Damascus, I’d say I am malfunctioning. It’s odd and is happening to the others as well.”

  “They’re not quite like you, correct?”

  “The other dominos? I’ve never been allowed close enough to study them, but I know it’s like they left something out of the mix after Mathur left. They’re not as stable, not as ‘well built’ for want of a better phrase.”

  “In anyone else, I’d call that conceit.” Bastian laughs and steps over to his friend. “You’re due for your check-up soon. I’m sure they can fix whatever is wrong.”

  “Maybe.” Dom looks away. “I feel like a part of me has been slipping ever since he left, you know.”

  “You should go out to see him.”

  “Not right now. We have more at stake than me.” Dom straightens and looks back at Bastian. “Do you think she’s ready?”

  “No,” Bastian answers truthfully. “But I wasn’t ready to take on the world when my father died either, and I did it anyway. Sometimes it’s not what you are ready to do, but what you can do that matters. Eventually, for Sai, they should end up being the same thing.”

  “You think she can teach them?”

  “Not yet. But by the time I have her ready to leave, she’ll be able to identify and seek out any type of psionic.” Bastian glances at his watch. “Food will be here soon. I was thinking I’ll keep her in my guest quarters for a bit. I think she’s too volatile at the moment. If she accidentally comes across Deign in the hall, I can’t see it ending nicely.”