by Paul Tassi
Noah sat in the curved seating that rose out from the ground like a miniature gladiatorial arena. Traditional Soran schools had nothing of the sort on campus, but the Earthborn were a special case. And it wasn’t as barbaric as it probably looked from the outside. It served to help the students blow off steam and learn how to dismantle attackers should the situation call for it. And with a newfound promise that they’d get to leave the colony at age twenty, they just might need such training to deal with the dangerous wide world.
Celton called the next pair down to the floor: Quezon, the dark, usually silent giant nearly as tall as Noah, and Kavala, his half-brother by way of their shared mother from Earth’s Philippine island chain. Kavala was wide with muscle from his Greek father and was one of the more formidable Earthborn in the ring. Quezon’s reach could give him the edge, however. The two began to slowly circle one other. They were fighting without practice weapons, bare fists only.
Noah and Erik were sitting in a row, boxing Sakai and Kyra between them. Noah didn’t much care for the pairing implication, but Sakai had assured him that Kyra had no late-night visitors in their shared quarters, be they assassins or his brother. That much was a relief at least.
Celton was just about to signal the match to start when he noticed Erik in the stands. This was his first appearance at sparring since their return.
“First Son!” Celton called out from the floor, using one of Erik’s most disliked nicknames. “Nice of you to join us today. Will you be taking part in a match yourself?”
Erik slouched back a few more inches.
“Only if I’m facing you, Instructor,” he called back.
“If only I were allowed to give you the thrashing you so desperately seek,” Celton replied with a smirk. He’d always disliked Erik, as did a fair number of the teachers. “You’re telling me you learned nothing running away from Xalans on Earth?”
Erik’s annoyed look turned downright dark.
“Careful, Instructor.”
“I’m just saying, if you’re some world-hopping warrior now, it would be nice if you graced the rest of us with a lesson.”
Erik glanced sideways toward Kyra, who was chuckling at the banter. Noah knew his brother well enough to know that Erik probably took that as her laughing at him.
Uh oh.
Erik rose from his seat.
“I’ll fight,” he said, turning away from Kyra and slowly marching down the rows of seats toward the floor.
“Ah, amazing! The little prince agrees.”
Now that was Erik’s least favorite nickname. Noah could almost feel the heat pouring off him.
“And who will you challenge?” Celton continued, gesturing outward to the Earthborn in attendance. Kyra looked nervously at Noah and Sakai.
Don’t do it, Erik.
Noah didn’t want to fight his brother. Not here, not now, not again. Though, as he considered it, he wasn’t sure if it was because he thought he’d win, or that he’d lose.
“Them,” Erik said instead, pointing toward Quezon and Kavala, who had ceased their circling to witness his exchange with Celton. Both looked surprised. Noah breathed a secret sigh of relief, but then shook his head as he realized what his brother was getting into. His ego was bad enough normally, but to have Kyra around inflating it was making matters worse.
“Fine,” Celton said, jovial no more. He wanted to see Erik get demolished as penance for his boasts.
Kavala simply shrugged and looked at Quezon, who was silent and locked eyes with Erik as he stepped into the ring.
“What’s he doing?” Sakai asked, her voice low.
Noah looked at Kyra.
“Showing off.”
“He can’t win, those two are—”
“He can.”
He will.
Few people truly understood Erik’s fighting prowess when he set his mind to it. Noah was one of them. His father had killed Shadows. His mother had conquered armies. Destruction was in his blood.
Quezon swung first. Erik ducked under the punch and countered with a sharp jab to his exposed ribs. Kavala lunged at him from the side, but Erik rolled over the top of his broad shoulders and kicked the back of his knee when he landed, sending him tumbling. Quezon launched himself over the stumbling Kavala and let loose a lightning-quick series of kicks that Erik deflected left and right until one struck his shoulder. Erik curled his newly reattached fingers into a fist and countered with a hard right to Quezon’s jaw.
Kavala regained his balance and ran at Erik full-steam. Noah’s brother was barely able to duck the clothesline in time, but as Kavala whipped around on the backswing he caught Erik in the chest with an elbow. Erik flew backward, but as soon as he landed he launched himself up and threw both feet into a dropkick that connected with Kavala’s abdomen. Erik hit the ground and rolled out of the way as Quezon tried to stomp down on him with one of his long legs. Erik caught the inside of Quezon’s calf with his hooked foot and pulled him down as he got up. He drove the taller fighter into the ground with a crushing punch, but then bent backward to avoid another swing from Kavala. Erik blocked a second punch and a high knee, which lifted him off his feet all the same. He countered with a pair of spinning high kicks, one to Kavala’s face, the other to Quezon’s arm, which he was using to get back up. Quezon went crashing back down to the earth, and Erik landed a pair of jabs and a hard right cross to Kavala’s already bloodied face. His eyes went in two different directions as he fell to the ground.
“Enough,” Celton shouted, dismayed at the outcome.
Quezon was livid as he scrambled to his feet. Kavala regained his senses and joined him. They wouldn’t be embarrassed any more than Erik would. Both dove toward him. Whatever fury was on their faces, it was nothing compared to the expression he wore.
In half a second, he grabbed Quezon’s arm and drove straight through it with his palm. The subsequent scream and bone crack were only matched by Kavala as Erik stomped his boot into his shin and splintered it.
There were screams coming from the crowd too at that point. The floor was covered in blood, as were the three combatants, and white bone shards poked out of Quezon’s useless arm and Kavala’s ruined leg. Kavala was howling in agony while Quezon had apparently passed out from the pain.
“Erik!” Noah shouted, leaping up from his seat the moment he’d heard the first bone crack.
Erik turned to face Celton and mouthed something no one could hear over the cries of the Earthborn all around them. Celton let loose a thunderous punch that Erik made no attempt to dodge. His brother hit the ground between his two victims. Noah looked back toward Kyra. Both she and Sakai had their mouths covered with their hands, speechless. Theta was one row up from them and looked equally horrified.
Noah arrived at the carnage on the floor. His brother was on his back, conscious, but staring blankly at the rafters.
Smiling.
Laughing.
Noah marched through the med bay, where Kavala and Quezon were having their bones set and two Chinese half-sisters were recovering from a bout with the parasite. The door at the end of the bay lifted and he made his way down a series of winding hallways until he reached the area he was looking for: holding.
The cell was covered in dust; it was seldom needed for the normally well-behaved Earthborn. But his brother had managed to land himself there a few times. He sat cross-legged on the ground, drawing shapes in the dust with his finger.
Noah approached the glowing barrier screen that kept his brother locked inside and got as close to it as he could without touching the energy field. Erik glanced up at him. No one had bothered to clean him up, and he was still painted with dried blood.
“What is wrong with you?” Noah growled through clenched teeth.
Erik lazily brought himself to his feet and approached the barrier.
“You could have killed them,” Noah continued.
Erik rolled his eyes.
“Since when is a broken bone a near-death experience? They’ll
be mended in a week and you know it.”
Bones had been broken in the ring before, but always accidentally, and never out of purposeful savagery.
“What was that?” Noah said. “You trying to show off to Kyra? If you think that’s the sort of thing to impress her, you don’t know her at all.”
“Oh and you do?” Erik spat back. “All your late nights on the dreadnought give you some insights into her delicate nature?”
Noah resented what Erik was hinting at.
“We never—”
“Of course you never, gods forbid you betray your nonexistent oath to Sakai.”
“She needs our protection,” Noah said. “Not your unwanted affection.”
“Maybe she wants both,” Erik said. “You ever think of that? You weren’t the only one spending fourteen hours a day with her, you know. She deserves better than a giant oaf who has delusions of being some sort of saint, despite stealing longing glances at her chest whenever possible.”
Noah banged on the screen angrily, and immediately regretted it as his entire arm went numb. He tried to shake out the needles with limited success. Erik was just trying to provoke him now, and he was falling for it.
“This isn’t even about Kyra, is it?” Noah said, the feeling beginning to come back to his fingers.
“Of course not,” Erik snapped. “It’s about going to Earth and fighting in a real war, and now being forced to come back here for playschool.”
“We have a duty here,” Noah said. “We have an entire species to help train and cultivate so the human race doesn’t go extinct.”
“You think that’s the most pressing issue at hand here? Our dear father is a psychotic Shadow, our entire planet may fall to this Archon asshole, and our High Chancellor has put out a hit on your little platonic clone friend. And I’m supposed to care about exam scores and my combat training KDA? How can you stand it after what we’ve just been through? It was bad enough before, but now it’s just unbearable.”
The scary thing was that Noah agreed with everything Erik was saying. The everyday happenings of the colony seemed so insignificant now after all they’d experienced. Was he any closer to helping his father regain his sanity? Helping Kyra escape her death sentence? Winning the Great War? But still he pressed Erik.
“The others look up to you,” Noah said. “You’re a role model, and it terrifies them to see you like this. What sort of example is that?”
“You’re all the role model they need, brother,” Erik said with a sarcastic grin.
“Theta looks up to you too. She adores you. You should have seen her today after she watched you tear those guys apart. She was heartbroken.”
“Like I give a shit about what Theta thinks!” Erik shot back. “She’s useful when she’s pressing buttons to let me out of this place or arranging trips to other solar systems. I see those blushing looks she gives me, but someone should tell her that two different species can’t mate!”
There was a loud clatter from the side of the room. Theta was standing there and had dropped a tray of bandages and gel vials. Her snow-white face was bright crimson as she scrambled to pick them up.
“I was just … I was coming to treat your … I volunteered to address your injuries while—” she stumbled over the words, and her claws were shaking as she reassembled the contents of the tray. “My apologies, I will return another time so as not to intrude on your private—” She turned and quickly left before she even finished the thought.
For all Erik’s rage and swagger, he looked downright mortified when Noah turned back to him.
“This is why you’re alone,” Noah said, jabbing his finger toward his brother within an inch of the screen. “This is why you’ll always be alone.”
18
Lucas sat outside in one of the many paved courtyards of the military base. Soldiers marched around in formation, and a pair of prototype aerial fighters were being worked on in the sprawling hangars across the way. It was starting to get cold on the continent, though it would likely never see snow. Thick gray clouds rolled by, but they hadn’t unleashed any rain yet. Still, Lucas could hear thunder off in the distance.
It had quickly become clear that keeping Lucas locked up in the sublevels was to no one’s best interest when, out of sheer boredom, he had pummeled the walls of his cell until the allium was warped to look like a frozen pool of turbulent water.
He eyed the outer perimeter walls he could easily leap or charge through with his newfound strength and speed. But he had no reason to do so. He needed Alpha’s help, and besides, where would he even go? One of his children thought he was a monster—which was hard to refute given his current half-formed Shadow status—and he’d accidentally assaulted the other during a psychotic break. And Asha? At least she had been allowed to visit him. And there she was.
Asha wore military fatigues a few shades darker than the rest of the soldiers in the base. She still had her winged Guardian emblem pinned to her chest, though she hadn’t been sent out on a mission with them since the Purge of Makari, as they called it. Since then, Commander Kiati had taken her Guardian squad to assist on Aerias, one of the farthest colony planets, where fighting had been fierce both in orbit and on the ground until the Xalan fleets had fled. Lucas was pleased to hear of Kiati’s promotion in the wake of Mars Maston’s death. The squad deserved a leader of her caliber. Rumor had it Asha was offered the position herself, but turned it down.
Her hair was long and wild as it always was, and she had to brush it out of her face when the winds began to pick up. It was stunning how little she’d aged, and Lucas felt downright ancient beside her, acquiring more silver hair by the day. At least it was growing back.
He embraced her when she reached him, the engines of her transport winding down a ways off. Soldiers turned to stare at the pair of them. Lucas was used to everyone looking at Asha when she entered a room (or a military base, for that matter), but knew it was him they were gaping at. Lucas was wearing a long, high-collared olive jacket, but black veins crept around the sides of his face. And there was no hiding his electric eyes, which stood out in the grayness of the day as though they glowed. However well trained the soldiers were at the Merenes base, they were always visibly unnerved whenever he surfaced. Even so, all were sworn to secrecy about his return to Sora under threat of imprisonment. Knowing Madric Stoller, possibly worse.
“How do you feel?” Asha asked as she pulled away from him. The pair started walking toward the hangars. The soldiers all snapped to attention and pretended they hadn’t been gawking.
“Weaker,” Lucas said, smiling stiffly.
“Well, weaker for you these days isn’t saying much,” Asha replied.
Lucas nodded.
“Alpha’s charting about a 30 percent drop in my strength over the past few weeks. He believes he’s almost fought off conversion completely, and it shouldn’t be much longer now.”
“That’s a relief,” Asha said, breathing out a sigh. She eyed Lucas curiously when he remained silent. “Isn’t it?”
“Imagine you were given the power to do anything,” he said. “And all you were told you should do was sit in one place while the gift was slowly taken away from you.”
“A gift?” Asha said, wrinkling her nose. “That’s what you think the Archon did to you? Ask the Corsair how that’s working out.”
“You sound like Alpha,” Lucas said, the hangars growing large up ahead. “But you don’t know until you’ve experienced it. There’s nothing like it.”
Lucas made his next step a stomp, and the pavement cratered beneath his boot. Asha was not impressed, and Lucas felt a bit silly.
“I just want you to be rid of this so you can get out of here and we can try to be family again,” she said.
“The boys don’t really want much to do with me,” Lucas said, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets.
“The boys don’t know you,” Asha said. “And you don’t know them. You’ve been missing for the last sixteen years, and psych
otic or unconscious most of the time since you woke up. This is the best I’ve seen you, and it’s because Alpha’s treatment is working. Don’t you want more days like this?”
Lucas nodded silently. She was right. Lucas’s head was as clear as it had been before they’d gone to Xala. Probably since pre-war Earth, for that matter.
“And what about your other … gift?” Asha pressed.
“The mind control,” Lucas whispered. Saying it out loud was bizarre. “It’s what Stoller’s really after. Same as the Archon, I imagine. Alpha won’t test it. I’m too scared to try. Strength and speed I understand, but that? It’s terrifying. Even I’ll admit that.”
“All the more reason for Alpha to continue your treatment,” Asha said, putting her hand on the back of his neck. They were in the shadow of the hangar now. Lucas looked up at the fighter hanging suspended from the ceiling. One of Alpha’s designs, from the looks of it. It was a marvel of engineering, seamlessly merging Xalan and Soran technology. The other copy of the ship next to it had much of its paneling open, and a team of engineers was performing electrical surgery on it.
“I know,” Lucas said. “But what if I can be the tipping point in the war?”
“The war has already tipped, if you ask the top brass,” Asha said. “Stoller thinks the Xalans are prepping for one final desperation push, but our homeworld defenses will shred them. They lost too much trying to retain the colony worlds.”
Lucas sighed. He supposed they were right. That he should give up these strange, wondrous, horrible powers and return to an ordinary life if the war truly was about to come to an end. He had his family back. What could be more important than that? He needed to remember that was all he had ever wanted.
A few days later, Lucas sat alone in his windowless living quarters, flipping through various layers of the Stream on the mammoth projection that took up most of the wall. The news broadcasters were practically tap-dancing with the news that the Xalans were on the run and saying Chancellor Stoller was due full credit for turning the tide of the war. Lucas scoffed, thinking of how many warship engines Alpha had assembled over the past few years, and how any sort of victory would have been impossible without them.
