by Amber Stuart
Then that died, too.
As the echoes slowly wound down to silence, and the ringing in my ears began to lessen, I could hear my heart beating loudly in my chest. Dread hit me, even before a much more familiar voice spoke up from the other side of the robotic trawler.
"Cease fire!" it shouted, breaking the silence. “It is done!”
I recognized the voice as Ledi’s. At first, though, I couldn’t comprehend his words.
“It is done!” Ledi repeated, louder. “We have accomplished our goal! The lock is open! Nihkil Jamri is one of us again!”
Looking at Nik, I felt the blood drain from my face.
Seeing the same understanding bleed into Nik’s dark irises, I felt that wave of dread I’d been carrying around abruptly worsen.
Ledi wasn’t leading us to safety.
He wasn’t saving us from the Pharei... or the Malek.
This whole thing had been staged.
Looking around the room at the armed morph surrounding us now on three sides, something else hit me as I scanned the rows of distinctly not-human faces. Ledi must have been behind the bombing in the Council chambers, too.
Ledi was the Council mole.
As if he heard me, Council Advisor Ledi turned.
Looking directly at Nik, Ledi grinned at him broadly.
Then he let out what sounded like an involuntary laugh. The sound barely contained the triumph I heard in his voice.
“Finally, my friend!” he said, smiling wider. “Finally, the charade is over! Finally, I can tell you who I really am, and welcome you home, Jamri!”
24
SUBTERFUGE AND A REUNION
I KNEW IT was Ledi speaking.
I knew that, but somehow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t know his voice, and not only because of the smug note of victory there.
Ledi sounded different. Not just in tone, but in everything I could hear and feel behind his words. I couldn’t make sense of how he could be so entirely different, yet still be the same guy. I heard the accent. I knew the words.
But, somehow, it just wasn’t him.
"Gulau-tau-tre, abbens, uya," the same voice said, louder. "Fusilwei... Nihkil Jamri. We are so pleased to welcome you back to being with us, my friend...”
I glanced at Nihkil.
Whatever this was, his understanding of the situation contained far more nuance than my own. Nik’s face had paled to the point where I might have worried he verged on passing out, if not for the cold look of disbelief in his eyes. Well, that... and the furious line of his mouth. Nik looked about to speak for a second, then didn’t.
“Nik?” I whispered. “What’s going on?”
The expression on Nik’s face only hardened more.
I felt the heat rise in my chest as his emotions reached me through that opening between us... an opening that now throbbed and pulsed, seemingly with a life of its own. I could barely think past the sensation, much less the barrage of Nik’s feelings that came with it.
No real understanding solidified for me, but I could tell that, unlike me, Nik knew the significance of that change in Ledi’s voice. He thought he did, anyway.
Staring at him, I found myself thinking he was probably right.
Even apart from that fire ripping apart my chest... even apart from nearly being killed, and the ringing in my ears from that whistle, I couldn’t tear my eyes off Nik’s face.
If he were anyone else, I might have been afraid of him.
Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure I wasn’t afraid of him, but fear didn’t top my list of emotions as I watched his symmetrical features shift with his understanding. All I could think was that Nik might really lose it.
He might just flip out, right here and now.
“Nik!” I whispered fiercely, to distract him as much as anything. “Nik! What is it?”
His fingers tightened on my shoulder. Even so, when he looked at me, I saw the worst of that heat dim. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
"Nik," I said, not hiding my relief. “Come on. Talk to me.”
He gave a perceptible shake of his head.
Still holding me down, he moved his head to the left and up, peering between the metal treads to glimpse the people on the other side of the metal crawler. He still didn't let his head clear the machine, but I found myself thinking he had to be looking for the owner of the voice, maybe to verify his suspicions to himself.
"What is Ledi doing?" I whispered, seeing that spark ignite back in Nik’s now-red eyes. "Nik? Do you know what he’s up to?"
He motioned me quiet, even as Ledi spoke again.
"Come now, Jamri," Ledi said. His voice shifted back to the one I knew. "Can we drop this pretense, please? I felt it open. You know I did. You also know what that means. You know who I am... finally. And I must confess, it is nothing but a relief to me...”
A smile formed in the air around the other man’s words.
“Must you play these games, trying to convince yourself that what you know to be true, cannot be?”
Ledi, or whoever he was, raised his voice, speaking to the others in the room.
“Lower your weapons, friends,” he said, his voice again holding that smile. “Let Jamri know we mean no harm to him or his human. Those few among us who might have wished him ill have already been dispatched... he is only with his people now.”
I glanced at Nihkil again. I saw conflict in his eyes, and more of that anger, maybe more than I’d thought him capable of, truthfully.
“What’s going on, Nik?” I whispered.
He looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there. I didn’t get the sense he didn’t want to speak that time, more that he had absolutely no idea what to say. The expression on his face bordered on helpless, threaded through with that anger and disbelief.
“Nik,” I said, my voice lower. “Nik... damn it. Talk to me. You’re scaring me.”
“Jamri!” the other voice boomed over at us. “Jamri, my friend! You must calm down! Remember the heightened emotions with an open lock! Calm yourself, before one or both of us is forced to do something drastic!”
I started to raise my head, but Nihkil's fingers gripped me tighter, holding me down against the wheel. Before I could argue, he raised his voice, speaking to the other man.
“I will come out,” Nik said. “I will go with you. But you must let her go!”
Ledi let out a low, chuckling sound.
It sounded like nothing I’d ever heard from him before. I was still trying to understand the expression I could see on Nik's face, when this new Ledi's voice rose again.
“You really have got yourself quite a crush, haven’t you, Nik?” he said.
“I mean it,” Nik growled. “Let her go! I won’t negotiate anything until you do.”
Ledi went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “...Up until when you lost it on Hunsef that day, I really thought this whole thing with the human was a political move, Jamri... an attempt to get rid of your military-held leash. Don’t get me wrong, I applauded this move of yours. I thought it brilliant, really, to find an otherworlder for this. Especially one who managed to pass through the gates without their insides inverting...”
“You will release her,” Nik said. “Or you might as well shoot me where I stand.”
“You know I won’t do that, Jamri.”
“Then you’re going to lose some people. Maybe a lot of people––”
“Wait!” I said, holding up a hand, more to Nik than anyone. Seeing his mouth harden as he fell silent, I turned towards Ledi, raising my voice. “What is this? Who are you, if you’re not Ledi?”
Silence hung in the air, broken only by the trawler’s engine.
“Nik knows,” Ledi said after another beat. “Don’t you, Nik? You know who I am. Now, at least.”
I stared at Nik, but the morph’s expression didn’t budge.
“Let her go!” Nihkil said, harsher. “You’
re here for me. Clearly. Take me, then... you have no need of her, too.”
Turning, I shoved at his chest angrily with a hand. “Take you? Nik... are you out of your mind? You’re not leaving me here!”
Ledi’s chuckle again floated over the air across the hangar. “I think your girl has a point, Nik. You can’t very well leave her on Palarine now... can you? Noble as your words sound, they aren’t exactly realistic.”
The second silence stretched longer than the first.
Through it, I could almost feel Nik thinking.
He still seemed to be recovering from shock. I watched him shake his head, as if he refused to acknowledge the other’s words. I could almost feel him trying to force himself to accept this new situation, whatever it was.
I was still straining into that silence, trying to decide what the hell was going on, when the robotic crawler stopped dead in front of us. The ragged wheels came to a halt, along with the guardrail I still gripped in both of my hands. I didn't know who shut the crawler's engines off, Ledi's people or someone watching from elsewhere, but the sudden silence and lack of motion made me feel even more exposed, even though we weren't any better or worse off than before.
We were still too far from anything to make a run for it, even if we weren’t surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered.
As that much sank in, I felt myself sigh.
Ignoring the tightening of Nik’s hands, I straightened.
There was no point in hiding. If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead. Nik must have realized the same, because he didn’t force me back when I slid free of his grip that time. He merely followed as I stepped out from behind the giant wheel.
My eyes immediately found him.
Ledi stood, open-palmed, the doong holstered in a pouch by his side. His eyes trained past me to Nik, as if I didn’t exist.
“You are Zarwin,” Nihkil said, into that quiet.
I glanced between them, startled.
Zarwin, the morph rebel? I hadn’t seen that one coming.
Ledi appeared unsurprised by Nik’s words, however.
His eyes shone brighter, even as he reached up, plucking what must have been contacts, or some alien equivalent, out of his eyes. Once they were gone, his eyes shone a pale, robin’s egg blue, eerily bright, and difficult to look away from.
“Correct.” Ledi smiled, putting the lenses in a small case he pulled out of his pocket, and snapping it shut. “Who else am I, Nik?”
When Nihkil didn’t answer, I glanced back at him, too.
His expression, if anything, had gotten more difficult to read. He felt as tense as a cat where he stood beside me, his fingers holding my wrist tightly enough that I worried he might break it if he squeezed much harder. He felt ready to run with me... although, yeah, I had no idea where he thought we could go.
I was about to question him again, when he spoke suddenly.
"All right," he said. "Don't shoot. We will come with you."
I blinked, staring up at his face.
"We will?" I muttered.
"We will come closer now," Nik added, giving me a bare glance.
I didn't fight him when Nik gripped my arm just above the elbow, maybe because it felt like he did it to support himself more than to force me to accompany him. He was still in pain from whatever happened to his chest, I realized. I saw him wince from the shrapnel wound, too, even before he took a half-step closer to me. I wondered if he’d torn something open in his hurry to get me behind the trawler, even as I felt him lean some of his weight against me from behind.
When I glanced up, his face looked drawn, pale, but also angry.
The hand not holding me disappeared inside his coat pocket, where he likely gripped the doong Ledi passed to him before we left the military city.
“This weapon,” Nik said, even as I thought it. “It does not work?”
“It works,” Ledi said, smiling at him. “I was banking on you not shooting me, Jamri.”
“You may have miscalculated,” Nihkil said.
“Perhaps.” Ledi’s gaze sharpened, but the smile remained at his lips. “Your lock is open, is it not? Confirm this much, at least, Jamri. Tell me that I am not mistaken.”
“You don’t need me to tell you that,” Nihkil said.
For the second time, I heard real anger in his voice.
Nik didn’t return my glance when I looked back, but I found myself understanding the rest in a kind of packed flash. Of course his lock was open. That’s what I’d felt just before the gunplay ended. They’d staged this “Malek abduction attempt” to get Nihkil to open his lock to protect me. They’d tried to force him to protect himself during all of those weeks of beatings and interrogations and it hadn’t worked. Yet, the one thing Nik had been able to prevent under Pharei law, namely, using me to get to him, had been the thing to finally open him.
I felt weirdly touched by that... but yeah, also kind of pissed off.
Not at Nik, of course.
“You are right, of course,” Ledi said. “I felt it open, Jamri. You have no idea how happy it makes me, that I can still feel such a thing...”
I felt Nihkil’s irritation, even as he glanced at me.
“He is right,” Nik said, his voice low.
“He’s right about what?” I said. “About feeling your lock open?” Thinking about this, I said, “How did he feel it? That means something, right?”
“It means he held my lock himself, once,” Nik said, his voice openly angry. He avoided my eyes, his jaw hard as he spoke in a low voice. “Once someone holds your lock, the connection never entirely vanishes, not until one of you is dead.”
“Ledi held your lock?” I stared at him, confused. “I thought you said Yaffa held your lock. You said Ledi never––”
“He didn’t do it as Ledi,” Nik cut in. “I’ve only had four lock-holders before you, Dakota. Yaffa was my fourth. You are my fifth. I had thought the other three dead, until today.”
Seeing Nik’s expression, I thought better of pressing.
“Can’t you just re-lock it?” I whispered finally.
“No.” His fingers tightened on my waist. “Anyway, we need it now, Dakota.”
“But that can’t be a good thing, right?” I said. “I mean, they obviously want you to be unlocked––”
“It is too late,” Nik said only. “Stay with me, Dakota. Please.”
I nodded without really getting it, following the prod of Nihkil’s fingers as he urged me forward. I let him hold me against his body as I paced his steps, not sure how I felt about the fact that Nik was essentially using me as a human shield.
I didn’t get the sense he did it to protect himself though, at least not at my expense.
Anyway, whether he tried to shield me, or I tried to shield him, or we tried to shield each other, the gesture would mainly be symbolic. We were surrounded. He knew that as well as I did. Even so, he paced behind me carefully, his steps smooth and animal-like as his eyes darted between the three different groups of soldiers.
"What are we doing, Nik?" I murmured.
"Dakota, it's all right," he said. "He won't kill us."
"That’s actually not my only worry.”
"It is the only reassurance I can give,” Nik said grimly.
I nodded, still following his guiding fingers forward.
"Who is he?" I said after another pause. "Who is he really, Nik?"
Not answering, Nik continued to steer me deeper into the open hangar floor.
My eyes never left the line of soldiers, nor the weapons they now trained on me, and especially on Nik, behind me. I noticed Nik's gaze didn't leave Ledi’s people, either, and that he continued to keep me squarely in front of his chest, with the space between our bodies minimal.
As we got closer, Nihkil’s arm slid around the front of me, protecting my chest, as well.
“If you try to eliminate her, I will kill myself.” Nik looked around at all of them before
his eyes fell squarely on Ledi’s. “Do not test me... Zarwin.”
I heard the edge in his voice as he said the other’s name.
Nik’s hand fell over my heart, even as he pulled me closer.
"Jamri," Ledi warned. "You know your implant will go off, the second you transform. And it won’t help you, anyway... I’ve already told you, we have no intention of hurting either of you. Not if you cooperate.”
Nihkil ignored that, too.
"Where do you intend to take us... Zarwin?" Nik said, when the silence continued. "Are the military spies correct? Do you wish me to fight in your anti-human armies, too? If so, I don't see much advantage to me... certainly not to my mate."
My fingers tightened on his arm at his words, but I didn’t make a sound.
My mind tried to catalogue what I knew about this Zarwin guy.
According to military reports, he was the quasi-mythological leader of an anti-human army of morph. I’d also heard that Zarwin’s guys had a price on Nik’s head for working as a gate-shifter for the humans.
Mostly, though, from what I’d seen, they liked killing people.
Human people, that is.
Both the Pharei and the Malek had been hunting the guy for years, trying to take him out. Because he’d eluded them for so long, even with all of the blood and DNA scans and implant tracking, a lot of people speculated that Zarwin might be a supernatural... or even a human.
According to Nihkil and the data records I’d seen, Zarwin’s people believed that the morph were the rightful owners of all inter-dimensional gates. They’d claimed responsibility for bombing settlements on both Trinith and Udael, where the previous two gates lived, as well as runs on the military intelligence communities of both Palarine and Mydara. They’d further claimed responsibility for numerous morph kidnappings, bombings, ship boardings, abduction of half-morph babies from humans homes... even assassinations of human military leaders.
I stared at Ledi as we approached him, feeling Nihkil’s arm tighten around my chest.
I studied the other man’s suddenly very non-Pharei looking features.
