by Frankie Rose
“People of Pirius! We are gathered here this evening to announce the new chancellor of the first sector!” Anticipation ripples through the hall, and I can hear so many thoughts rising up toward the high ceilings.
Col Pakka is the only viable option.
Col will defend us.
Farren is the right choice.
Farren will win.
Col will win.
Col deserves to follow in his mother’s footsteps.
Col…
Col…
Col…
There are two other Pirians standing up there on the dais, a very large woman wearing a benevolent smile, and a sturdy, nervous looking elderly man who side steps from one foot to the other, chewing on his bottom lip. They’re obviously also contenders in the running for chancellor of the first sector, but I don’t hear their names on anyone’s thoughts. There seems to be an even divide between Col and Farren.
“As you entered the hall, all verified residents of the first sector cast their votes, and we have been diligently tallying the results for the past hour. I am now able to say that the count is complete, and a new chancellor has, indeed, been selected. By a hundred and thirty seven votes, the new chancellor of the first sector is…”
I sense six strong voices, all echoing the same name on the other side of the Appointments Hall. Each and every one of them says Col Pakka, as if they’re prompting the announcer on the dais to get on with it and complete his sentence.
When the fat little seer finally quits his fanfare and speaks the winner’s name, though, it comes out entirely different. “Chancellor Farren, of the third sector!”
A ripple of shock travels through the hall, six streams of surprise almost strong enough to color the air a vibrant shade of green. I’m assuming these six Pirians were the ballot counters, and the seer making the announcements has just declared the runner up as victor. Reza’s horror is there for all to see, painted all over her beautiful face.
I watch as she attempts to conceal her dismay, but she fails to do a very convincing job. Darius looks stricken. And Col? The only word to describe the energy rising from Col right now is relief.
Farren steps to the front of the dais to accept his new role, and the crowd cheers. There are plenty of Pirians who turn their backs and push their way out of the hall, their worry and suspicion turning the air sour. I don’t listen to Farren. I focus on Reza, savoring the gambit of emotions that spill out of her. She’s anxious. More than anxious. She’s terrified. Her walls are completely down for a second, and I see her thoughts with crystal clarity. She’s worried about the people of Pirian. She’s worried there will be panic and death. She’s worried about…me.
She keeps sidestepping it, dancing around it, avoiding the thought at all costs, but I can feel it there within her head. Her plan takes shape inside my head just as it forms inside her own. She’s going to try and sneak into Farren’s mind. She’s going to try and steal one of his memories.
How very me of her.
I could intervene. I could reach into the smug, arrogant bastard’s head myself and scoop out whatever it is Reza is looking for, but that would be no fun. I’m curious. Will she actually get her hands dirty? Will perfect little Reza, with all of her scruples and morals, carry out a task that she considers wrong in order to protect me?
This should be interesting.
I fold my arms across my body, and I wait. I sense Reza’s panic when she tries to slip inside Farren’s head and she encounters her first blockade. Then, her sense of victory when she breaks through. Then, her confusion when she realizes she doesn’t know how to proceed. Hunting down and weeding out a single memory inside someone’s mind is difficult. It took me cycles to be able to finesse that skill, and even now I don’t really bother working to such infinitely small parameters. If I need a person to forget something, I make them forget everything. That’s the only way to guarantee the process will work.
Reza fumbles around inside Farren’s head, essentially tripping all over the furniture, and that’s when Farren senses her. He’s not the most sensitive seer I’ve come across—his mind is relatively stunted in comparison to some people here on Pirius—but he knows something’s up.
Reza nearly falls backward, and Col catches her, wrapping an arm around her in order to keep her on her feet. An insidious fog gathers inside my own head, twisting my thoughts for a second. Col shouldn’t be touching her that way. He shouldn’t have his arm around her shoulders. If anyone should be breaking her fall, it should be me.
As soon as I think this, a quiet, timid voice in the back of my head whispers something I don’t particularly want to hear: You are the very reason she will fall.
A loud buzzing fills my ears. I don’t hear or see anything for a moment. Col’s arm, holding Reza tightly, has consumed my mind, and nothing else seems to register. She doesn’t shrug away from his embrace. She doesn’t push him away, the way she pushed me away earlier. She just stands there, panting, her cheeks flushed with color, staring at Farren while the hideous piece of shit stares right back at her. He looks like he’s going to hurt her. He looks like he’s going to fucking kill her. Resolve pours off him in waves. As chancellor of the sector, he can have her cast out. Banished. He wants to make her suffer for trying to invade his mind, though. He wants to make her pay before sending her out to die of thirst on the surface.
I react. I don’t even need to think about it. I barge my way into Farren’s head, and the action is as simple as opening up a door. I step inside, and Farren’s fear swamps me. I’ve done nothing to disguise my presence. I’ve done nothing to camouflage myself. I want him to know I’m inside his head, and I want him to understand what that means. I can end his life right now if I want to. I can command him to take one of the phase rifles he has hidden under his ridiculous robe, and I can make him shoot himself with the head with it. I could make it even easier than that, though. I could force him to just stop breathing and he would suffocate in front of everyone. They wouldn’t be able to save him. They wouldn’t be able to push the oxygen into his lungs if I didn’t allow it.
Farren writhes and squirms like a worm on a hook, desperately trying to eject me from his head, the same way he just ejected Reza. He has no idea who he’s dealing with, though. I see inside his thoughts, and I witness all of his secrets. He’s petrified of me. He damn well should be.
“I’ll be the harbinger of your destruction,” I speak into his mind. “I will close my fist around your fragile heart and cease it from beating. If you so much as look at her again, so much as think about her, I will make sure you never draw another breath, Waylen Farren. I will make your death my most cherished accomplishment. I’ll cleave your head from your shoulders, and I will mount the damn thing on my wall for target practice. Your family will know no peace. Your friends will beg for death before I am finished with them. Do you hear me? Do you understand me?”
Farren’s lips don’t move, but he replies immediately inside his head. “Yes! Gods, I hear you! Yes, I understand!”
“Good. Now leave, before my mercy finds its limit.”
Farren mumbles a few words to the crowd, his face turning purple with rage, and then he descends from the dais, spitting mad but doing his best to look pleased as people congratulate him on his victory. He heads right for me, and when our eyes meet I recognize the look of defiance I see there. Farren may have just told me he understood me, but I know men like him. He’ll return to the dark, cramped hole he calls home, and he will sit there and stew. His pride will convince him that he is stronger than me, that he can outwit me somehow, that he’ll be able to take care of me, if only he just stands up and takes action.
And then he will die.
He’ll have to die anyway, because the truth of the matter and the one thing he should really know about me is that I have no mercy. I cut through the crowd, watching Farren flee, feeling pretty good about myself.
I’m about to leave, when I snag on something, like tripping over a rock in a ro
ad. A secret, dark and nasty, burning at the forefront of someone’s mind.
TWENTY-FOUR
REZA
A KNIFE’S EDGE
I dream of mechanized animals with fluffy, organic, wiry coats, leaping over fences. A weird dream. I wake up, covered in sweat, my heart beating too slowly, my lungs refusing to inflate, and I have to get up and walk around my quarters to try and calm the panic that hits me.
I can feel that he is awake. It’s a strange sensation, being able to tell when another person’s mind is active. When Jass succumbed to the sleep state Darius induced, I barely detected him at all. It was as though his conscious has slipped away and he had traveled somewhere I was unable to follow. Now, I can feel him, like a hand on my shoulder, a weight, a presence that I am reluctant to admit is a becoming more than a little reassuring. He must have decided now was a good time to return to us. If he’s still in Dari—
“What are you doing?” The words are marred, slightly distorted, but I hear them perfectly well inside my head. My heart damn near explodes out of my ribcage from the shock of a very real, very close voice speaking to me this way.
“Jass! Out. Get out of my head!”
“Is that what Farren said when you tried to lobotomize him earlier?” I can hear the smirk in his deep, rumbling voice.
“Darius shouldn’t have told you about that.”
“He didn’t. I watched it all happen with my own two eyes. I need you to come with me, Reza.”
“Where?”
“Off-planet. To a base on the other side of the system.”
“A Construct base?”
He pauses. My heart beats a handful of times while I wait for him to answer me, but it feels like a lifetime. “Yes,” he says stiffly. Nothing more. No further explanation. No wheedling to try and make me see his request from his point of view. I can’t help but laugh.
“You seriously think I’d ever willingly go to a Construct base? I need sleep, Jass. Please…don’t do this again. It’s bad enough that I can feel your restlessness without you striking up conversations with me against my will.”
“You’re just as restless as I am. You can feel it, too. Death hangs over this planet. It’ll cloak it like a shroud, blotting out the suns, and then it’ll be too late.”
My hand reflexively moves to the base of my throat. “Too late to save everyone?”
“Too late to save yourself. Everyone on Pirius is going to die. You can’t change that. If Stryker and his men arrive and find you here, they won’t hesitate. They’ll take you. They’ll torture you, just like they tortured me. If you come with me now, I’ll be able to protect you. I’ll be in charge of your reinsertion into the Construct. I’ll be able to make sure you’re safe, Reza.”
There’s a pleading quality to his voice that makes my breath quicken. His words are just as cold as they ever were, but I can feel how badly he wants me to listen to him. He’s urging me through the connection, trying to impress upon me the danger that approaches, as if I am completely ignorant to it. I am all too aware of the peril we’re all in, I tried to convince him of it earlier, but if he thinks I will just leave Pirius and forsake everyone living beneath the surface of this planet, he has another thing coming.
“You know what my answer is, Jass. You know it already, which is why you didn’t even bother showing up at me door to ask it. You knew it would be a complete waste of time.”
He doesn’t reply. The connection falls dead, like a damaged coms radio, blasting nothing but quiet static through its speakers. I exhale, sinking down to sit on my bed. Thank the gods for that. I don’t want to argue with him. It would be exhausting. The last thing I need after my run-in with Farren. It took me hours to fall asleep earlier, as I lay there under the covers, waiting for one of the chancellor’s men to burst through the door and murder me. Now I know how desperate Jass believes the situation with the Construct to be, I won’t be able to sleep for an entire week. Fuck. Without their ability to analyze their visions, the Pirians are never going to leave their home. They’ll remain here and burn because they are too stubborn and too scared to risk running out in the open in order to reach safety. I can warn them and so can Darius and Col, but until the Construct ships breach the atmosphere and are hovering directly over the sub city, nothing I say will change their minds or stir them into action. They’ll be—
Rap, rap, rap.
I freeze. The gentle knocking was quiet, but it might as well have been a series of deafening explosions. I know who it is. I can feel him standing out there in the hallway. Waiting.
I get to my feet and move to stand by the door. Reaching out, I allow the palm of my hand to hover an inch above the surface of the wood. Closing my eyes, I hang my head, breathing deeply. “You’re not supposed to be here,” I whisper. “Go back to your room.”
“I won’t.” His answer comes to my in my head. It’s soft. A gentle caress that reminds me of his hands stroking my face as he kissed me. “You challenged me. Just now, you told me coming to you would be a complete waste of time. You know it isn’t, though. You know you want me to come inside.”
“I do not.”
“False.” He speaks the word out loud this time. I can hear the amusement in his voice through the door.
“It’s the middle of the night, Jass. We can have another session tomorrow. You can talk to me then. Ask me anything you want to.”
“I don’t need to ask you anything else,” he says. “I already know everything about you. And you know everything about me. Open the door, Reza.”
“No.”
“I could open it myself.”
“But you won’t.”
“You sound very sure.”
I don’t like the reckless edge to his voice. I know very well he’ll open this door if he wants to. I won’t be able to stop him. I’m filled with alarm, but it fades and vanishes just as quickly as it came. What will happen if he breaks his way in here? Will he try and make me leave Pirius under the cover of darkness, regardless of the fact that I told him I wouldn’t? There’s every chance he might. I growl, unlocking the door and flinging it open, ready to fight. Better I face him this way, instead of allowing him the pleasure of entering against my will.
He stands there, wearing a pair of loose black pants and nothing else. His chest is bare. His feet are bare. His hair is rumpled, curling everywhere in a shock of dark waves that frame his face in the most fascinating, distracting way. The tunnel outside my room is narrower than most of the sub city access routes, which means he’s standing that much closer to the door. That much closer to me.
“I wouldn’t have broken it,” he says, sliding past me, entering my room. “I would have just unlocked it. You don’t need to look so indignant.”
“Please. Why don’t you come on in?” I close the door, regretting the decision immediately, but I don’t want to open it again. Opening it will only display fear, and I’ve given him the satisfaction of frightening me thousand times already. I won’t be handing my emotions over so easily anymore. Not if I can help it.
Jass has no right being crammed into such a small space. He towers over me, the crown of his head almost touching the ceiling, and I’m dwarfed by him even more than usual. I turned the light on beside my bed earlier; the soft, subdued light pours over Jass’ shoulders and down his right arm like honey, turning his pale skin to gold. I don’t look at his chest. I don’t look at the beautifully carved muscle, or the defined lines that mark out each of his abs. I don’t look at the broad sweep of his shoulders, or the pronounced shape of his collarbone. I definitely don’t look at the way his pants hang low on his hips, displaying a deep vee that disappears below the waist of the thin black material. Jass sweeps his hand back through his hair, pressing his lips together in a boyish way that makes me want—need—to stop looking at him altogether.
“You came half naked on purpose.” This is a statement. A fact. He made a decision when he left his room not to put clothes on, and that means something. Jass leans back aga
inst the wall, folding his arms across his chest. The man looks damned good in the plain black shirts he’s been wearing, but he’s something else without them. His arms are corded and powerful—muscle knitted around even more muscle. He would probably be a formidable foe even if he didn’t possess the ability to control people’s thoughts and actions. Just like his mind, Jass’ body is a weapon, and it looks like it’s been kept in excellent condition.
“You told me to come, so I came,” he says simply. “I didn’t realize a shirt or a pair of boots were going to make a difference to our conversation.”
“It would have made it easier to look at you while I refused your insane request,” I counter.
“Look at me now, Reza.” His voice is low and hushed. Haunting, in a way. I close my eyes instead of lifting my head. I will not give him what he wants. “Reza. It’s never going to be easy for you to look at me. Looking at me makes you feel alive. Looking at me makes you want. Looking at me makes you need. So just fucking do it. Look at me. Look at me right now, the way I’m looking at you.”
I’ve forgotten that I’m wearing nothing but a training vest and my underwear. I was so concerned with him showing up here half naked that my own attire completely escaped me. Now I don’t know which one of us is more underdressed, him or me. I sigh, raising my head, raising my gaze, until I’m looking him in the eye. There’s a hunger in his eyes, just as dangerous and sharp as my own. My skin flushes at the very sight of it.
“You’re never going to convince me to leave these people to die,” I whisper.
“You’re never going to convince me that you don’t think it would be easier if we did.”
