by Jaye McKenna
He debated, but only briefly. Cameron could pull the truth right out of his mind if he wanted, especially now, when Draven couldn’t defend himself. And he’d much rather answer while his thoughts were relatively clear.
“I was working at the Lyra Research Center on Aion. I… don’t know what happened. I… I think I was performing a psionic evaluation, but I’m not sure. It’s… hazy. The next clear memory I have is of waking up on Alpha, with psionic damage. I thought it might heal, but… it’s been months, and I still can’t shield.”
“Hence the riptide.”
“Yes. Anarin’s not easy to get a hold of, not even for Mr. DeMira. So it was riptide or nothing. I tried to be careful, tried to ration it, but…” He shook his head. “I’m addicted.”
“Yeah, it was… kind of obvious. I’ve been there.”
“I know.”
Cameron stared at him for a long time before asking, “Why did you leave Alpha?”
“Mr. DeMira and I had a…” Draven trailed off. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not to Cameron. Not to anyone. “Disagreement.”
“A disagreement.”
Draven swallowed and stared down at the blankets. His hands were already clenched into fists with the effort of holding back the memories burning in the depths of his mind.
It had been a desperate struggle to hold it together while everything fell apart around him. DeMira’s last game had broken him, and he’d hurt everywhere, from the bruises all over his body to the burning, tearing pain in his backside. He’d tried to count, but it had been impossible to focus. He’d reached for the comfort of the Pattern before he’d remembered that he couldn’t see it anymore, and even if he could, it, too, was broken, maybe more broken than he was. He couldn’t touch it. Couldn’t hold on…
He remembered screaming and screaming into a darkness that would never, ever end—
“Draven.”
Cameron’s voice tore him out of the past, and he squeezed shut stinging eyes and struggled to turn away. Pain tore through him again, but he didn’t want anyone — especially Cameron — to see him like this.
A warm hand came down on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Try to get some sleep,” Cameron said. “Let me know when you need more riptide. Or something for the pain.”
Draven didn’t answer. Didn’t know how to respond to a touch that didn’t hurt, a voice that didn’t require immediate submission and absolute obedience.
He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain long enough to lose himself in sleep.
* * *
Miko huddled on the couch in his living room. On the vid-screen, the call Draven had made to Cameron the night before played for perhaps the dozenth time. Miko had removed all traces of the call from the net, but saved a copy to one of his secret, protected data structures.
The first time he’d watched it, he’d been too relieved that Draven had made it to Aurora to worry about what else might have happened. The next time through, alarming details jumped out at him: the deep lines of pain and exhaustion carved into Draven’s face, the way his hands trembled, and the way his focus drifted, as if just staying conscious was a struggle.
Cameron had sent a message early this morning, but it had been terse, saying only that he and Draven were safe at the lodge, and Draven was stable for now. Miko had asked for more details, but there had been no response, and he guessed that without any way to charge his phone, Cameron had turned it off to conserve power.
He wished Tarrin was here. The apartment was far too quiet without him and their roommates, Nick and Vaya. Not too long ago, Miko wouldn’t have even noticed the lack of other people, and in fact, would have preferred it. But ever since Tarrin had broken through the wall of isolation Miko had built around his heart, Miko had found himself at the center of an ever-growing web of human relationships. A web that was slowly becoming just as important to him as his connection to the mythe.
He hugged himself tightly. Sometimes he hated the fact that Tarrin had become as necessary to him as air and water. He worried when Tarrin was gone, and without the Pattern, it was impossible for him to follow Tarrin’s thread and reassure himself that all was well.
Even if Tarrin was separated from him by hundreds of light years, Miko would once have been able to use the Pattern to see that he was safe.
Not anymore.
Something was coming. Something dark and huge. Something that had the power to swallow up everyone Miko loved, but the Pattern was so broken, Miko couldn’t even sense the shape of the impending darkness, let alone see a pathway through it.
Instinctively, he let his mythe-shadow unfurl, tasting the currents, seeking the Pattern. Something black and oily brushed against the edges of his awareness, and Miko drew his mythe-shadow in tightly, shuddering. No. He didn’t want to look at the Pattern like this. What had once been solid and dependable, was now like a kaleidoscope, shifting and changing in ways Miko couldn’t even begin to interpret.
It was like being blind.
Worse than being blind, really, because he could still see occasional glimpses, but he could never make sense of them.
Someone knocked on the door, and Miko cut the power to the vid and got up, letting his mythe-shadow drift out again to see who it was. He sensed nothing, which meant it was Kyn.
When he opened the door, Kyn gave him a tired smile. “Hi, Miko. I just wanted to check in with you, make sure everything’s okay.”
Miko dipped into the net and activated the voice synth. “Come in,” he said, and stepped aside, gesturing toward the living room. “Is this about our net security? I sent you a message about that this afternoon.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I got your message, just didn’t have time to respond to it. If you think we’re already as secure as we’re going to get, then there’s nothing more to be done.”
Kyn didn’t sit down, so Miko gathered this would be a short visit. “The database here is secured,” Miko told him. “Nobody on the FedSec side of things can access it.”
“I’ll let Cam know it’s all good, then. He said he’d be in touch tomorrow.” Kyn cocked his head. “Are you all right? It just occurred to me that all three of your roommates have gone off to Earth. I wasn’t surprised that Tarrin went with Senator Cottrell, but I wasn’t expecting him to take Nick and Vaya with him.”
“They’re his liaisons,” Miko said. “And whatever happens in this Senate session could affect Aion.”
“Yeah.” Kyn ran a hand through shaggy honey-blond hair. “I guess it makes sense for them to go, but I’m sorry it’s left you alone.”
Miko managed a small smile. “I’m used to being alone. Anyway, I still have you and Luka and Cameron.”
“About that… Cam, I mean.” Kyn paused and regarded Miko intently. “Do you have any idea what he’s up to?”
“Yes.” Miko didn’t like to lie, so he’d answer that one truthfully, though he wasn’t about to offer anything more.
“Okay… it’s like that, is it? Can you at least tell me whether or not he’s safe?”
“He’s safe.”
“Stranded in a snowstorm someplace with limited power doesn’t sound safe to me,” Kyn said.
“You either believe me or you don’t.”
“What does your Pattern say?”
Miko shook his head slowly. “It’s broken. Unstable. Every time I think I’m starting to understand, something changes. It won’t hold still long enough for me to follow any of the threads.”
“Can you tell me anything about what’s happening out there?” Kyn waved a hand toward the ceiling. “About how it’s going to affect the Institute?”
“I can’t see that.”
“And yet when Vaya was in trouble, you knew Tarrin had to go to Aion to save him.”
Miko’s fists clenched. He wished he could show Kyn the difference. Kyn hadn’t always been mythe-blind, and Miko had once shown him the Pattern and gotten the impression that Kyn almost understood. Since the accident that had burned out Kyn’s
psi, Miko couldn’t even sense his presence, let alone share something as complex as the Pattern. “That was months ago. And it was big. Impossible to miss. It’s different now. Everything’s so out of focus, I can’t see the details. I only get glimpses, and they’re too full of shifting threads and changing colors to make any sense of.”
Kyn’s shoulders slumped. “So you can’t guide us. Tell us what we need to do.”
“I can keep an eye on the surveillance feeds. I can track any private communications on the net between Command Council members. But I can’t… I can’t see the future. Not the way you mean.”
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
Kyn sighed and headed toward the door. Halfway there he stopped and turned back to face Miko. “If you need anything… you know you can come to me, right?”
Miko knew. He doubted there was anything Kyn could do for him, but he nodded dutifully all the same. It was important to Kyn to believe he was in control. Miko could let him hang onto that illusion for just a little longer.
Things would be out of control soon enough.
Chapter Three
The wind howled outside the lodge, but Cam barely heard it as he laid out another solitaire spread and studied the cards. How many packs of cards had he worn out that first summer? Hours, he’d spent, playing hand after hand, barely registering the cards as his mind wandered through all the dark, twisting passages of a past he’d been told he needed to come to terms with.
He’d been seventeen and fresh out of rehab. Angus had dragged him out here so he could find himself. Cam hadn’t bothered to try to explain that unless he could find his twin, his other half, he’d never find himself. Nobody had ever cared enough to hear his side of things before, and he’d had no reason to expect Angus would be any different.
But Angus had known something was wrong, something more than the obvious. He hadn’t stopped his gentle, relentless questioning until Cam had finally broken down and told him. Cam had been certain Eleni wasn’t dead, but that was all he was sure of, and he’d feared what might have become of her without his protection.
To his utter surprise, once he’d spilled it all to Angus, his foster father had taken him back to Alpha himself to find her. Even though he’d had no clue where she’d gone to ground, Cam had known where she was, the same way he knew how she was feeling.
Their awareness of one another had always been there, a bond, a connection operating beyond normal psi. He’d never been able to block it out, not even once he’d understood how to shield his mind. If the distance between them was too great, he might not get any sense of her emotional state, but she was always with him, and he could always find her.
When Cam had led Angus unerringly to her the same day they’d arrived on Alpha, Angus had sensed the power in her, and offered her the same chance he’d offered Cam: come back with me. Learn to use your talents for the greater good, and I’ll give you a safe place to live, enough to eat, and a chance to make a better life for yourself.
She’d been scared. Of course she had. But she’d also seen her brother alive, sane, and no longer enslaved to riptide, and she’d sensed how much he trusted Angus already.
In giving him back his twin, Angus had made Cam whole again, given him all the reason he needed to stay clean and sober.
Now, he stared at the cards without seeing them.
Eleni was worried about him; he felt it all the time, a constant vibration just on the edge of his awareness. It was like the sonic disruptor. He could almost ignore it — until he started thinking about it.
He’d responded briefly to the messages she’d sent, but hadn’t given her any of the details she’d asked for, only said he’d be back when the storm cleared.
It wouldn’t be enough. Not for Eleni. They were family to each other in a way that the McKinnons weren’t. When he’d worked undercover for FedSec, she’d hated not knowing where he was, and had told him after that first months-long assignment off-world that knowing he wasn’t dead was not at all the same as knowing he was all right.
The four years he’d been on Alpha working undercover as a psionic interrogator had been hell on her. He’d never told her, but Eleni was part of the reason he hadn’t fought the Command Council’s decision to run him out of the department after he’d thrown the mission in favor of saving Miko.
Across the room, Draven moaned in his sleep. Cam threw the cards down and went to check on him. Draven was due for more riptide about now, and Cam didn’t want to be late with it. This far from civilization, it wasn’t so much a question of blocking out the psionic noise, but how long Draven could stand the withdrawal symptoms.
In his current condition, not long.
He’d been running a fever since last night, but it hadn’t been high enough to concern Cam. The wound had still looked clean; no redness or swelling, and the bleeding had stopped. Draven had tossed and turned all night, keeping Cam awake with his nightmares and hallucinations. By morning, the fever was high enough that Cam started doubling up on the antibiotics.
It wasn’t enough, though, and with every hour that passed, Cam was becoming more convinced that Draven needed more help than he could give him. With Draven unable to shield, a hospital was out of the question, and while he didn’t want to involve Eleni in this, she was the only one he knew he could trust completely.
Now, Cam laid a hand across Draven’s brow. He was burning up, and the fever reducer Cam had been giving him didn’t seem to be doing much of anything.
As he lifted his hand away, amber eyes fluttered open and fixed on him, widening a little.
“Easy,” Cam murmured. Was Draven even seeing him? Or was he seeing some nightmare hallucination like he had been during the night?
“Is it time?”
“Yeah, it’s time.” Cam pulled a needlepak from his pocket. “You hurting?”
“Everywhere. My… my skin is crawling.”
“I know. I remember.” Cam moved the covers aside, positioned the needlepak over the vein in Draven’s arm, and pushed.
“So cold…” Draven was shivering hard.
Cam tucked the covers back around him. “You’re running a pretty good fever. I’m not sure why. The wound looks clean, but I guess there could be an infection, deep inside. I don’t know how far in the blade went.” Or how clean it was, or what it might have damaged, but Cam didn’t want to think about that. “The snow’s supposed to stop sometime tonight. Tomorrow I’ll dig the flyer out and go for help.”
Draven clutched at Cam’s arm. “What kind of help?”
“My sister’s a healer and a doctor. And she’ll keep her mouth shut.”
“Your… sister?” Draven didn’t look convinced.
“If I was planning to turn you in,” Cam said, “I wouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. This is a terrible time for me to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere. The shit is hitting the fan in a huge way, and they need me back at the Institute.”
“Sorry,” Draven whispered.
Cam didn’t say anything to that. He sat back down at the table and dealt another hand of solitaire.
* * *
The snow had finally stopped, but the wind had picked up, and the temperature had plummeted. It was late evening, and after all the meds kicked in, Draven had decided the bed was too damn cold. He wanted to sit by the stove and get warm.
Cameron had moved one of the sturdy kitchen chairs close to the stove and helped him across the room. The wound still throbbed and burned, and the pain made finding a comfortable position a challenge. Draven was still trying to decide if he’d rather be by the stove, warm but hurting, or in the bed, freezing his ass off, but in slightly less pain.
At least the fever had gone down a little. Cameron’s relief at that had been almost tangible. Draven wondered if he’d still go for help in the morning. Probably. The man was itching to get out of here. He had duties he’d abandoned, responsibilities to the people he took care of.
What must that be like,
to have people in his life who cared? People who would worry if he was out of contact for too long?
Draven couldn’t imagine it. It had been so long since he’d had anything like that, and of course, he’d been too young and selfish to appreciate it at the time.
He watched the glowing tongues of flame lapping at the tempered glass window, mesmerized by the shifting, shimmering colors. A caged inferno. Safe, as long as it stayed contained.
Cameron had given him riptide not long ago, and the drug was working its way through his body, relaxing him, loosening him up. His lips curved in a small, satisfied smile as the dancing flames reminded him of—
“DeMira’s mansion,” Cameron said suddenly, as if reading his thoughts.
Draven’s eyes snapped to Cameron’s face. He’d been sitting at the table playing cards last Draven had noticed, but now he stood near the stove warming his hands, a blanket draped over his shoulders.
“What about it?” Draven asked.
“It burned to the ground right around the time you would have left Alpha.” There was no accusation in Cameron’s voice, just mild interest.
“Pity,” Draven said in a soft, neutral tone.
“DeMira was killed. Along with a prominent New London business owner, Gregor Vorzana.”
The contours of a smile curved Draven’s lips. He hadn’t had confirmation that he’d actually succeeded until now.
“It was you,” Cameron whispered.
It wasn’t a question. Draven didn’t answer.
“Why?”
“You should ask Miko.”
Cameron frowned. “Miko doesn’t talk about Alpha.”
“I, too, prefer not to talk about Alpha.”
The frown deepened. “You were one of DeMira’s most trusted men. Inner circle. You had it made. Why would you—”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Miko was my… replacement.” The words slipped out before Draven could think twice. “Or… one of them.”
