“Overclocking…excellent…you have…the trait….”
I twisted my body to make use of the momentum I’d gained in order to land on my feet.
Damn, every move I made felt unbearably slow. I realized my body wasn’t keeping up with my mind.
Overclocking? Was this what she called overclocking?
She landed lightly on her feet but it didn’t prevent her slashed skirt from billowing upwards.
Okay, that had to be black underwear I just saw.
She charged at me again, but this time she pivoted on her left foot, and lashed at me with her right.
Now I had clear view of what her skirt had been hiding.
Yes—racy black underwear. It was sheer with lacy ruffles along the edges.
Holy Molly, this girl was going to be the death of me in more ways than one.
I wonder if Haruka ever wore underwear like that?
I tried throwing my body back, pushing off the ground with everything my legs could muster. Even though I had plenty of time to think through the move, my body failed to respond in time.
But the blow she landed on my chest wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I was already moving away from her. Even so, the impact lifted me off my feet and I sailed in slow motion through the air until my back hit the ground.
I felt the air expel from my lungs.
That took a long time.
Pain and shock raced through my body. What should have taken seconds felt like it lasted for a half minute.
Damn, this phenomenon was too weird.
Try as I might I couldn’t move in time to stop my assailant from landing on my midriff. She straddled my waist, and I felt the heat from her smooth thighs penetrate my body.
Maybe dying in slow motion wouldn’t be so bad.
I looked up into her pretty face and saw the elation on her features.
She looked genuinely happy as she raised the blade over her head.
“Sorry…this…will hurt…a little….”
I reached up as fast as I could but my arms moved unbearably slowly.
She brought the blade down and I felt it pierce my chest, but not my heart.
Blood spurted onto her hands. My blood.
A few droplets landed on her cheeks.
Great. I marred her pretty features.
Then I realized I was probably going to die if my body was spouting so much blood into the air.
The weird time phenomena started to fade and I sensed my surroundings begin to move at a normal pace.
She pulled the knife out of my chest.
If it hurt going in, it hurt twice as much going out.
I struggled to breathe and convulsed on the rooftop while she sat on my midriff.
“Don’t worry. This is sure to work. Arisa is positive of what you are, and she’s not the only one.”
My vision was growing cloudy. I could barely hear what she was saying.
But I did see her pull out and uncap something that resembled a pressurized needle.
She plunged the needle into my neck.
I felt a surge of liquid flood into me.
“She’s not wrong. She was right about me—she’s right about you. She’s definitely not wrong!”
Her elation was turning into desperation.
What the Hell was she saying about me?
Then she leaned close to me.
I smelled the scent of her hair and her perfume as she whispered.
“I’m sorry. This part is going to really hurt.”
What—you don’t think I’m in pain already?
She was looking at me, our noses only inches apart, when a burning sensation that exceeded the volcano of pain in my chest suddenly spread from my neck to the rest of my body.
If she hadn’t been holding me down with her arms, I might have thrashed myself to pieces.
As it was, the only reason I couldn’t scream was because I had no air in my lungs.
That and the fact her mouth was smothering mine.
Damn it! What a way to commemorate my first kiss – on the rooftop, with a knife wound to my chest, and a hot girl straddling my pain wracked body.
I passed out without getting the opportunity to be grateful that I did.
Reflections – 1.
When the Cataclysm ripped the galaxy apart for a radius of fifty three light years, it left behind the Hurakan Nebula.
Basically, the nebula formed from the remains of numerous planets, moons, and stars blown to bits by the trans-light shockwave.
That was more than two centuries ago.
Two hundred and twenty seven years to be exact.
Twenty years later, humanity had picked up the pieces and put together two spheres of political influence.
But the Prides were exposed and all Hell broke loose between Regulars and the Aventis.
The Regulars lost, the Aventis won, and peace settled upon the colonized remnant of the galaxy – one little corner of the galaxy.
Then the Prides initiated the Pharos Project.
To build a colony within the edge of the Hurakan Nebula.
It took forty years to build. First, asteroids of sufficient size were found. They were debris from the numerous planets that were smashed to pieces by the Cataclysm. Today, we call these asteroids The Islands.
Five Islands tied together by powerful effect-fields, and numerous cables as thick as inter-habitat buses.
Giant caverns more than a dozen kilometers long were scooped out inside each of the rock islands. These came to be known as the Habitats. Immense tunnels connected the habitats within an island, allowing people to commute between them. However, pressurized and atmospherically sealed trains ran between the Islands, transporting hundreds of passengers at a time.
I was ten when my parents died.
They were killed in an explosion set off in the largest starship dock Pharos had to offer – the Harbor Sphere of Island One.
A massive empty sphere six kilometers wide, with a hundred docks and berths cut into the rock wall of the harbor.
My parents worked for a shipping company as dockside managers.
That day a bomb was triggered inside a super freighter that had just pulled into the dock.
The vessel went boom.
The dock went boom.
My parents and hundreds of others died in an instant.
That was the day before Pharos was due to celebrate its centenary.
As historians would call it, it was a Day of Infamy.
A centenary marked in blood.
The ones responsible for the explosion announced their existence to the people of Pharos.
They declared their opposition to the Prides.
They went by the name…Crimson Crescent.
Chapter 1 – Reunion.
(Haruka)
The start of a new school year.
At least I wasn’t starting the year at a new school.
I had transferred into Galatea Academy seven months ago, once my body acclimatized to the Avenir Symbiote.
Galatea Academy was one of five premier schools in Pharos catering to the Aventis.
For a colony that consisted of five immense rocks or asteroids, Pharos was the hub of all commerce and traffic into the Hurakan Nebula. The asteroids were referred to as Islands. The smallest was thirty kilometers long and twelve kilometers at it widest. The largest, Island One, was fifty seven kilometers long and twenty two kilometers wide.
Galatea Academy was located inside Habitat One, Island Three, District Dee-Three.
It was a school exclusive to the Prides.
No Regular humans.
Just us Aventis, and a number of Familiars.
When I first joined the Avenir Pride, it took me as long to get used to the changes in my body, as it took to grow accustomed to the new school.
That was to say, it didn’t take me long at all. That was because I was welcomed with open arms by my new classmates, and that made the transition easier.
The girls in
my class made me at home as best they could.
And the boys did their best to put in a good impression – for obvious reasons.
Because I transferred in halfway during the school year, I had to work extra hard to keep up with the slightly different curriculum. But I persevered, and by the end of the year I found myself in the top ten in my class, and the top twenty in my year.
I was ready to begin my second year of high school with a great deal of pride in what I’d accomplished.
I knew I hadn’t disappointed my family either.
If anything, my parents were even more proud of me than before.
Although, there were times I hated the way they bragged of their daughter joining a strong and influential Pride.
I worried my mother would start asking me when I would start dating seriously, and had any good prospects come alone.
I politely sidestepped the issue each time.
I couldn’t date anyone seriously.
I didn’t have the heart to do so.
My heart was in pieces, and I had no way of putting it back together again.
I forgot to mention that I cried so hard after that day I really wanted to die.
I cried hard for a week.
My parents believed and rightly so that Caelum was at fault. My parents never liked him. They pitied him, an orphan of the state after his sister – his sole remaining relative – died. They sympathized with his circumstances.
But they never found him worthy of me.
And for that I could never forgive them, nor love them like a good daughter should.
And because I loved Caelum I was afraid of telling him how I felt.
I was afraid of hearing him say ‘no’.
In the end, I missed my chance to tell him.
When I calmed down and thought about our circumstances, I realized that maybe Caelum was right.
It hurt like Hell to say goodbye, but he’d given me the clean break I would need in order to start again as an Aventis.
To start my new life as a member of the Avenir Pride.
But regardless of the reasons, the end result was a hollow shell.
Me.
I spent time with my new friends.
I spent time with a boy every now and then, and joined my new girlfriends on double dates.
A met a special boy, and little by little he began filling the emptiness that consumed my heart.
And then something happened – something I never dreamt of coming true.
I saw Caelum again.
And he threw my world into a spin.
#
(Haruka)
He stood at the front of the class room.
As a transfer student it was required that he introduce himself.
I felt my heart beating so loudly I thought my classmates would hear it too.
But they were all eyeing him warily, and I quickly understood why.
I looked at him, studying what I could see of him.
He looked a little taller, and he stood a little straighter.
He’d lost some of the fat on his cheeks and the uniform hung well on his body.
His black hair was thick and neatly combed.
He looked older.
He looked…harder, as though he’d acquired an edge he lacked before.
I was starting to understand this wasn’t the Caelum Desanto I had known for so many years.
This wasn’t the Caelum that I held in my arms when he cried at his parent’s funeral.
We weren’t children anymore, and that was more than evident in the aura I perceived emanating from him.
It was an aura that quietly, confidently challenged the classroom.
He spoke his name, enunciating it with precision.
He greeted the classroom, the teacher, afforded the usual pleasantries and stated his hopes for a productive year.
I listened to him, yet like all the students in the class, my eyes were inexorably drawn to the left breast of his uniform’s blazer. Since becoming an Aventis, my eyesight had grown preternaturally sharp, and I saw the reason my classmates were wary of him.
Two badges pinned side by side.
One held the crest of the Pride he was associated with – the Lanfear Pride.
The second marked him as a Familiar – neither Aventis nor Regular human, but something that lay in between.
Yes, it was clear now. This was not the Caelum I remembered.
He was not the Regular young man I’d left behind seven months ago on that school rooftop.
Caelum Desanto afil Lanfear.
That was his official name now.
I swallowed again, wondering if it was stomach acid I tasted in the back of my mouth. Or was it bile? As I swallowed, I turned my head to look at another member of my class.
She sat at the back of the room, her long raven dark hair framing her heart shaped face. She sat with a perfect posture, as though raised from an early age with all the teachings of a child born into a privileged family. Yet as far as anyone knew she was an orphan of the state.
An orphan of Pharos just like Caelum.
I watched him walk down an aisle of smart desks and seated students.
He walked to the girl at the back of the room, and sat at the empty table on her left.
There were a number of empty tables around her.
For as long as I’d been a part of the class – a mere six months – she had always been alone. She had sat alone, eaten alone, studied alone, and played gym activities alone.
But now she was no longer alone.
She had Caelum sitting to her left.
I watched him nod to her politely, and she returned it with a faint smile.
They wore matching badges on their blazers.
My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an iron fist.
He had swept his gaze over all my classmates. He had surely seen me seated by the window, a third of the way down the length of the classroom.
And yet, he had walked down the aisle between the smart desks with his eyes focused solely on one individual – the girl that was a Familiar just like him.
Caprice Steiner afil Lanfear.
Not once did Caelum look my way.
My vision swam, and I couldn’t prevent my stomach from beginning to heave. I raised my hand, then mumbled something as I staggered to my feet and then stumbled away from my smart desk. I was aware our homeroom teacher, Ms. Clarisse Fauntine, was speaking to me, but I couldn’t understand a word of what she said.
I ran to the girls toilets and fell into an empty stall. With my head above the toilet bowl, my stomach heaved and emptied its contents.
It wasn’t over until I’d dry retched a few times.
I heard footsteps and the voice of a girl I knew.
“Haruka? Haruka—ah she’s in here.”
Reaching up I pulled at the paper in the dispenser, hurriedly wiped my mouth, then flushed the toilet.
I looked up at Siobhan.
The blonde girl returned my look before reaching down. She picked me up easily enough and sat me down on the toilet seat. Needless to say she lowered the seat cover first.
“Haruka, look at me. How do you feel?”
“Sick….”
“Is it something you ate? Something you might have drunk last night? Where does it hurt?”
I shook my head, then pressed down on my sizeable chest. “Here….”
“What does she mean?” I recognized that voice as Alistair’s. “Is it chest pains? She can’t possibly be having a heart attack. She’s one of us.”
Siobhan was studying me intently. “Haruka? Is it…heartache?”
The pain in my chest grew and I nodded furtively.
She sighed and asked, “He’s the Caelum you spoke of…isn’t he?”
I nodded fitfully.
Alistair whispered softly, “Oh my gods. But—but Haruka you said he couldn’t be an Aventis. You said all his tests were negative.”
Siobhan caught my gaze with hers.
“You didn’t know, did you?”
I shook my head. My throat burned. “I didn’t know…I didn’t know…he was a Familiar.”
Siobhan sighed again. “Let’s get you cleaned up and back into class. Or do you want to go to the nurse’s office?”
I looked down at the tiling and gave her question serious thought. “Maybe I’ll…maybe I’ll lie down for a little while.”
Siobhan nodded. “Okay. I’ll walk with you.” She turned and addressed Alistair. “Tell Ms. Fauntine I’m taking Haruka to the nurse’s office.”
As I washed my face at the hand basin, and rinsed out my mouth, I realized what a fool I’d made of myself. No doubt Caelum was thinking I’d rushed out dramatically just to grab his attention.
I felt ashamed, and I felt scared.
Not once since attending the Academy on my first day, had I ever felt so scared about walking into my classroom.
I looked at Siobhan’s reflection in the mirror.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’ll go back to class.”
I would have to do so eventually.
I would have to face him eventually.
I dried my face, brushed out my hair with my fingers, then steeled my back.
I walked out of the girls’ toilets, down the corridor and then back into my classroom.
I forced myself not to ponder whether Caelum paid any attention to me as I stepped into the room.
But when I sat down, I used the small mirror in my pocket makeup kit to peek his way.
He was busy working on his smart desk with pen stylus in hand.
I snapped the kit shut with a soft click.
#
(Caelum)
Lunch break came around quickly enough.
There were fewer classes today since it was the opening day of the school year.
The opening ceremony had been held during the period normally assigned to morning homeroom. After the one hour ceremony all the new Familiars attending the academy were summoned to the Principal’s office. That was the reason why I was late introducing myself to my classmates.
At the Principal’s office, I stood with a half dozen other Familiars – two girls and four boys – and listened to the Principal’s stern lecture.
I didn’t have much of an opportunity to study my companions who appeared to be first year high-schoolers.
Instead, our Principal occupied almost all my attention.
Pride x Familiar Page 3
