Till Dawn Do Us Part (New Reign Book 1)

by May Sage

Kaur nodded shortly, before taking his seat.

  “What timescale am I looking at?” he asked the boy to his left.

  “Fifteen minutes ago, sir. I came directly.”

  Kaur nodded, before getting to work on the smooth platform that came to life under his fingertip, showing a control screen.

  He frowned when the initial report came clear; there had been no tempering, no external issues either. If he believed what he read in front of him, the tape of the entire day was perfectly fine. Rather than wasting his time on a non-existent issue, Kaur decided to watch the video, and see what he was dealing with.

  He rewound it twenty minutes back and watched the tourists roll into their base.

  Why they’d open their doors to humans, he had no idea; they’d guarded the planet since the beginning of humanity without needing to make a spectacle of themselves. But he wasn’t one to question the decisions of the Council; he had too little patience and diplomacy for politics.

  The tourists were fascinating, as human usually were. They came in so many shapes and forms. Same could be said for Xelos, of course, but his kind had long ago abolished practices that could render one obese, or, you know, old. Kaur just loved watching old people; their wrinkles were so alien.

  But it was a youth who commandeered his attention, next. A boy in a yellow parka detached his little hand from his mother’s, and stepped a little too close to the edge. Just then, a band of teenagers passed by, cheerfully brawling. Kaur froze in helpless shock, as he waited for the inexorable fall. They were at the very top of their Watchtower, and of course, they had no barrier - no Xel was in need of one. The boy would die. Logic demanded it.

  But just then, something happened; something one hundred percent illogical.

  A glitch.

  Kaur

  He was missing something, he knew it. It was right there, before his eyes. Nothing was unexplainable. Nothing. This was the simple principle his race lived by. They’d studied and questioned everything until they’d bent their very nature to their wills. So, he would not be vanquished by a damn video on Earth of all places.

  “You’re alright, sir?”

  “It’s just Kaur, here,” he snapped, and the man who was technically his boss on Earth shivered a little. Along with the rest of the building.

  Great. He was losing control like a youngling, now.

  Kaur sighed, before apologizing. “Sorry, I haven’t had much sleep.”

  “Anything I can help with?” Kain pushed, gaining some of his respect.

  Most people would have high tailed it out of there as quickly as they could. He opened his mouth to say that no, he didn’t need any help. Kaur’d been raised by the most independent woman in the entire universe - and the man she had deigned worthy of attaching herself to - so, seeking or accepting assistance wasn’t in his nature, but after a second, he thought better of it.

  He’d looked at the surveillance tapes all night, at least ten times each, and he wasn’t seeing anything. Might as well get a fresher pair of eyes on his issue. The man was a Sup - he might very well be able to point out something Kaur had overlooked; the most insignificant of details would help at that point.

  Kaur waved the Captain forward, and pointed up at one of the various holograms hovering in front of him, before pressing on a command to make the recording play again.

  “See?” he asked, and the man next to him frowned in response.

  The child in his yellow parka was too close to the edge of their surveillance tower, and when the careless teenagers playing around pushed him forward, he should have fallen. Every logical trajectory Kaur could calculate ended with a human omelet flat on the ground, two hundred and seventy eight feet down.

  He paused the video recording, and growled angrily; “This child is dead. There’s no other possibility.”

  Kain nodded slowly, catching on.

  “There’s been no death in any of our tours; we would have known.”

  Kaur played the rest of the track; gravity was starting to claim the child, but all of a sudden, there was a glitch of some sort, and the kid was sitting on his ass, away from the edge of the tower.

  This wasn’t logical. Unless someone had tempered with the tape, but Kaur should have been able to spot that.

  “See? Something has happened here; one of us must have helped - someone who control speed, or a telekinesist, perhaps; but there was no report and…”

  “There,” Kain said, pointing to another monitor.

  This time, it was the Captain of the Guard who paused the video. He stepped forward, and singled out a hooded silhouette in the crowd.

  “There were seventy two tourists on the tour. After the glitch, I count seventy three, and that person wasn’t there before.”

  Kaur stared at his superior, astonished.

  “What? You thought that because I’m head of the security in the most boring planet of the Galaxy, I must be useless?”

  That made him smile.

  “Something along that line.”

  Kain smiled kindly.

  “I’ve chosen this assignment. I was born and raised on Earth, you see.”

  That made him raise an eyebrow; there had always been a few of them posted in outer systems like Earth before, of course, but they generally didn’t keep children there.

  “Anyway, I have speed control as well as an eidetic memory. This must be one of us in disguise. Although…”

  He left the word hanging, not bothering to raise the evident concerns. Although, why would a Xel hide from them? Why wouldn’t their sensors have alerted them of a presence?

  It didn’t make a blink of sense. And it was worrying.

  There was another race with abilities similar to theirs… and if there was one of them on Earth, they needed to know.

  Kaur shook his head. A Drakarien wouldn’t have saved the kid. They’d have watched from the sideline with popcorn.

  “We need to investigate the matter. Can you point him out from upfront?”

  Kain nodded, played the video again, and stopped it; he then zeroed in on their target.

  A few seconds passed in complete silence.

  “Damn,” Kain said, using English rather than their mother tongue.

  Kaur concurred. Damn was right.

  Long hair falling around her in wild, untamed waves. Dark eyes she kept fixed on the floor so that no one would notice how they shone. Kaur hadn’t noticed her before; she did her best at blending in, despite the fact that she was a freak. An impossibility. A freaking myth. And also, a complete knockout. The hood had managed to make her blend in, but now she’d been singled out, he just couldn’t look away.

  “I’m either still dreaming, or that’s a time traveler’s orb in her hand.”

  Kaur was pretty certain they were both dreaming. Because there was no such thing as a time traveler. They hadn’t had one for millennia.

  But the small, rounded glob in her hand didn’t lie. Especially not when it disappeared, absorbed inside her flesh.

  “This stays quiet for now,” Kaur said, before his brain fully caught on. “Until we have something to say about it.”

  “Of course. Given the fact that they’d lock us both up if we went around saying that pink unicorns exist after all. But what are we going to do?”

  Very good question.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the boss?” Kaur retorted, quick to pass the responsibility on.

  Whatever they decided, it would be frowned upon, criticized. It wasn’t the kind of situation they could find in a manual. If you happen to find an extinct kind of Xel, proceed to page fifty three…

  One of those would have been pretty damn handy right about now.

  “Fuck that. This is way beyond my pay-grade,” Kain replied, rightly so. “The Council will crucify me if I kill it, or, if I keep it alive. You’re the only one who can get away with making a decision and living to tell the tale here.”

  Again, correct.

  As Kaur had said about five hundred time befo
re, sometimes, being the first son of the Xelos’ Empress sucked balls.

  Aria

  Customer. There was a customer at the door! Aria practically tripped herself, getting up from the chair where she’d been reading a romance book, and skipping to the till, beaming up at him.

  She served a dozen customers per day around launch time; but it was barely past ten in the morning.

  Aria’s smile dropped; not because the person in front of her was a Xel; she was used to serving his kind in X-Press and her professional smile never faltered. They were alright, on a one on one basis. Most of them tipped more than her weekly salary with each order. It dropped because she couldn’t look at that man and simultaneously do anything else.

  He was a dick. That much was obvious. Why, otherwise, would he walk around practically naked? Yeah, that was drool on the corner of her mouth. That tanned, sculpted chest, the intricate, radiant tattoos, and the scars around them… If she’d launched herself at him and started licking his skin, she would have been perfectly justified. Then, there was his face. The long haired, green eyes hunk might have looked too pretty, if it wasn’t for the fresh scar on his jaw, the stubble, the… carelessness. He looked like a god and he didn’t give a fuck.

  Fuck… now there was an idea.

  “How can I help you?”

  His eyes lifted to her, and she did not squirm. Aria wasn’t one to be intimidated. She did not…

  Okay, she totally did, as would any man, woman, child, dog or turtle, confronted to that man.

  She’d taken one step back before consciously deciding to do so, getting him off her personal space.

  “I’m sure you can. Arianna, right?”

  That made her pause, because her name tag just said Aria.

  The man took a step towards her, put his large hands on her till, and leaned forward.

  “Is there any way we could talk for a minute? Alone.”

  She froze, knowing what it was about; no way was the timing a coincidence. She’d used her power for the first time in years yesterday and today, an alien turned up, calling her name?

  Well, that left her one option.

  Aria grabbed hold of the first suitable object she found around her - a tray - and launched it at his face, before jumping up the counter, to a round table nearby, and running for it.

  She had exactly one advantage - two second of surprise - and she couldn’t waste it; she considered attempting to make it to the busy avenue up the street, but the chances of success were slim so instead, she turned towards the road and leaped on top of a car, willing her heartbeat to slow down.

  It had been a while but she was trained for this; and she’d been prepared for someone to find her for close to a decade.

  Sure, she’d imagined that it would be the feds, rather than an alien, but same difference. They wanted to use her, and she had no intention to let them.

  Never again.

  Twelve years ago.

  She was still hungry; her stomach recoiled when the scent of freshly baked goods hit her nostrils. It made her feel sick, faint, and absolutely desperate. There was nothing she wasn't ready to do for a piece of bread. How long had it been since she'd last eaten anything? Days for sure; maybe a week.

  “Good morning.”

  The man who said that was smiling down at her, making her flinch and take a few step backs. Adults were bad. They generally wanted her to return to the foster home, and as well as starving there, she’d been beaten on a regular basis.

  The man pulled out a wallet and handed it to a pretty, smartly dressed woman at his side.

  “Go buy the kid something to eat and a juice, Winifred,” he told her, before crouching to be at her level.

  The child frowned, looking at him with suspicion. She knew that man. She’d seen him on TV. He was someone important.

  “You know who I am?”

  She shook her head despite the vague sense of familiarity.

  “I’m the secretary of state. My name is Harry Tennison.”

  That rang a bell.

  “You’re alone out there? Living in the street must be pretty hard for a young boy by himself.”

  She’d cut her hair to manage to nits a little better. No need to correct him, though.

  “We’ve opened up a program for kids like you, if you want in,” he offered.

  By that time, his assistant had made it back; he took the croissant and orange juice from her, and ended it to the girl.

  “You’ll get food, and somewhere to sleep. There’s a school, too, and you could make friends.”

  She was so distrustful she wouldn’t have fallen for it if he’d acted any differently, but Harry Tennison was a master in the art of manipulation, so he just handed her his card, after scribbling down an address.

  She was at the Compound by the end of the week, joining a group of two hundred and forty three kids just like her. Only a dozen survived the month, and it took them two years to break free.

  Two traumatic, painful, and valuable years, that made it easy for her to jump to another car, leap off it when it reached a bridge, and fall back to her feet with the grace of a cat.

  Aria glanced up, glaring with mistrust for ten seconds, before her shoulders relaxed. He hadn’t followed.

  She checked her back pocket and breathed out when she found her phone.

  She took it out and keyed in a number she’d memorized a long time ago. It directly went to voicemail, as she’d known it would.

  “I’m compromised.”

  She immediately hung up, jogging away, and leaving San Francisco behind.

  Stay in tune to be notified of Beyond Time’s release!