The Augenspire (Origins of Elaria Book 1)

by V. St. Clair

  “Yes, things seem to be progressing well here,” she assured them, before moving on with Topher.

  They walked across the street to a little park that was more like a large courtyard in the middle of the city than an actual park. It did have a little walking trail that went around the space, though, and some benches and trees dotting the neatly-mown lawn, so Jessamine supposed it technically qualified as a park.

  “So, what did Darius have to say?” Topher asked again when they were seated beside each other on a wooden bench facing the park. A woman was walking her dog around the grassy area in front of them.

  “He was informing me of his plans to move into the capital after he had his fill of the summer parties down south,” she answered drily. “He inquired as to whether we have different seasons in Silveria, and then recommended that the Viceroy and I get control of these terrorist attacks before his arrival, because it is bad for business.”

  Topher looked like he was tasting something unpleasant, but kept his expression as neutral as possible.

  “Then he asked when F.O.B would reopen, because he is trying to run an empire, and when I explained that his father wasn’t nearly as discommoded by the business interruption as he seemed to be, he suggested he could explain the situation to me with simpler words if necessary.”

  “I see.” Topher looked like he was ready to spit fire over the insult to her intelligence, but as usual, he kept himself under control.

  “At that point I may have accidentally recommended lodging my armored boot in a place that would require a general surgeon to remove it, and ended the call.”

  A snort of amusement escaped Topher against his will and he said, “Really, Jessamine, you must get better at dealing with him if he’s going to be your husband.”

  “You think I should have let him treat me like a silly child who needs to be educated in the workings of her own government?” she retorted indignantly.

  “No, but you should try not to let him rattle you so badly. After all, you have people to give him a steel-toed enema for you.”

  Oh, good, he was smiling. Jessamine always cherished these rare moments when he could let his guard down and tell her what he was really thinking.

  “I believe I should be first in line,” she laughed. “So you’re suggesting I task my Majors with intimidating my husband until he learns proper respect?”

  “Oh, I doubt you’ll have to ask it of anyone,” he assured her pleasantly. “At least a few of us would consider it our personal obligation to remind that toad of his position. On a completely unrelated note, my armored boots are quite a bit larger than yours.”

  She smiled, relieved to have someone on her side in this matter. She definitely made the right decision coming out to see Topher on this sunny, beautiful day; being with him made all of her problems seem less impossible to face.

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to call him a toad.”

  “Oh, I think I can call him whatever I want.” He smiled wryly. “You’re the one who is supposed to appear unbiased.”

  “Well, while you’re trying to discover how much of your boot you can fit through his colon, do make an effort not to kill him. The last thing we need is scandal in the Augenspire. More scandal, that is. It seems like there’s always something dodgy going on that we’re in the news for.”

  Topher frowned and said, “Yes, we’d barely gotten over that great embarrassment involving Aerial Commander Frowsly and the horse, and now we have to deal with the fallout from Fox’s terrible loss of face.”

  “It would help if he had actually picked out the right person as the psychic from the Academy,” Jessamine sighed regretfully. “All seven of those girls turned out to be innocent, and after the presence of so many Provo there, word leaked out that he had his Talents stolen.”

  “It is an unprecedented failure for the Provo-Major,” Topher acknowledged grimly. “Even though I doubt the enemy can do anything productive with his full Talent set, symbolically, it is a massive win for the opposition.”

  “You consider the Gifted the enemy then?” Jessamine prodded him gently, truly curious.

  “Not all Gifted, no, only the ones trying to destabilize the government and hurt your family. I can certainly understand their historically bad feelings, some of which I can be blamed for, and I hope your father’s plan for integration relieves much of the tension, but in the meantime it is my job to protect you both from the ones who would harm you.”

  “You keep talking like that and I’m going to ask my father if I can marry you instead of Darius,” she joked, just to see how he would take it.

  At first Topher looked stunned, his mouth actually dropping open slightly, but then his expression quickly turned to terror and before Jessamine could get past her hurt feelings and tell him she was only teasing, a faint buzz filled the air and her body became really heavy just as Topher flew backwards away from her.

  It took Jessamine a moment to realize the bench they were sitting on had exploded, and she had been knocked to the ground—but was otherwise unharmed—because of the shield-stick Topher had activated at her beltline before being thrown by the blast. That explained the suddenly heaviness and the faint buzzing noise.

  “Topher!” she struggled under the weight of the shield stick and got to her feet, frantically looking around and hoping he was alright. If he died protecting her…

  Another blast of some high-powered laser hit her shield and dissipated, knocking her backwards again. She could feel the shield-stick growing uncomfortably warm at her waist, which meant it was getting close to being overloaded. It was designed to protect against basic attacks, not repeated blasts by military-grade laser cannons.

  People were screaming nearby and running in all directions. A dust cloud was settling over them from the previous blasts, making it hard to see, but on her hands and knees, Jessamine was able to see Topher getting to his feet near a tree that he had obviously slammed into and snapped in half. Thankfully, he must have been wearing enough of his own shielding defenses to prevent his spine from snapping similarly.

  Jessamine rolled out of the way as another blast of light flew past her, burning her with the heat, and blowing a huge chunk of grass and dirt into oblivion where her body had been, leaving a massive gouge in the earth.

  They’re only trying to kill me…

  Well, that was good for Topher, at least. He had a chance at getting away, if only she could avoid getting him killed in the meantime.

  Topher was charging towards her with his ion-sword drawn, the orange light like a beacon that drew the eye. Jessamine still couldn’t see who her attacker was through all the dust, but as she was getting to her knees again, the laser cannon blasted through the last of her shielding. With a thrill of terror she felt the protection dissipate around her, and the spent shield-stick was smoking slightly from being overheated.

  Topher seemed to fly past her and slam into whoever was aiming at her, and she heard a fight ensue while she dropped her spent shield-stick and felt the weight drop away from her as well. She got to her feet and drew her knife, running to help Topher and getting there just in time to knife her assailant in the groin so Topher could throw him to the ground and stomp on his face with his plated boot.

  Topher’s head was bleeding from a superficial gash across the forehead and it looked like one of his shoulders was dislocated, but otherwise he seemed unharmed as he met her eyes with worry. The light on his wrist-comm was blinking red; he’d called for emergency services to come to their location. Jessamine wondered why the light next to it wasn’t blinking, which would indicate he’d called for backup from the Augenspire as well.

  “Topher, are you alright?” Jessamine asked before he could speak, gripping his arm so she could help him shove it back into socket at the shoulder. He groaned in pain and bit his lip. “Who was that guy? Why haven’t you called the Augenspire?”

  “I don’t recognize him; he’s likely a hired gun. And I haven’t called the Augenspire because he�
�s carrying a military-grade laser cannon.”

  Jessamine’s heart sank as she fully processed what he was telling her. If the weapon came from the military itself, then someone in the Augenspire had to have given it to the hitman.

  Oh shit, my own people really are trying to kill me…

  She saw panic in Topher’s eyes as he tried to grab her and throw her away from him, but this time he wasn’t fast enough. Lightning pain tore through her as something hot slammed into her back and exploded, pushing her forward into Topher as the pair of them fell to the ground.

  It felt like her entire body was on fire, and Topher pushed her off of him and roared in rage as he ran past her once more and chased whoever had taken her down. Jessamine had a hard time caring about whether or not Topher would catch the second assailant; she could feel the life bleeding out of her through her back, and tried not to think too much about what she had been hit by. A laser would have gone right through her and melted her insides, which was obviously not the case, and anything with that big of a heat signature would have been picked up by Topher’s Talents to alert him before it fired. That was surely how he was able to push her out of the way the first time she was attacked, since the laser cannon would have lit up like a torch to him, even at a distance. It must have been a low-tech weapon that got her in the back, which made it no less dangerous, unfortunately.

  An aerial ambulance was descending in the middle of the park now, the wind from the descent pushing away most of the dust. Armed guards were leaping out of it before it touched down, hurrying to assist Topher and canvas the area for more danger, while the med-techs ran over to pull her onto a stretcher.

  Bless the municipal police for responding so quickly.

  Topher was suddenly by her side again as they carried her into the ambulance; the engine was still running as they loaded her in. They were careful to keep her lying on her side, which told her they couldn’t brace her neck very effectively.

  My back must be in really bad shape if they’re forgoing even that basic precaution, Jessamine thought muzzily.

  “Major, you can’t come—”

  “She goes nowhere without me,” Topher snapped at them, the first time Jessamine had truly seen him lose control of himself. With blood spattered across his face from the second attacker, he looked absolutely terrifying. “I don’t care who else you have to leave behind, now GO!”

  It seemed no one was keen on arguing with a Provo-Major in a rage, even one without his armor on, because they took off as soon as Jessamine and Topher were in the ambulance, and the sirens began wailing as they sailed through the emergency lane.

  She was vaguely aware of people poking her with needles and setting up intravenous drips, but she kept her eyes focused on Topher, who was kneeling beside her and holding one of her hands in his, while the other was pressed against the wall of the ambulance for balance as they took turns at speed. His hat had fallen off somewhere along the way, and the enhancers at his temples were in plain view now.

  “How bad is it?” Jessamine asked weakly, blinking spots of darkness away from her eyes, determined to remain conscious.

  “You’re going to be fine, Jessa.”

  “That isn’t what I asked,” she insisted.

  “It’s…not good,” he admitted, refusing to look away from her. He was unusually pale and frightened, even with blood on his face. Jessamine wondered if they would be able to fix her after all, or if she was really going to die today—all because she wanted one measly hour of time alone with someone she liked.

  “I’m so sorry, Jessa,” he whispered. “This is all my fault; I should have known there was danger before the last minute. I should have known there was more than one assailant…”

  “You couldn’t have known,” she tried to console him.

  “I should have,” he insisted, tormented. “I was distracted—I’m always distracted by you—and I didn’t realize the heat profile I was seeing until it was almost too late. I should have thought to canvas for another attacker, but I get so caught up in you that I forget to do my damn job.” He looked furious with himself over it.

  Jessamine really wanted to focus on the important part of what he said, that he found her distracting—hopefully in a good way—but she lost consciousness.

  When she opened her eyes, she was lying flat on her stomach with her head turned to one side, and Topher was cutting the last of her shirt off of her and removing her knife from her belt. She didn’t recognize the room they were in, but it looked like an operating room, so she assumed she was at Gastelain Memorial Hospital. Topher looked strange all scrubbed up like a surgeon, but she would know his face anywhere. He must have been serious when he said she wasn’t going anywhere without him.

  That’s nice…she thought idly to herself. I’m safe as long as Topher is with me…

  She drifted out of consciousness again, only to wake up in screaming pain. It felt like someone was pulling fishhooks out of her back, and she groaned and then shrieked and flailed as another one was removed.

  “Can’t we sedate her?” Topher’s voice sounded haunted and desperate from somewhere above her.

  “We’d risk killing her with her vitals as tanked as they are,” someone else answered him. “Hold her down; we’ll numb her better after the last of the spikes come out.”

  Jessamine wanted to tell them it was worth the risk of death and to please give her a nerve block or some painkiller or something, but all she could do was shriek in agony until she lost consciousness again.

  The next time she awoke she couldn’t feel her back at all, which was a monumental improvement over last time. There was a slight pressure behind her that was rocking her entire body with the up-and-down force of it, but she couldn’t tell what it was without looking.

  “What’s happening?” she asked, throat sore from her earlier screaming.

  “We have removed the razor-spikes from your back, Vicerina, and now we’ve applied local anesthetic so we can scrub off any loose skin and attempt to prevent infection,” a doctor informed her.

  Ugh, razor-spikes. She had been hit by a very crude—and horrible—weapon indeed. Typically loaded into a wide-barreled gun, a ball of metal wrapped in razor-edged fishhooks would explode upon impact, ripping into everything in their path. If they were at the point of sloughing off dead skin and disinfecting her, then the spikes must already be out.

  “Topher, where are you?” she rasped, tilting her head slightly to look around, because she’d lost sight of him momentarily.

  “I’m here, Vicerina,” he addressed her formally, reappearing in her line of sight and crouching down so he was on eye-level with her. He was still holding her hand, though she only now became aware of it again.

  “How bad is it, Major?” she tried to look as coherent and commanding as possible. Now was not the time to be weak and helpless; she was the heir to the Viceroyalty of Elaria, and these doctors and nurses would not see her cry or whine if she could help it.

  “It’s bad,” he admitted, eyes blazing with intensity. “Once they get all the damaged skin off and disinfect you, they’ll begin applying the replacement skin and see if it takes. There are some vertebrae in your back that have been glued, and they’ll scan you again to make sure there aren’t any more bone-repairs needed. A few of your ribs are scarred from being gouged by the spikes, but they’ll touch them up with plascrete. Really, infection is the greatest concern with razor-spikes, since most people make sure they’re filthy before loading them into the launcher, and it will take days to know for sure if we were able to prevent it.”

  Jessamine knew all of this already. She had gone through the same weapons and medical training as the Majors, but she didn’t bother pointing it out to Topher right now. His voice gave her something to focus on while she tried not to pay attention to the horrible pressure and scraping sound coming from her back. She didn’t like being shirtless and in a position of weakness in front of these strangers.

  “What I said…earlier…
I wasn’t really joking…”

  She was going to say something else, but lights seemed to be popping in front of her eyes, and she felt very lightheaded and weak all of a sudden. She opened her mouth to comment on it, but heard only a vague groaning sound come out before she slipped into the blackness again.

  16

  Topher Augen

  ~

  Tick tock, tick tock.

  Don’t you know, little one?

  Nothing lasts forever.

  ~

  Topher was relieved when Jessamine passed out again, because it gave him permission to turn away and vomit without frightening her. The skin being peeled from her back in rough sheets was gag-inducing enough without the vile smell of Bactrin being poured into the open wounds. Even with the best team of surgeons and regenerative dermatologists on the planet at her disposal, Jessamine would be lucky to escape without scars.

  Scars will be the least of her worries, Topher thought grimly, wiping the acrid taste of vomit from his mouth. With a seventy-percent mortality rate from razor-spikes, she’ll be lucky to escape with her life.

  Razor-spikes were a crude, dirty guerilla weapon typically only used by people who had a lot of money on hand and wanted to kill you in one of the most painful ways possible. The weapon itself may have been crude, but there was nothing cheap about the manufacture of the launcher able to expel a ball of razor-spikes with the right amount of velocity and force to ensure maximum scatter and damage upon impact. Most hand-made attempts resulted in misfiring and the mutilation of the shooter—thankfully—which prevented it from being a more commonplace weapon.

  Satisfied there was nothing further he could do for Jessamine at the moment, he informed the surgeons working on her that he would return shortly and stepped out of the room and into the hall, welcoming the fresh air. His next actions were crucial. He needed to notify the Viceroy about what happened before he got word of it through some backhand channel—like the local news, who would doubtless be covering the attack soon, even if they didn’t know the victim yet. The only communicator he had on him was his top-clearance, government-issued one, which would prevent casual eavesdroppers from picking up his call frequency, but all calls made on government communicators routed through a central hub in the Augenspire.