Neodymium Betrayal, page 20
The Growen rescued me. But she said: “I began to develop electromagnetic abilities. I left to go explore my biology.” Mera drizzled the last sentence with honeyed double meaning. “How about you? How long have your powers run on enemy energy?”
“What do you mean?” Jei’s eyes narrowed—not threateningly, just confused.
He doesn’t know. She made her voice higher and a little weaker, to make sure she didn’t come across as a know-it-all: “Well, I saw the end of that fight with the pegasus jaw … you charge, don’t you, when there are lots of people attacking you? To like insane superhuman levels? As long as you’re conscious?”
Jei tilted his head to the side, thinking. “That actually sounds—right, lately. It hasn’t always been like that … to tell you the truth, you probably know more about electronegative abilities in general than I do.”
“Well, human brains don't really fully mature until around twenty-four years of age—about twenty-two Luna-Guetala rotations. So maybe your abilities weren’t done developing yet. You’re what—nineteen?” She didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t, so she continued. “Sometimes, too, you don’t know what you can do until an extreme stress enters your life.”
“I’m not under any more stress than usual,” he said. “I’ve lived under Growen rule three times—that was stress.”
She almost laughed with compassion—oh, sweetie, didn’t he know? “Nothing hurts like betrayal.” Her fingertips reached to trace, to soothe that angry, hardened jaw—
And then her hand jerked back to her lap as his head snapped around to face her. “Sorry, sorry,” she squeaked. “I didn’t—you look so miserable.” She lowered her eyes.
“Don’t do that,” he said, his eyes back on driving.
“I won’t distract you again, I’m sorry.”
“No, the eye thing.” A different kind of anger passed over his face—how many kinds did this guy have? “You don’t have to cower like that,” he added. “You’re not beneath me.”
She stiffened. “I—I know that!”
“Well, good.” He leaned forward a little, straining to see his precious hunting trail. “I’m sorry if I’m misreading,” he added. It was a foreign kind of apology, to Mera—just very plain, without any ceremony, shame, or anything to gain. “I get the feeling someone’s treated you like crap and you think you deserve it. I could be wrong. You do these little things that my mom used to—just—tells.”
She didn’t know how to take that. She planted a finger on her lip, wondering … maybe there was some kind of abused damsel fantasy here she could use to gain control over him?
But what he said felt too true—too naked—and she didn’t know if she’d just realized something about herself or not.
“Speaking of you,” Jei added. “Why are you really helping me?”
She didn’t know how to answer that now. She’d told him her cover story, but that wasn’t what he was asking. “I—I told you, I travel where I want, and help whoever I want,” Mera said. She decided she didn’t like these kinds of questions, and before he could double down with a “why here and me, though” she returned to a topic with less heart and more head: “Anyway, as I was saying about your power surge … I doubt it’s based purely on your number of enemies. But from the two major incidents I’ve heard about, I don’t think you draw on allies. Is that because you need a particular trigger to set yourself off, and override your body’s survival mechanisms—kind of like how adrenaline can override your glucose control systems? Or does your power actually have something to do with an aggression pattern in the cerebral electricity of enmity? I’m not sure how I’d figure that out.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s why. You heard through the mercenary forums about what happened at the Growen outpost on Luna-Guetala. You got curious. That’s why me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why do you care what I think as long as I’m helping you?”
“People’s reasons predict their selling price,” he shrugged.
“That’s a disappointing answer,” she blurted. It wasn’t some interest in her inner being—he just had the same cold strategy she did. She was suddenly incredibly annoyed with him. She turned in her seat to face forward, elbows on her knees and chin on her fists, glowering.
He didn’t notice. “What did you mean by the adrenaline thing?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Mera?” he asked.
She sighed; she couldn’t explain her mood shift to herself, so she didn’t try to explain it to him. “Your body has normal checks and balances that control how you use glucose for energy so that you don’t cause too much oxidative stress to your cells,” she grumbled. “Adrenaline can override that to give you a superhuman power boost, but totally tears up your muscle fibers and damages other systems.”
“So maybe that’s literally it. Maybe I’m just on a hormone trip when there’s a bigger force against me.”
“You have that long cool down, though,” she said. “I heard about what happened at Fort Jehu; it’s all over the rumor boards. You were there. That didn’t stress you enough to trigger the power boost?”
He didn’t answer; his jaw tightened again, and Mera realized she’d hit a nerve. Did he feel guilty? Oh dear. Her mouth ran apologetically to carry them both past the discomfort. “I think there’s a more specific trigger,” she said. “Maybe I’m onto something with the patterns people are giving off. Maybe you need a certain threshold of ambient atmospheric brain energy before you can fire.”
“I really wish I could predict how long the cool down lasts, and exactly how many enemies I need to trigger the power surge,” he mused.
“Maybe after we catch your partner we can just go from base to base taunting armies to test it,” Mera laughed.
“I know you’re joking, but that actually sounds extremely fun.” His eyes lit up over a delicious, wicked grin.
“Maybe I’m not joking,” Mera smiled, tapping her finger on her lip. She liked the idea of seeing him fire full-force, his head tilted back in a laugh while the world spun around his outstretched hands …
And she wasn’t joking. She just had a different set of bases in mind.
Chapter Thirty
Reise
After almost twenty-four hours hiding in the floor, the boys had three problems.
One, someone had farted, and while at first, they’d found themselves in paroxysms of laughter, the air in the hidden compartment never really cleared out. It had a different ventilation system from the main hold, to prevent sentient beings with good noses from sniffing out the smuggling spaces. And over time, that sucked.
Two, Gideon required an insane amount of calories. Nathan had calculated the freeze-dried rations they needed for several days, but Gideon had eaten half of the entire supply within the first twelve hours. He hadn’t even meant to. They all just looked up to find him with three empty packages besides him and a sheepish shock on his face.
Third, after hours of darkness had adjusted their eyes, they discovered twelve-year-old Jake Benzaran had never left the vehicle.
“Shyte shyte shyte shyte shyte!” Reise hissed. “Why are you here? You were supposed to go to the Hiding Place with everyone else!”
Jake was crying. “I di—idn’t want you—to leave me—behiiiind,” he sobbed. “I got—scared so I—hid!”
Reise’s fingers spasmed like claws. “But that’s—gah, what are we supposed to do with you?”
Nathan’s gentle voice intervened before Reise could choke his brother. “What Reise is trying to say, Jake, is that we’re going into enemy territory. That’s no place for someone below regulation fighting age; if you were scared before, it’s going to get worse.”
“But don’t go to enemy territory!” Jake cried. “Go to the Firebase with Lieutenant Bereens!”
“Bereens isn’t going to the Firebase!” Reise choked on his frustration.
“But he saaaaiid!”
“He lied.” Reise punched his own hand. “Okay? He lied. Because that’s what people do when they care about someone. He’s going to look for Lem. See?” Reise beat two fingers on his brother’s wristband to open a map. “We’re heading away from the Firebase, toward this Growen outpost here.”
Jake stared at the glowing blips in silent shock for a second. Then, his face scrunched—wetter and more dumb-looking in the shadows of the soft green light—and he began almost to howl. “But why would he do thaaaat—”
Gideon wrapped his bicep around the younger kid’s face and held him still. “Hey bud?” he said as the twelve-year-old struggled in breathless terror. “The sound dampening on this compartment’s good, but it’s not good enough that you can just scream out your soul, okay?”
Jake kicked. Reise sat on his legs to prevent them from gonging against the floor. Nathan leaned in to the kid’s ear. “Jake, I know this is scary. And if it were just Jei up there, we’d go right up, explain the situation, and get you back to the Firebase to take our punishment. But Jei’s got a civilian combatant up there, and if we suddenly appear out of nowhere, she’s going to know we have hidden spaces in these ships. Now, she may be a really nice person, I don’t know, but she’s not Frelsi. That information will find its way to the Growen, and people will get hurt. So you’re going to have to be quiet until we can find a way out of here. Okay?”
Jake went limp. “Let him go,” Nathan said. Gideon didn’t right away—“Let him go!”
“I am, geez! Just making sure he wasn’t going to—”
“He needs air, you sausage-snarfing bonehead,” Nathan said, pulling Jake away from the other teen like a protective parent. Reise found himself laughing at the insult, despite the situation. “Jake, we think your sister’s a prisoner at Growen South Central,” Nathan continued. “Reise and Gideon and I are going to find her.”
“Did Lieutenant Bereens say that?” Jake sniffled. He curled up against the back wall, quiet now, holding his knees.
Reise scooted over to sit next to him. “We haven’t talked to him,” Reise said. “Like Nate says, he’s got the civilian with him.” Reise leaned his head back against the wall with a sigh. When they were little, he and Jake had played games about going off on adventures together. Now that it was accidentally happening, it was much less fun. And that wasn’t really Jake’s fault. Maybe this whole thing had been a mistake.
But Reise had gotten sick of watching other people just wait it out when a loved one disappeared, and then cry when nine times out of ten the person ended up dead. Frelsi recovery teams had hundreds of requests pending at any one time: if you wanted something done you couldn’t trust others to do it.
Time mattered, too. When Lem escaped on her own, a year and a half ago, she returned changed after having been missing for months. Cinta came back actually crippled—without claws, he couldn’t travel the trees in his native habitat like before. This time, with what Reise had overheard of Jei and Cinta’s angry conversation, it sounded like his sister might be in serious danger.
And they’d all just lost the only home Reise had known! Why the hell shouldn’t he take the fight to the jerkwads who’d started it? What was the point of the constant combat training if you never—
“Hey, Jake,” Gideon said to the sniffling boy. “Remember when you used to sit on Reise and he couldn’t get up?” Reise rolled his eyes: Jake was about his same size, plus a few pounds, despite being two years his junior. “Remember that?” Gideon asked.
“Yeah …” Jake said.
“So look at him. He’s not scared. You can kick his butt, right?”
Jake could not, not with his janky foot, but he nodded, unable to see Reise’s eye-daggers.
“So if the guy you can beat up isn’t scared of something, you shouldn’t be scared either,” Gideon finished.
“Brilliant deduction, master scientist,” Reise muttered. He could see Nathan shrugging in the shadows, probably wearing that broad smile that was about as close as Nathan ever got to laughing. Gideon’s meaty hand made a slapping sound on Jake’s shoulder.
“So we’ve got a mission for you, brave guy,” Gideon said. “We’re gonna need you to keep your mouth shut and ears open until we can get you home. And when we say it’s time to move, you’re gonna move. No hiding or crying or other dumb shyte, okay?”
“O–okay.”
And so Jake was calm.
But now Reise had to get him back to base somehow.
Jei
We weren’t far, now—and the trail was leading toward Growen South Central.
The wind had picked up, rocking our kind-of-stolen evac transport from side to side like a seafaring vessel. It was my turn to swap out and head topside to stretch my legs. Without a word, I looked over at Mera; she leaned over and reached toward the old control sticks on my dashboard.
“You sure you trust little me to drive this giant thing?” Mera sparkled at me.
“I trust you to tell me if you can’t,” I said, standing to let her squeeze by me.
When her fingers closed over mine on the controls there was something like an electric jolt—not like static, but painful, like thousands of little needles stabbed me. The same thing had happened for a brief moment when she gripped my hand earlier, but this time a thought popped into my head: Don’t leave me.
I blinked, and pulled away with a smile, stepping back to clear the space around her. Wow, I was … tired. Poor woman probably already got enough creeps imagining things about her without me assuming she craved my company.
“You good?” I asked.
“I’m good,” she said.
“I’ll just be a moment. Then we’ll pull over into those dunes, like we talked about, to hide the ship, and hoof it the rest of the way.”
She nodded, eyes lingering on me for a moment—“Watch the road,” I said.
I grinned as I turned around and slid the cockpit door shut behind me. Whatever I imagined about her fingers, I knew I hadn’t imagined that glance.
I gripped the rough ladder to the top deck, sighing with the familiar, comforting hum of the evacuation transport around me, and pushed my way through the hatch up into the full wind.
“Njande,” I said aloud. “I’m here.”
I am, first.
“I know.” I put both palms on the deck and pushed myself up out of the hole. There was a slight drizzle on the wind. “I’m just—I’m here to see if you have anything else to say. We’re almost there. I’m doing this thing.” I stood with my arms outstretched, facing into the wind as my calves and soles followed the rocking of the ship to keep me balanced. I felt like I could ride through him, straight through a mist of memory and shadow that would wash away with the wind and dissolve just like Lem had. Just like my mom had. Just like Fort Jehu, Lavabase, and friend after friend. Nothing was solid; everything dissolved in time.
It was backward, of course.
Njande was more solid than Jei’s rock of a clenched fist, but a limited, three-dimensional creature could not know the mist was, in fact, itself. Njande saw, with deep sadness, the days stretching ahead and backward around the Paradox Warrior, and the timelines, not real yet, that shimmered around him like waves from a stone tossed into a pond.
Njande touched the moment, and collapsed the waveform.
Jei
Trust in Me with all your heart and don’t lean on your own understanding.
Only this frustrating repeating thought came to me now, in the brewing gale.
“Yeah, I get that,” I called back. I could barely hear myself with the roar in my ears. “And I trust you, but—”
Lean not on your own understanding.
“I don’t know what that means!”
Trust in Me.
I gripped the railing and yelled without words. I couldn’t pick up the rest of the message—either because the wall between our dimensions was still too thick, or my brain just couldn’t contain it.
With all your heart.
The gentle repetition gave me a feeling, at least—the feeling that, whether or not my brain could catch the meaning, the speaker cared. Maybe it just meant I needed to let that organ in my chest beat normally, without all the fluttering and pounding. Rest, he’d said before. Maybe that meant I just needed to meditate and hone my senses for the battle ahead.
I closed my eyes, gripped the color green in my mind, and stood before that door in my innermost sanctum, the one lined with old vines and carvings across its panels. I couldn’t go in there. I wanted to—no, I didn’t want to? I couldn’t surrender to the urge. I couldn’t fall asleep inside. I had to do this, awake, and feeling all of it, every drop of pain and rage.
You have to feel miserable? He asked from the other side. Oh, little human, woe to you, if you don’t enter this rest.
“Woe” seemed so out of place in my head. I laughed, a tired, sad laugh, not at him, but just at that word, and sat down with my back to the door. The wood was alive, and a cool warmth, a paradox of comfort, soothed my spine.
“I can’t rest. I don’t know how,” I said. “But no matter what happens,” I promised, “I’ll guard this room, just like we pledged. It’s yours, and mine. Only.
“Then, even if I muck this up, I have somewhere to come back to.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Reise
The wind had picked up outside the evac transport; under the feet of the Paradox Warrior and his friend, inside the hidden secret hold, the ship’s gentle rocking and vibrations from the engine eventually put twelve-year-old Jake Benzaran back to sleep.
Once the little brother revved into that familiar snore Reise knew so well, someone tapped Reise’s knee.
“Nate?” Yup—after so many hours in the darkness, they’d all adapted to see at least each others’ shapes and expressions now. Nathan nodded his head toward the other end of the hidden hold. Gideon and Reise followed into the cramped space at the back of the ship, under the decontamination room, hunched over, in Reise’s mind, like peacock guinea pigs snacking on moss.
