Riley's Paradox, page 20
part #9 of Hearts of ICARUS Series
“I now understand Riley’s response when I asked her that question when she awoke on the Mau after being drugged,” Percy said quietly.
“What did she say?” Jax asked.
“She told me she felt as though she’d been hit by a tree. I told her that she was not making sense and wondered if I should summon Dr. Rikel for her.”
“What was her response to that?” Wilder asked, arching one brow while a little smile played around his mouth.
“I believe it had something to do with my tail, knots, and a closet.”
Jax chuckled softly. “Sounds like Lady Riley has a bit of a mean streak.”
“All the best females do,” Percy said as he began subtly testing his body, muscle by muscle.
“That’s the truth,” Jarl agreed sincerely while his brothers, and Wilder, nodded their agreement.
“How far are we from Jasan?” Wilder asked.
“About two weeks from our current position,” Jax replied.
“We need to find that recorder first,” Wilder said, his stomach already tightening at the thought of further delays.
“Our orders are to bring you, Win, West, and Lady Riley straight to Jasan without delay,” Jawn said. “Once Win and West are onboard and awake, I’ll send an update to High Prince Garen and set course for Jasan. We’ll leave the other ships to bring in the remaining pods, and to search for the recorder. If it wasn’t destroyed they’ll find it and when they do, they can transmit any relevant footage to us.”
“That sounds good, thank you,” Wilder said slowly as he studied all three Lobos. “What is it that you’re not telling me, Jawn?”
Jawn shook his head, his expression revealing frustration for just a moment. “I have no specific information, Wilder, but something is happening back home. Whatever it is, it hasn’t been announced as yet. We just know that there’s a lot of tension and worry surrounding the Dracons, the Tigrens, and most especially the Bearen Consuls and their daughters. We caught a rumor two days ago that the security status on Dracon Ranch had been raised to high.”
“Why?” Wilder asked, surprised.
“We don’t know, Wilder. As I said, all we have is that rumor. Nothing more.”
Wilder nodded. “If you hear anything further would you mind letting us know?”
“Of course,” Jawn promised.
“They’re opening the second pod now,” Jarl said, glancing to the other side of the room. “It’s one of your brothers, but I don’t know which one yet.”
Wilder reached out with his senses, then nodded. “It’s West. Go ahead and check on him. I just need another minute or two to get my bearings before I climb out of this thing.”
“Let us know if you need help,” Jawn said.
Wilder nodded, then reached for his brother again, probing a little deeper. He was relieved to find that West was groggy, but otherwise fine.
“Nine weeks,” Percy said too softly for anyone other than Wilder to hear. “How will we ever find her?”
“One step at a time, Percy. It’ll take us about two weeks to reach Jasan, as you just heard. I know it feels like a long time, but it could take as long as ten days for our clan ship, the Pharaoh, to be prepped for an extended journey anyway. Even if we reached Jasan tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to leave until that’s completed.
“The first thing we’ll do, once we’re all fully awake, is send messages ahead with orders to have the Pharaoh fueled, armed, and provisioned. We’ll need to fill out our crew as well, which may take another few days. By the time we reach Jasan everything should be ready for us.
“From what Jawn just said, there seems to be more to all of this than we know, so we’ll also need to spend time gathering as much information as possible. We’ll speak with Riley’s parents, our Princes, and anyone else we can think of who might be able to help, or even point us in the right direction. Then we’ll start searching, and we will not stop until we find Riley.”
“I ask that you allow me to accompany you,” Percy said.
“You need not ask, Percy,” Wilder said. “I already promised you a place in our hunt and besides, we wouldn’t think of leaving you behind anyway.”
“Yes, I remember that now,” Percy said. “I hope that, once we find Riley, you will not object to destroying those who took her.”
“Object?” Wilder growled. “I’m looking forward to it.”
***
Riley opened her eyes to find herself in Bastet’s small transparent cat form, lying on a gray floor in a room with six unconscious women on tall narrow beds. Again. To her great relief, she remembered a few things this time.
Those few memories brought forth others, and those reminded her of still more. It began as a trickle, but she didn’t try to rush it. Instead, she let the memories come to her without trying to force them through the cotton wool that her head felt stuffed with.
She didn’t remember how she’d been taken, but she did remember her men, and the single night they’d spent together. Grief and loss hit her hard and fast, nearly swamping her before she could raise a mental barrier against it. She wasn’t sure what was going on exactly, but this definitely wasn’t the time to indulge herself in a pity party.
Leaving the emotional memories alone for the moment, she forced herself to focus on her last outing with Bastet. Luckily, she remembered everything that had happened the first time she’d mysteriously managed to send her consciousness out of her unconscious body. Including the invisible wall, and the strange dizziness she’d felt.
This time she felt stronger, with just a touch of dizziness. Hopefully the dizziness would fade again, but whether it did or not, she intended to find a way out of this room.
She needed to know who had taken her from the Mau, and where she was now. She also needed to find out if Wilder, Win, West, and Percy had also been taken, and if they were being held unconscious like she was. She had no idea what she could possibly do about it if they were, but she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.
Before she had a chance to put her thoughts into action, the door slid open and the same orderly from before entered the room. Riley hesitated, torn between making an attempt to get out of the room before she became too weak, and gathering more information from the view screens over the beds. Remembering that it had taken the man no more than a couple of minutes to check all six women, she decided to stay and learn what she could.
This time she followed him closely, jumping from bed to bed, studying the screens above each woman for the few seconds he activated them. By the time he got to her body on the other side of the room, she knew exactly where to look for the number she wanted.
The screens above the first four women indicated that they’d been in Room 3 for ten days. When the orderly activated the screen above her bed, she saw that she’d been there for ten days as well. Since she’d only seen that number for the sixth woman before, she had to wait for the orderly to turn her screen on to discover how much time had passed.
When the sixth woman’s screen finally came on, Riley wasn’t surprised to see that it also indicated ten days. That number had been three when she’d seen it before, so that meant seven days had passed since she’d first awakened as Bastet. Seven days.
She’d never had to rest that long after using astral projection before she could do it again. Not even when she first started using it as a kid. She wondered about that as the orderly finished up and left the room.
She glanced at her own body lying motionless exactly as it had been seven days earlier, then jumped to the floor. After two steps she stopped and mentally rolled her eyes.
The fact that her true body was unconscious while somehow managing to send her mind out in the form of Bastet was practically a miracle all by itself. She honestly couldn’t imagine how she was doing it. It was so...bizarre. In that light, having to rest for seven days no longer seemed excessive at all.
Still, if her mind was unaware, then how did she manage to use astral projection in the first place? If, on the other hand, her mind was aware that her body was in a coma, why couldn’t she remember that now? How was she supposed to wake herself up? How was she supposed to keep herself from going completely insane? And also, by the way, how in kólasi was she using a psychic ability now when she hadn’t had the energy to use either of them in over a year?
Setting those questions aside before her rapidly escalating frustration got the better of her, she resumed walking toward the door. She half expected to bump her nose against that invisible boundary at any moment, so she was more surprised than relieved when she managed to not only reach the door, but step through it.
She stood for a moment, looking up the corridor before her. There were six doors, three on each side, and she’d just exited the third door on her right. There was a set of swinging double doors at the other end of the corridor that had been propped open, revealing an expanse of empty flooring that appeared to be a corridor running horizontal to the one she stood in. Beyond that was nothing but a bare gray wall.
Should she check the other five rooms for her Rami and Percy first? Or should she go beyond the double doors and attempt to discover where she was and who was running the place?
***
A small white cat with a pale blue teardrop on her forehead and turquoise eyes slowly emerged through a solid door into a vacant corridor. The corridor ended in a wall just a few feet behind her, but there was a set of wide double doors at the other end that were propped open.
Her tail twitched a few times with indecision. Then, ears stiff and alert, muscles tense, she began walking up the right side of the corridor, staying close to the wall.
The sound of male voices reached her and she stiffened, panic gripping her before she remembered that no one could see her. She crouched down against the wall, her eyes fixed on the open doors at the end of the corridor where the voices were coming from.
A moment later two men, one on either end of a large, heavily laden hand truck, turned into the corridor where the cat stood. They only walked a couple of yards before stopping in front of the first door on the left nearest the opened double doors. Then they began shifting the hand truck back and forth in small increments, attempting to get it turned around in the narrow corridor so they could push it into that room.
While they did that, the cat studied the items on the hand truck, trying to figure out what she was looking at. Finally she realized they were cylinders made of glass, plastic or some other transparent substance. Each one was about three feet high and two feet across. There were about a dozen of them stacked on pallets, each separated from its neighbor by thick packing material. As she watched, the men finally managed to push through the doorway and into the room beyond.
A moment later two more men pushing another big hand truck loaded with more of the stacked cylinders entered the corridor. After a minute or two of pushing and pulling, it too went into the first room.
The cat continued walking along the right side of the corridor until she reached the open doorway of the room the cylinders had been taken into. Curious, she crossed the corridor, entered the room, and crouched down in the nearest corner.
The room contained what appeared to be pedestals arranged in six evenly spaced rows of five. Constructed of what appeared to be brushed steel, each one was about four feet high, two feet wide, and two feet deep. As she watched, the men removed the cylinders from the hand trucks and placed them carefully on top of the pedestals.
She had no idea what the cylinders were for, but they reminded her strongly of aquariums, though she seriously doubted that was their purpose. Whatever they were meant for, the sight of the cylinders combined with the pedestals made her hackles rise from her neck all the way to the tip of her tail. She had no idea why she reacted that way. She just knew that she didn’t like them one bit, and would have loved nothing more than to destroy them.
Once she was sure the delivery men weren’t going to do anything more interesting than place the cylinders on the stands, she left the room. Hesitating for just a moment, she turned and headed for the double doors at the end of the corridor which were still propped open. Just as she stepped across the threshold, she vanished.
Chapter 11
Two days later
“Sorry I’m late,” Win said as he joined his brothers in one of the Shadow’s two training rooms. “I just received a response from Captain Sands. He confirmed receipt of our orders and will see that all the preparations we requested are completed, and that the Pharaoh is ready to go before we reach Jasan.”
“Good,” Wilder said as he sorted through the wooden practice swords in one corner of the room.
“Where’s Percy?” Win asked as he joined his brothers and began going through the bokken himself.
“In our room,” Wilder replied worriedly. “He’s depressed, I think. He spends most of his time either sleeping, or staring out the porthole.”
“Is he eating?”
“Yes, but only because I told him this morning that if he got too weak, he wouldn’t be able to help us find Riley.”
“Good thinking,” Win said. “I don’t want to imagine Riley’s reaction if anything should happen to him. She’d be heartbroken.”
“She would be,” Wilder agreed. “Since it’s our duty to see to our berezi’s health, safety, and happiness, we will just have to make sure nothing does happen to him.”
“I had the strangest dream last night,” West said, turning one of the bokken over in his hands as he spoke. “Actually, the strangest thing about it is that I had it two nights in a row. Exactly.” Satisfied with the bokken he lowered it, a little surprised to find both Wilder and Win staring at him. “What?”
“I had a strange dream too,” Win said. “Twice.”
Both West and Win turned to Wilder, who nodded. “Yes, I did too. It was about a small white cat with a blue teardrop on its forehead.” Both Win and West nodded slowly. “Obviously it represents Riley. Or it seems so to me.”
“Agreed,” Win and West both said at the same time.
Forgetting about the practice swords, the three of them compared dreams, detail by detail. That all three of them had the exact same dream was strange enough. That they’d all had it two nights in a row was incomprehensible.
“I think the strangest thing about the dream itself is that I had a strong sense of what the cat was feeling and thinking,” Wilder said. “Not everything. I couldn’t read her mind, and I didn’t communicate with her. But I knew she was afraid of being seen even though no one could see her. I knew she was curious about the cylinders. And I knew she didn’t like them.”
“You’re right,” Win said, frowning. “I just accepted that in the dream, but now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve ever known what another person, or animal, was thinking in a dream before. Not like that.”
“I wonder how many times we would’ve had that dream by now if we hadn’t been in the life pods,” West said.
“I doubt we’ll ever know,” Wilder said. “I wish there was more information in it, though. Something to tell us where it takes place, or why the dream is of a cat rather than a katrenca, or even what those cylinders are for.”
“I woke up both times wishing the cat had gone into the other rooms along the corridor,” Win said. “If we have the dream again tonight, we should try to see if there are details we missed.”
“Such as?” West asked.
“Shipping labels on the cylinders or the hand truck. Name tags on the men delivering them. Windows in the room the cat entered. Whether or not the cat can feel the floor vibrating as it would on a ship.”
“We’d need to be Dream Walkers to accomplish all of that, Win,” Wilder said.
“We could at least try,” West argued.
“Yes, we can try,” Wilder agreed. “The real trick will be remembering to look for such things while we’re in the dream.”
“I’ll try searching the database for those cylinders,” West offered. “I know it’s a long shot, but who knows what might turn up?”
“Good idea,” Win said, holding two bokken up for inspection. “Shall we spar or go to lunch?”
“I don’t feel much like sparring at the moment,” Wilder said. “But, we did just spend nine weeks in life pods. The exercise will be good for us.”
Chapter 12
Four days later
Riley sat at the foot of the bed where her unconscious body laid, waiting for the orderly to come and check the women. She was tempted to leave the room before he came. This was the third time she’d projected Bastet from her unconscious mind, and she still had no idea where she was, who had taken her, or even why.
The last time she’d awakened, she’d only gotten half way through the double doors at the end of the corridor before she was yanked back, her energy depleted. She was a little frustrated that she’d wasted so much time watching those men set the cylinders up, but she was glad she’d seen them. There was something about the things that gave her a bad feeling. Bad enough that she really wanted to stay away from them. But she couldn’t. She didn’t know why, but something told her they were important.
As much as she wanted to begin searching for answers, she couldn’t convince herself to do it before reviewing the data on the vid screens over each bed. It was the only hard information she had access to so far, and she couldn’t ignore it.
While she waited she thought about Percy, and the Katre-Laus. The moment she’d opened her eyes to find herself lying in the middle of the gray floor again she’d realized that the last of her memories had returned. She now remembered her transport disrupter bracelet burning her, and she remembered the shock, fear, and horror on Wilder’s face after he’d broken the bathroom door open just before she was transported off the Mau.
She couldn’t help but feel a little bit guilty that their mating fangs had descended despite her efforts to prevent it. At the same time, she couldn’t regret the night she’d spent with them, or the strong bond they’d forged between them.
