I blinked, shocked to discover the darkness in my half-sister’s mind. Hidden there, even against the power of my gift, all this time. She felt exactly like what the stories of our father had always impliedheshould feel like: greed, anger, cunning—those were first and foremost. Her impatience to get answers from me was heavy and hard to miss. She wasn’t happy to see me or concerned about my well-being; she was here to interrogate me.
I did not count on her realizing I’d burst her facade like a bubble. She jerked back from hovering, supposedly protectively close, and her smile dropped. “What did you do, Danitalin?” she said in such a cold tone that fear slid like ice water down my spine. She was furious with me, and I could sense her desire to strike at me; it pulsed against my skin. My eyes dropped to her hands in reflex and widened when I discovered the metal, gem-studded claws she wore over her nails. Her hand would do serious harm if she struck me with that, she’d draw blood.
Her satisfaction curled between us then, thick and heavy. She knew I’d seen the threat, sensed it, and she rather enjoyed having that kind of power over me. How sick. How could this woman be related to me? I already knew how my empathy-gifted mom had been tricked by Hadralin for the duration of their passionate affair. Yet it sickened me to discover how deeply I’d been tricked by him, and by my half-sister. Mom had warned me, and I had believed myself too strong an empath to be deceived.
“So, you’ve grown stronger. Fine. It doesn’t matter.” Koratalin strode away from me in a swish of lush golden silk and red embroidery. Her black hair shimmered along her back in undulating waves, the tips dipped in gold dust for an extraordinary look. She’d always enjoyed the finer things in life, and I should have realized that getting piles of gifts from expensive stores was not love—just the only way an emotionally stunted person could think to persuade me to like them.
“I never did like playing games,” she added, and that was a blatant lie. Koratalin had taken great pleasure in deceiving me, I saw that now. Her smirk told me sheknew I knew it, and she did not bother to correct herself. “Now, since we’re done with this”—she flapped her hand between us, and her gold- and gem-crusted claws glinted—“sisterly bonding thing… You’re going to tell me what I want to know, and then you’re going to finish your work. Got that, sis?”
I nodded slowly, but my mind was racing as I considered the options. There was no way I was going to make the cure for her that she was after, but I needed to convince her that Jaxin was key to it all. I had to make sure he was safe, and I had to make sure we found a way off Koratalin’s ship. Once we were together, I was certain Jaxin would know things I didn’t. So that was the plan: get him in the same room with me, preferably with minimal guards.
“So, this is the real you, is it?” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. It was a poor shield against the darkness I now sensed coming from her, and my skin prickled, reminding me that she’d embraced me. “Why do you even want a cure for Roka pollution? What do you care?” Jaxin had outlined some reasons to me at one point, but it still didn’t make much sense. How would having this cure give Koratalin control of a bigger slice of the drug trade?
She smiled evilly, there was no other word for the way her mouth curled and her black eyes glinted. She was going to indulge me because she liked being the one in control, and she rather liked horrifying me to boot. “Because, sis,” she drawled, tapping a claw against her red mouth, “with a cure like that, I can charge the sods working for me to have it. It’ll have them flock tomyproduction sites and leave the others at a disadvantage. I can even charge my rivals a premium if they want it for their workers. Get it?”
I did not get it, it was too horrible. This was not at all what I had set out to create, and I refused to hand over such power to her or anyone, for that matter. Shaking my head, I told her no, and her expression grew dangerous, a threat sharpening in the air like a knife. She was too far away to harm me with her claws, but that did not mean she couldn’t harm me in other ways. There was a very small laser pistol hanging from her belt, for instance, and her personal guard was only a shout away.
“You don’t get to say no to me, Danitalin. You’re my blood. I’d hate to see you harmed, but I will, if you leave me no choice.” Hate to see me harmed? That was a lie, too. She didn’t give a Nia’s whiskers about me. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter, as long as she got her cure. That was where I had the leverage, and I pounced on the chance.
“Where’s my guard? Where did you put Jaxin? I’ll help you if you let us—both of us—go afterward. Unharmed. And I’ll need his help; he’s the only one who knows how to assist me.” My demand was met with an amused bark of laughter, Koratalin’s disbelief that I needed Jaxin’s help crashing against my mind. I struggled to maintain the cool shielding I’d learned to create with Jaxin’s exercises, pain like shards in my chest from her intensity. Things were wearing thin; I was getting tired of keeping this up.
“You need a dumb Rummicaron warrior to help you?” my half-sister said, shaking her head. “I doubt that. Are you banging him? Is that it?” I gasped, and perhaps my expression said enough, because she laughed again. “Oh, that’s priceless! You are! I suppose him being a cold fish is the only way you can get close and not burn out. Something is better thannothing, is it?”
Mortified, I tried to figure out how to answer that, but every answer would give away how much Jaxin meant to me. That was not a risk I could take; it would put all the power back in her hands. I settled on: “His emotionless state protects my mind from overloading. He helps me think straight.” She raised an eyebrow as if she did not believe me, and I feared she was about to suggest she’d put another Rummicaron as a guard in the room with me. Then she shrugged, as if she didn’t really care.
She thought she was in control, that she had all the power. Perhaps she didn’t think Jaxin and I could get up to no good when put in a room together. She was going to find out she was wrong, because I was convinced that, together with him, I could do what Jeltom and I had tried to do the first time around: a bomb, a distraction, and escape.
Chapter 22
Jaxin
Waking up in a prison cell under lock and key was not as strange a situation to me as it might be to others. I’d gone through that a time or two before, perhaps more than I could count on one hand. Like that time Aramon had goaded me into getting just a bittoodrunk on Rummicaron ale on the Yengar Space Station, and I’d trashed the place. They’d had to bail me out of a cell that time, but a Yengar cell did not smell nearly as clean as this one did. That was the part that worried me.
Metal and cleaning products; beneath it, the scent of blood and vomit. This was the kind of cell where torture happened, and even if I was good at blocking out feelings, torture was a bit much, even for me. I’d gone through that once in a prison after a failed mission on some backwaterplanet with a species very similar to Xionians: feathered raptors with sharp claws, except thesecouldfly, and they had been anything but civilized.
Those times, though, I’d known rescue was imminent. I’d had full faith that someone from the Varakartoom would free me at any moment; all I had to do was hang on for a little while. This time, I knew they’d try, but how would they know where we were? We… It wasn’t just me to worry over, either. There was Dani, and she was missing.
The cell was empty—no cot, not even a bucket. I paced it restlessly as fear and anger mounted. How could such a simple setup have gotten the best of me? A single pilot and a few flicks of a button, and I’d been helpless to stop it. The knockout drug had done a number on my head, and it throbbed with a headache I ignored. Dani needed me to be strong, and I was certain she was alive. She’d stay alive as long as she didn’t finish making her cure, if she even could. She’d only uttered those worries to me, though, and I knew she’d be wise enough never to say them to her half-sister.
My cannon wasn’t with me, and that only made my fury grow. If they’d harmed Dani, I’d have decimated all those on the ship, and if they’d so much as scratched or dented Bex, I’d do the same. The thought of some filthy criminal touching her controls made me see red, and that, for the first time, made me realize I’d grown as attached tothisversion of my cannon as the previous one—like Bex had reincarnated when Ysa had put her old barrel on this cannon.
With no comm, no weapons, and no Dani, I didn’t know what to do, so I paced. I felt like a wild animal, trapped, furious, terrified. Dani was brave, but she was facing her evil half-sister, a woman who’d caused her great danger and painover the past couple of weeks. I needed to be there with her, to protect her, to guard her. Trying to bend the bars of the cell was impossible, though, no matter how hard I tried. I just made my chest ache fiercely because my muscles weren’t quite strong enough, quite healed enough.
Roaring, I slammed a fist into the wall, then raked my claws over the metal with a screech. This wasn’t right. I should be with Dani right now; I should have protected her from being caught in the first place. I was proving a failure to the one I loved, all over again.
“A failure?” a voice whispered. “No, you’re not a failure, Jaxin.” I twisted around and faced whoever had spoken, shocked to discover that my empty cell was not so empty after all. A silver woman sat in the corner, her legs sprawled carelessly and silver hair draped around her nude form to obscure her chest and bare hip.
“You’re not real,” I said to her, the strange features of her metal face alien to me, but somehow familiar, though I was certain I’d never seen someone quite like her. She smiled, a beatific kind of smile that made my stomach clench. Familiar, but how? Who?
“Of course I’m not real, silly,” she said with a laugh. “You’re dreaming.” I blinked at her, confused. Dreaming? No, I was awake, I was pacing this damn cell like a caged beast, and Dani was in danger and needed me. My chest ached from pulling on the bars of the cell. That was real, wasn’t it?
“Who are you?” I asked, eyes flicking to the door and the dark hallway beyond. There was nobody guarding this cell, but that didn’t help me get out if I had no key to unlock this bloody door. The silver woman rose silentlyto her feet, her hair whispering against her metal skin as she came to stand next to me and tested the bars with her segmented fingers. As if she were a robot—a very advanced one—she didn’t move quite right.
“I’m Bex, Jaxin. Or, if you will, the figment in your brain you created as a small boy to protect you after your sister died. Bex, your cannon; Bex, your friend; Bex, a part of you.” I stared, because she made that sound like I was crazy. “And I’m here to remind you that youwerea boy when Bexlin died, and you would have drowned if you had tried to save her. I’m here to tell you that you’re not a boy now.”
I jerked upright with a gasp and discovered I was lying on a cold metal floor in an even colder cell. My heart pounded in my chest beneath my metal sternum, and my thoughts raced wildly. A dream. It really had been a dream. The words Bex had whispered in my mind echoed through my waking thoughts now:You’re not a boy now.I could still do something to save Dani, even if I could never change what had happened to my sister or save her. I was not going to lose anyone this time.
When a set of guards came not much later to retrieve me from my cell, I discovered I had a much cooler head than I expected. The temptation was great to break their necks, to bite them with my sharp teeth. You could never truly disarm a Rummicaron, after all. I did not act on that impulse, but let them guide me from the cell without comment. Not only could they not take away the risk of my bite without muzzling me, they’d also failed to strip me of my armor. I was the Varakartoom’s weapons master for a reason, I had more weapons on me than anybody ever expected, includingseveral small knives and a garrote they hadn’t located, hidden in my armor.
