Destiny (Experimental Heart Book 1)

by Shannon Pemrick

  “Then how do you get those people inside it?” Raikidan questioned.

  I couldn’t resist a giggle. He made this far too amusing. “They’re a recording. We use a device to capture the movement and then they’re sent to the TV station to be transmitted to TVs in the homes in the city. The TV station gets the videos and transmits them through a tower to the antenna on our roof that then feeds information to the TV. This is also how you get live-cast programs, such as the news. They’re sent immediately to the stations through the same network as they’re being recorded.”

  “Still sounds like magic…”

  I chuckled and looked back down at my book. “Just flip through the channels.”

  “What if I can’t find anything?”

  “If you can’t find anything out of six hundred channels, then I’d say Laz had better let you have that book, or better yet, let you read with her,” Ryoko said.

  I laid the book down and gave her a stern look. “Don’t say that. Because knowing our luck, that’s what’s going to happen.”

  She grinned, her eyes squinting. “You mean your luck.”

  “It’s not luck,” Rylan objected. “We all know, no matter how many channels we have, there is barely anything on.”

  “Yeah, but we’re used to all the shows,” Ryoko said. “Raikidan isn’t a city guy. If he can’t find anything that catches his eye, then there’s a problem.”

  Rylan thought this over. “Good point.”

  I rolled my eyes and went back to reading.

  About ten minutes passed before Raikidan started to shift in his seat as if he were uncomfortable. This, in turn, caused my hair clip to dig into the back of my head more. Eventually, Raikidan put the remote down with a sigh and grabbed my head. Lifting my head up, he took my hair clip and gently tossed it onto the coffee table. He then lowered my head back down and went back to flipping through the channels. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one getting uncomfortable with it.

  I lifted my head and pulled my hair to one side. Laying my head back down, I moved around until I was comfortable and picked my book back up. I hated how cozy he was and how willing I was to just lay here. I didn’t want to find his lap comfortable and I didn’t want to risk getting too close to him. It would just make things worse in the end.

  Getting the feeling I was being watched, I looked over at Ryoko and Rylan. Both of them were engrossed in their reading, although Rylan was taking quick glances at Ryoko and was leaning closer to her than he had been before. Why can’t he just tell her? If he waits too long, he’ll miss his chance. I rescinded that thought immediately. It wasn’t uncommon for nu-humans to harbor romantic feelings for another and not act on them for a long time. In many cases, years could pass before anything was done about it. This was because, unlike regular humans, in nu-human courtship, when it happened instead of casual hookups, it would last decades before they’d decide to make their pairing legally binding or not. It was a lot like elves, in a way, now that I thought about it.

  Knowing they weren’t the reason I was feeling watched, I went back to my book to appear as if I was reading again. Looking up at Raikidan, I raised my eyebrow. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he muttered as he went back to viewing the TV.

  Rolling my eyes, I looked back at my book but casually glanced up through my lashes and caught him watching me again. What is his problem? Finally getting fed up with it, I went to ask him, but the sound of someone coming down the hall brought my attention elsewhere. Argus, a pair of scissors in hand, walked into the living room. He rubbed his face to wake up a little more.

  “Hey, Ryoko, you mind trimming my hair?” he asked.

  She looked up at him. “Um, can I finish reading over these reports?”

  “Uh, su—”

  “I’ll do it,” I offered, sitting up.

  Argus looked at me skeptically. “Uh, thanks for the offer, but I’d be lying if I said I trusted you to do it.”

  “I’m not bad at cutting hair.”

  “Last time you cut someone’s hair, it was Blaze, and we had to shave his head because you butchered it so bad,” he reminded me.

  I laughed. “You do realize I did that on purpose, right?”

  His brow furrowed. “Why in Lumaraeon would you do that?”

  “Why not? It’s Blaze.”

  “She has a point,” Rylan said.

  Argus sighed. “You promise you won’t make it so I have to shave my head?”

  I chuckled and stood up. “I don’t hate you, right?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Then you’re fine.” Jumping over the back of the couch near Ryoko, I pulled a barstool out from the kitchen bar and placed it in front of Argus. He placed the scissors on the counter and went about removing his shirt to reduce the amount of hair he’d get caught up into it. He sat on the barstool with his back facing me. Leaving him for a second, I entered the kitchen and retrieved a bowl from the cupboard. Filling it with warm water, I left the kitchen and set it down on the bar table. I dipped my hand into the water and went to thread my fingers through his hair, but stopped.

  I lightly traced the tattoo on his back with my wet fingers. It was a beautiful image of a sidewinder that appeared to be rippling his skin as if it were moving across it. “When did you get this?”

  He shivered from my touch. “Shortly after you left.”

  “Colors look nice still,” I said.

  “I’ve gone back to have them enhanced. You like it?”

  I nodded. “I think it’s fitting, and it’s cool too.”

  Ryoko sighed. “I still think you should have gone with something a little nicer than a snake.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with snakes,” I said.

  “They’re slimy!”

  “They are not. They’re scaled and smooth to the touch. Well, most of them. Some have a rough texture.”

  “Still think they’re slimy and gross,” she muttered. “I hate serpents.”

  Her comment made me think of Raikidan, and I bit my lip, so I wouldn’t laugh. If only she knew. Dipping my hand back into the bowl of water, I went to work wetting Argus’ hair. While I did, I glanced over at Raikidan. He had given up on the TV and now had my book in his lap.

  I shook my head. “Raikidan, could you seriously not find anything to watch?”

  “I got bored looking for something,” he said, not looking up.

  I didn’t press him. There was something in his voice that told me not to. I suspected it had to do with Ryoko’s comment. Pulling my hair to one side, I grabbed the scissors from the counter and threaded my fingers through Argus’ hair more, trimming it. I may not have been a stylist, but trimming his hair wasn’t going to be too difficult. I’d had to do more while in the military.

  “Argus, you look a little too calm with Eira near your head with scissors.” I looked up at the sound of Blaze’s voice as he walked down the hallway.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He gave me an exasperated look. “Don’t even start.”

  “I’m serious. Who are you?”

  Ryoko looked up at him and laughed. “You might want to go fetch your hat. She might recognize you then.”

  “Very funny, you two,” he replied as he made his way past Argus and me and entered the kitchen.

  “I’m surprised you’re not bald by now like Zane, what with you rarely removing your hat and bandana,” I teased.

  “Hey, I’m not bald!” I looked back at the hallway where Zane’s voice came from. “I shave my head. There’s a difference.”

  My eyes squinted. “You shave it because you’re balding, old man.”

  He walked up to me and ran his fingers through my bangs quickly. “Oh, I think I saw a gray hair, Chickadee.”

  I swatted his hand away. “I don’t have gray hair, and don’t call me Chickadee. You know I hate it.”

  “That’s why I do it.” He chuckled. “But you’d worry if I didn’t pick on you. Besides, if your mother were to find out
I wasn’t making sure you were on your toes, she’d… well… I’m not exactly sure what she’d do to me. I’ll get back to you on that.”

  I chuckled. “You don’t know what your own sister would do to you? And you call yourself my uncle. I’ll tell you what she’d do. She’d haunt you for the rest of eternity.”

  Zane laughed. “You’re probably right.”

  Ryoko giggled. “I think you guys have gone and confused Raikidan.”

  I looked over at him. He was leaning back against the couch again and looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “What?” I said. “I said he was my uncle the other day.”

  “Might be because you two don’t look similar in the least,” Rylan said. “You look more like your mom.”

  I nodded. He had a point.

  “I think she looks like Jasmine,” Ryoko said.

  Zane chuckled. “Maybe her eyes, but that’s about it.”

  “That’s not why I’m confused,” Raikidan admitted. “You’re all tank-born. How can you have relatives?”

  “Just because we’re tank-born doesn’t mean some of us aren’t related, I’ve told you this,” I said. When Raikidan’s look of confusion didn’t change, I sighed. “The nu-human DNA gene pool used to make us is well mixed, so many experiments are cousins, nephews, or any other distant relative of each other. Zane, my mother, and Jasmine are siblings. They took the same strand of DNA and experimented on them in three different ways to see what would happen. Although their skills were different from each other, Jasmine being smart enough to be made a geneticist and Zane and my mother being soldiers for different talents, they still retained human sibling traits many other experiments lost.”

  Raikidan rubbed his temples. “I shouldn’t have asked. This stuff just gives me a headache.”

  Zane chuckled at his comment. “You’ll get the hang of it eventually.” He looked at me again. “I still say they experimented with your mother’s DNA the most. How else would she have gotten such a strange hair color you both shared?”

  “It’s because she was an elementalist,” I said as I concentrated on Argus’ hair.

  “You learn that on your ‘vacation?’”

  I nodded. “The shamans say the body has a tendency to change features of a wielder’s body as a side effect from so much power. Most of the time, it’s the hair color. That tends to match their element or show signs of it, like Rylan, Mom, and Jasmine. On rarer occasions you’d never know because they show very little to no physical signs, like some shamans I’ve met.”

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed Zane rub his mustache. “That makes sense, I guess, but I still don’t know how my sister, a water elementalist, ended up with a child like you, a fire elementalist with violet hair.”

  I shrugged. “I blame Jasmine. She was the one who was tasked with my creation, after all.”

  “You’re too kind to her,” Argus said, a grin on his lips.

  I flicked his ear and finished up with his hair. Brushing off the hair that had landed on his shoulders, I moved to the front of him and I ran my fingers through his hair to make sure it was even for the style he usually chose.

  I went behind him again and grabbed the bowl of water. “Now go get rid of that stupid skinny caterpillar on your upper lip.”

  Argus smoothed his mustache. “I like it.”

  “It looks stupid on you.”

  “I second that,” Ryoko piped in.

  Argus sighed and stood up. Dusting his hair free of loose strands, he picked up his shirt and headed down the hall.

  “Grow a chin strap instead!” Ryoko called after him. “It’ll look good on you, and don’t forget to slick back your hair.”

  He waved her off and continued walking. I cleaned up the mess I’d created, and then went back to the couch, sitting down next to Raikidan and grabbing the remote.

  “Do you mind putting on the news?” Rylan requested. “Same channel as before you left.”

  “Sure.” I pressed a few numbered buttons and let the TV do the rest.

  Placing the remote back down on the coffee table, I leaned back on the couch and watched. It wasn’t all that interesting, so my attention waned rather quickly. When I couldn’t force myself to watch any longer, I slyly looked over at Raikidan. He was engrossed in the book, and I grinned. Quickly I grabbed the book and took it away from him.

  “Hey!” He glowered at me. “I was using that.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I couldn’t find anything to watch on your magic box, so you owe me.”

  I sighed. “For the last time, it’s a TV, and you were too lazy to go through all the channels to find a program you liked, so therefore I owe you nothing.”

  He growled and tackled me. Sticking my bare foot in his face, I pushed him off of me. He forced my leg out of the way. Putting most of his weight on me, he tried to grab the book again. “Give it back.”

  “No.”

  His warm bare chest made this incredibly awkward and uncomfortable.

  “Get a room, you two,” Blaze grumbled as he ate some of his cereal.

  I tilted my head up. “Bite me.”

  He grinned. “Tell me where.”

  Zane smacked him on the back of the head and exited the kitchen.

  “Hey, that hurt!” Blaze complained.

  “Oh well,” Zane replied casually.

  Using the distraction to his advantage, Raikidan took hold of the book. I yanked, but he proved to have a good grip. My eyes narrowed, and I yanked again, but he refused to let go.

  “Can’t you two just share it?” Ryoko asked. “It’s just a book.”

  “The books struggles with two simultaneous users,” I said as I continued to struggle against Raikidan’s grip. “They need special training with the two users to work right. Otherwise it gets confused and doesn’t transfer information correctly.”

  She rolled her eyes and went back to watching the news. I latched onto Raikidan’s hand and tried to pry him off of me, to no avail. He shook my hand off and then reached out and pinned it to the couch. He tugged on the book but found my grip on it to still be nice and tight.

  “You had your time to read it. Now I want something to do,” Raikidan grumbled.

  “Watch the news, then.”

  “You watch the news.”

  “Hey, hey, turn it up, turn it up!” Ryoko screeched. “Something happened!”

  Raikidan and I both stopped, but unfortunately for Raikidan, he was unbalanced and fell on the floor. Ignoring his misfortune, I snatched the remote and turned the volume up. Everyone’s attention focused on the newscast.

  The video wasn’t a pleasant one. Crumbled buildings stretched for blocks and soldiers scrambled everywhere.

  “As you can see, there is a lot of devastation from this attack,” the newscaster informed. “Seven military and four civilian buildings have been destroyed. The dead count is sitting around one hundred, with hundreds more injured and missing.”

  Buildings crumbled to pieces everywhere.

  I blinked and looked away from the TV.

  The smell of burning bodies and screams of people dying filled the air.

  “Many claim this is another rebel attack, while others disagree, due to the civilian losses. Although there is a lot of disagreement at this time, the biggest question everyone is asking is why? Why did they do this? What purpose does this serve? This is Eliza Dresh with the morning news, and we will bring you more information when more light is shed on this disastrous situation.”

  I held my head.

  Soldiers rushed through the city, looking for any signs of life, and eliminated it.

  “Rebel attack, my ass,” Blaze retorted through a mouthful of cereal. “We don’t hit civilians.”

  Rylan nodded. “We’ve passed up quite a few opportunities in the past due to the threat of civilian losses. Laz, you okay?”

  “Yeah, just a small headache,” I said. “Nothing to worry about. Our main concern is this attack. Our cause was easily t
argeted by many civilians. I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I.” We all turned and looked at Genesis, who now stood in the hallways. She walked into the living room and climbed up on the couch next to Ryoko. “That attack was stationed in Sector One. Due to the poor state it’s already in, the Council tries to avoid sending teams in there. I’m having Seda look into it now. In the meantime, it’ll be in our best interest if we keep a low profile. I’ll also relay this message to the rest of the Council.”

  “I agree,” I said. “Although I’d like our efforts to proceed faster, with this situation it could cripple us if we don’t tread carefully.”

  Genesis nodded. “I want you and Raikidan to get jobs. It’ll help with the finances since we now have two more mouths to feed, and it’ll keep you both low on the radar. We don’t need the military to get suspicious.”

  “They can work at the shop,” Zane offered. “They’ve already been seen there, and if we’re to work with their alibi, it’d be best to ease them into the city life. It’ll help us out, and once they’re seen enough, they can find another job to better help with the finances.”

  “I’m fine with that,” I agreed.

  Raikidan didn’t respond, but Genesis took his silence as an agreement and hopped off the couch and left the living room.

  “That is still weird,” Raikidan murmured as he climbed back up onto the couch.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “Seeing a child talk to you all like that.”

  I shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but a knock at the front door stopped him. No one reacted. It was quite early, so we couldn’t figure out who would be paying us a visit. Another knock was heard.

  Slowly Ryoko got up and headed down the stairs. “General Zo, what are you doing here?”

  My blood froze. I looked at Rylan and then Zane. They, too, weren’t thrilled at hearing Zo’s name and didn’t show any signs of knowing why he was here.

  “I’m here to speak with Zane and the boys,” Zo informed Ryoko.

  “Um, okay, come on in,” she welcomed.

  Quickly I put my hair up and then grabbed my book. Enemy. The book wrote out text in response to my alert to appear like a normal, aged book. Raikidan moved his arm around the back of the couch as he leaned in closer to pretend he was reading with me. I looked up as Ryoko led Zo and two other soldiers up the stairs and into the living room.