Sk'lar

by Elin Wyn

“Indeed. What’s concerning about the square?”

  “Besides entry points we can’t control and too many hidey-holes for snipers?”

  “Yes, besides that,” Vidia joked.

  “It could rain that day,” I played along. “Tell Fox that you don’t agree with moving the debate.”

  “Oh, sweet Phryne. This is politics. I have to make him think it’s his idea not to move the debate in order for him to agree to it.” Vidia smiled slyly.

  “Can you do that?”

  “I’m offended that you had to ask.”

  “Get to it then. I’ll feel much better with that weasel out of our building.”

  “He’s not a weasel. He’s a fox.”

  “Very funny.”

  We returned to the conference room. Fox and his attendant sat in silence.

  “Let me guess, you’re going to refuse to move the debate.” Fox’s smile was anything but friendly.

  “I actually like the idea,” Vidia replied, throwing me off guard. I tried not to look surprised. I felt sure Vidia had a plan. This was what she was good at, after all.

  Fox looked just as surprised as I felt.

  “You do?”

  “Of course! I want as many people as possible there to hear the debate. It’s only fair that they do. Most families don’t have a way to watch the broadcast at home.”

  “That’s exactly my reasoning!” Fox replied.

  “I just have to make my poor team scramble,” Vidia sighed.

  “Are they not organized enough to handle a sudden change?”

  “That’s not the issue,” Vidia said. “For an area that large, we’ll have to pull out all the stops with security. Perimeter guards, aerial units. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course.” Fox reached across the table to put his hand on top of Vidia’s. My skin crawled on her behalf. “These are volatile times, after all.”

  I know a threat when I hear one.

  “My poor head of security wanted to use a small team,” Vidia hummed with sympathy. “It’s much easier on them that way. That’s why the indoor venue is preferable for them.”

  Fox paused.

  “I understand,” he said slowly. I watched the wheels in his head turn as he fell into Vidia’s play.

  “I’m sure you do.” Vidia nodded. “We’re in the home stretch now. You know how it goes. Most campaign resources are spent by now. I’m sure we’re both scraping the bottom of the funding barrel.”

  “Absolutely.” Fox patted Vidia’s hand. “In that case, forget about changing the venue. I’m sure it’ll be better for both of us, anyway.”

  “Thank you for being so understanding. I couldn’t ask for a more honorable competitor.” Vidia bid him goodbye with a flourish. When we were alone in the conference room once more, I turned to her.

  “Don’t you think you laid it on kind of thick at the end?”

  “Of course!” Vidia snorted. “His ego needed it. He’s still a man, after all.”

  Sk’lar

  It was the evening of the debate, and we had things cleared. We had security personnel in tight rotations everywhere across the building. Yet, despite all of that, there were still too many places in a building of this size.

  The debate was being held in an indoor stadium to accommodate the number of people that had expressed interest in coming. The stadium was large enough to hold a few thousand people, but we were restricting the count to half that, with large monitors temporarily installed outside the stadium for any overflow.

  The stadium had been one of the grandest creations the humans had put together before the Xathi war and, aside from some minor structural damage, it had come through the invasion almost unscathed.

  But we only had maybe one hundred guards, and too many of them were humans. I trusted them, but with the “switch,” as some of them were calling it to represent the people that suddenly changed personalities and allegiances, there were too many opportunities for one of those human guards to suddenly turn.

  That was why no one had lethal rounds. We had to take precautions, and one of those was to make sure that non-lethal rounds were loaded into the weapons by the Vengeance crew, then handed out to the guards after they were checked to ensure they had not brought another weapon onto the premises.

  At each entrance, we had scanners that checked for anything that could be used as a weapon and had them confiscated, with names in order to ensure the return of said item, and a hope that everything would go well.

  I walked my patrol, barely listening to the debate. It was going smoothly, Vidia’s opponent was playing nice and not repeating any of the diatribe from his television interview. Perhaps his act earlier was simply a ploy in order to garner votes. As they continued their back-and-forth, I turned my concentration to watching the crowd, which was difficult. There were simply too many people and too many possibilities.

  I looked up to the podium, not to pay attention to the debate, but to see how Phryne and her team were doing. She still trusted her people, despite having gone through the attack on the offices and one of her own betraying them.

  She looked prepared and vigilant standing just off to Vidia’s left. Several others of her team were spread out in front of the dais the two candidates were debating on. The other security team was spread out the same, and they were doing their job well.

  I was impressed.

  As I looked back to Phryne, I started thinking about how well we fit together. I had no illusions about how I’d gotten my command position. I knew I wasn’t Rouhr’s first choice when he gave it to me, and that the only reason I got it was because I was the only K’ver willing to take the position. I knew I wasn’t close to my team and that, while they would do their jobs and we would all sacrifice ourselves for the others, they didn’t consider me to be a friend.

  Phryne made me forget all of that.

  She was unusual, brash, funny, and seemed to know what she wanted and took the steps she needed to get what she wanted. She was to the point and I liked that about her. Yes, it had been tough to deal with her at first, but she had to be hard and tough working as security. If you threw in the inescapable fact that she was security for possibly the most powerful human on the planet, in terms of politics, she had to be extra tough. Yet she did her job without complaint and put everything that she could into it.

  That was when she was at work. When she was off duty, she opened up and I found myself looking forward to being around her more off duty than anything. She was unusual when compared to other women, and it was a level of unusualness that appealed to me. I enjoyed playing pool with her, as well as other games. I enjoyed spending time with her talking about the most off-the-wall things. She would tell me about things she used to do as a child, like how she used to climb one of the trees in the park as high as she possibly could, then jumped off into the lake. Or how she would collect unusual looking rocks just because they were different looking. Or how she used to take her neighbor’s toys to play with them because her parents didn’t want to get her ‘boy’s toys’ and she really wanted to play with them.

  While that normally wouldn’t be counted as unusual, it was the fact that she was so proud of it all, even now as an adult, that made it cute and weird. It reminded me a lot of my own idiosyncrasies from my youth. I actually still had some of my original augmentations from when I was a child. I had chosen my original augmentations based on their bright colors instead of what they could do for me. I was the child that was never able to keep up physically because I never had the right augmentations, and I didn’t care because I enjoyed the colors.

  That’s what I liked about Phryne. Her unusual fit with my unusual, and I loved it. We also had a relationship that played off one another so well without all the “I love you” moments that the others had. I did love spending time with Phryne, and I knew that there was no one else around that made me feel as good as she did, but we didn’t need those sappy moments of expression between us.

  We just played off one anothe
r perfectly, and that…

  A gunshot and a stadium full of screams ripped me from my thoughts and back to reality. A quick scan showed Vidia and Phryne down on the ground, her opponent also down, hiding behind his podium. In the center of the crowd, closest to where I stood, I spotted the shooter. The crowd had spread itself away from the shooter in its panic to get away.

  I raised my own rifle and took a shot at the shooter, but someone jostled me as I shot and I missed, striking the ground by his feet. He looked at me as if I was nothing, then, as I raised my rifle to shoot again, he took off running into the crowd.

  “Rek,” I cursed as I gave chase. It was hard to weave my way through the crowd, as they were all trying to get away from the chaos, ironically creating more chaos in the process.

  I shoved my way through the crowd, trying my hardest to keep my eye on the shooter. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to do. The man that had pulled the trigger had bright blonde hair and pale skin, and he stood taller than most of the people in the crowd.

  I was knocked off my feet and forced to fight my way back up. My hand was stepped on, someone tripped over me and fell on my back, and I felt a knee strike me in the side of the head, but it didn’t feel like a purposeful shot. I somehow managed to get back to my feet, feeling a bit groggy.

  I blinked quickly, trying to clear my vision. I looked around, temporarily lost, then found the shooter, standing in the middle of the chaos, staring at me. It was possibly the most unnerving thing I had ever seen. The look in his eyes was, I couldn’t describe it, I couldn’t understand it. He looked as though he was waiting for me, as though he was wanting me to chase him. Then, his eyes flashed and he turned to run again.

  I forced my way through the crowd, and things were beginning to clear, making it easier for me to move. The shooter had made his way through the crowd and was climbing the steps of the stadium seating area. I wasn’t far behind, but had to stop as a mother rushed by me with her child in her arms. I finally got through and bounded up the stairs, my superior stride helping me to catch up to the blonde man.

  He made the top of the stairs and turned left on the concourse, with me only a few steps behind. He was quick, but I was faster. As he rounded a corner, he took an awkward step that I ignored, and it cost me. I stepped right into a puddle of liquid and I went sprawling, sliding and rolling across the floor as he continued to run away.

  I cursed my stupidity, regained my footing, and took off after him again.

  I finally caught up to him, already being arrested by Tyehn as Navat and Jalok pointed their weapons at him.

  “Go check on Phryne,” Navat said. “We have this piece of garbage.”

  I nodded, glared at the shooter, then made my way down the stairs, bounding down them two or three at a time. At the podium, I could see several members of Phryne’s team kneeling next to her as she lay still on the ground.

  No! Oh, please, don’t let her dead!

  I could see the darkening wet spot on her back getting bigger and I raced faster. One of her team looked up as I raced over. “She’s still breathing. The bullet hit low, but it doesn’t look like it hit anything vital, we hope.”

  “We’ve already called for medical,” Vidia said, her face calm but her eyes filled with concern, fear, and rage. “They’re on their way in now.”

  All I could do was nod as I knelt next to Phryne, reaching out and grabbing her hand.

  Don’t die. We have so much to talk about still. Just don’t die.

  Phryne

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. I was sleeping in a bed, yet it didn’t smell like my place. My thoughts clicked together in slow motion like each one was dipped in wet cement.

  All I could focus on was the strange smell. I heard nothing. It was like my ears hadn’t woken up yet. Neither had my limbs. I couldn’t feel any of them. Out of curiosity, I wiggled my toe. It took a while to form the thought then send the message from my brain to my toe. After a delay, my big toe wiggled against starchy fabric that felt nothing like my sheets at home.

  My focus pulled to my breathing. Even that was a challenge. The rise and fall of my chest was slow and shallow. I couldn’t have been getting enough air. I had to get up and start my day. A stretch and a scalding shower were in order. I usually skipped breakfast, but today I felt like I needed some.

  There was a cart not far from the office. The little old man that ran it made the most delicious wraps stuffed with eggs, meat, and peppers. He’d even learned a few alien recipes. Maybe I’d grab something for Sk’lar on the way there.

  There was a faint whirring sound. My ears finally caught up to the rest of me. I shut out every other thought to analyze the new sound.

  Definitely mechanical. Designed to be quiet. I didn’t feel a breeze or an unusual amount of warmth, so it wasn’t a fan or a heater.

  My eyes.

  I’d forgotten I had eyes. They were closed. I needed to lift the lids. I could do that. It was simple.

  Lifting my eyelids felt like lifting a rusted manhole cover with just two fingers. My vision was blurry at first. I blinked. Each blink felt like sandpaper over my corneas. When I winced, my whole face hurt.

  “There she is,” a deep, kind voice spoke. It sounded like there were three hundred gallons of water between me and whoever was speaking. I had to get through it. That voice, the speaker… that was someone important.

  The words themselves reached my brain slowly. I looked in the direction that the voice came from.

  Someone stood over my bed. Their skin was like coal but shot through with blue lines.

  Sk’lar!

  I blinked rapidly, ignoring the pain.

  “Sk’lar,” I croaked. Speaking felt as if the skin inside my throat was being torn open.

  “Don’t talk yet,” Sk’lar advised. “Wait until you have some water. I’ll go ask Evie if I can give you some.”

  He disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later with a white paper cup and a bendy straw. He held the cup steady while I tried to suck through the straw. It took me a few tries.

  “What happened to me?” I asked once my throat felt better.

  “You got shot.”

  “I. What?” My brows pulled together.

  “At the last speech,” Sk’lar explained. “Someone fired shots into the crowd. You and Vidia were both struck.”

  “Is she okay?” I tried to sit up, despite every bone and muscle in my body protesting.

  Sk’lar placed a firm, but gentle, hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down into the pillows.

  “She’s okay,” he assured me. “She’s up and walking around already.”

  “Is that a roundabout way of telling me I got the worst of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What exactly happened to me?”

  “Like I said, you got shot.”

  “Where did I get shot? Sk’lar, why won’t you give me a straight answer?” I demanded.

  “Because I don’t want to cause you distress.”

  “Not telling me is what’s causing distress,” I insisted.

  “Okay, okay.” Sk’lar put his hands up in surrender, his eyes tight with worry. “The bullet missed your spine by an inch. Unfortunately, it was some kind of homemade round designed to split in half. One half nicked your heart. The other punctured your lung.”

  I took in a shuddering breath.

  “You lost a lot of blood and you were in surgery for almost twenty-four hours. Evie brought in every medical expert on the planet to help save your life.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I needed to say something. I’d freak out if I didn’t. A bullet nicked my heart? It tore through my lung? I shouldn’t be alive.

  “You don’t have to say anything.” Sk’lar pushed back a lock of my hair. The sweetness of the gesture, the intimacy of it, stirred something in me.

  Before everything went to hell, I’d been trying to figure out where he and I stood in a relationship. I thought I was fine with a friends-with-benefits arran
gement to keep stress levels low after work. At least, I thought I was fine, until I realized we never explicitly agreed to a no-strings thing. Now I wasn’t sure.

  Did he want more than that?

  Did I?

  Did I just not understand my own feelings or was I under the influence of medical drugs? Why was this so hard to sort out?

  “You all right?” Sk’lar asked, his voice comforting, even through the morass of my feelings.

  “What?” I’d almost forgotten he was sitting right there.

  “You’re frowning at the wall. I’m worried you’re going to give yourself a headache.”

  “Too late.” I forced my face to relax and drink more water.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?” he pressed.

  “Nope.”

  “Do you want me to tell you about the man who shot you?”

  “Yup.”

  Sk’lar laughed and scooted his stool even closer to my bedside.

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  “No.” He frowned. “Despite my opinions on the mater.”

  “He almost killed me. Why isn’t he dead?” I demanded.

  “Because he was taken in for questioning. And no matter how I felt, that was the reasonable, logical response.”

  My anger deflated. “Oh.”

  “His name is Canter Xent. He’s one of the long-standing anti-alien radicals. He’s been on our radar for a while, but we had no idea he was in the city.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “That’s what we want to find out,” he explained. “Xent somehow bypassed all of our security and managed to get a clear shot at you and Vidia.”

  “Do you think he was hired by Dashiell Fox?” I asked.

  “It’s possible, but we can’t confirm. He’s not talking.”

  “Let me at him,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll get some words out of him.”

  “Words or screams of pain?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t. And it sure as skrell didn’t matter to me as I was chasing him. If I’d gotten a hold of him…”