by Kit Rocha
“Irrationality is the only human constant I’ve been able to discern.” That almost-smile returned. “Take the O’Kanes in Sector Four. Their world did crumble, but they still threw parties. Maybe the only true human constant is that, as a species, we have no concept of a no-win situation.”
“True. And they were right all along, weren’t they? We’re still here.”
“So far.” Ashwin rubbed his thumb absently over the twin bar codes imprinted on his wrist. “I don’t identify with many of the traits I observe in people, but I understand that one. I’ve never met a Makhai soldier who could conceive of a no-win situation.”
“Human nature,” she murmured.
“So does that make us less human, or more?”
“About as human as the rest of us, I’d say.” With the potential for all the same strengths and weaknesses, hopes and dreams. Joys and pain. “Are you going to the memorial?”
“Yes. Gideon requested that I attend.”
Gideon wasn’t exactly subtle when it came to his interest in pushing Ashwin and Kora together, but Jaden’s memorial was a solemn event. A sacred one, and matchmaking had to be the last thing on his mind. “Do you think he’ll ask you to stay in One?”
Nearly twenty seconds of tense silence passed before Ashwin nodded. “Most sector leaders would. I’m a formidable ally.”
What Gideon wanted and what the Base would allow were two different things. “Won’t administration want you back now that the deserters are gone?”
“You know them. What do you think they’d say if I told them Gideon Rios wanted me to stay on his estate?”
They wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to form an alliance. They couldn’t afford to, not when Gideon had access to every other sector leader—and all of their information, sensitive or otherwise. “I think...they’d expect a return on the investment of their resources, and that could get ugly for you.”
His slightly quirked eyebrow left him looking almost wry. “If I leave Sector One, they could give me an even more uncomfortable assignment. That’s my life, Kora. It’s my job.”
That was the part that scared her. “It’s your job,” she agreed flatly. “The question is, how well will you do it?”
“I used stolen drone technology and exposed our isotope tracking system to Gideon Rios’s right-hand man.” He smiled. “So far, I don’t seem to be doing well.”
Another forced, empty smile. Kora shuddered, nearly dropping her forceps. “You can’t do anything that will hurt them. Promise me, Ashwin.”
The smile vanished. This time, when he lifted his hand, he didn’t let his fingertips hover. They brushed her cheek, warm and calloused and rough against her skin. “Hurting them would hurt you. You have to believe that I’ll do anything within my power to avoid that, including commit treason. Again.”
She tilted her face to his hand for a moment, chasing the contact before she caught herself. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” His thumb traced a small, shivery circle on her cheek. “I’m not a good man, Kora. But you shouldn’t have to be grateful that I won’t hurt you.”
Except what usually held people back from hurting others was morality—simply put, emotion—and he’d spent so much time telling her that wasn’t a factor. Not for him. “I’m grateful anyway.”
“All right.” He touched her one last time before dropping his hand again. “I should let you finish. We’re both expected at the memorial.”
“Right.” She still had to fully assess the damage, set up for regen, go through the painstaking process of rebuilding the damaged tissue...
And now her mind was reeling, not only with revelations but with possibilities. If Ashwin was going to be here, if he was going to stay—
No. She locked the thoughts away, forcing her attention to the task at hand. She couldn’t let herself get distracted by what might be, not until it was. More than his health was at stake.
There was also her heart.
»»» § «««
Ashwin was accustomed to the discomfort of regeneration tech.
He couldn’t remember the first time he’d experienced it. His earliest memories remained difficult to sort into chronological order, but he must have been no more than six or seven. A nasty fall or a fight with another trainee—something had resulted in that first trip to see the regen techs in their white coats.
The forced growth of new cells hurt. Civilians were always offered some sort of anesthetic, but the Base wanted their Makhai soldiers to develop a tolerance for pain early. Over the years, Ashwin had been put back together so many times that a tech had once joked that he didn’t have any of his original parts left.
The tech had been new. And Ashwin’s blank, unamused stare had cured him of trying to joke with Makhai soldiers.
Kora was always different. His blank, unamused stare had never stopped her from telling jokes, and the Base’s protocols had never stopped her from doing what she could to mitigate his pain. Here, in Sector One, she was free of the Base’s cold rules and strictures. Under Gideon’s protection, and with his encouragement, her skills had flourished.
A gentle ache was the only souvenir he carried of the bullet he’d taken in the shoulder. He’d touched the spot once while getting dressed, unsure why the shiny new skin felt so sensitive. Anticipation, perhaps. He could imagine her touching him there, her brow furrowed in concern. Her fingertips would trace the boundaries of the newly healed skin, as they’d done dozens of times before. Never impersonal and clinical. Always gentle and caring.
And now he knew what she sounded like when she came.
For all his ignorance of social customs, Ashwin knew it was an inappropriate thought. It was also inappropriate to let his gaze slide to the opposite side of the Rios family temple, where Kora stood between Maricela and the head priestess. Her blue eyes were trained on Gideon as he eulogized Jaden, and tears gathered on her lashes.
It was inappropriate to imagine her in the grip of pleasure, but it was preferable to the way his gut churned when he saw her pain. There was no enemy to fight here. No action to take. No bullet he could absorb with his body to keep it from hers.
Her grief was an impossible foe. Against it, Ashwin was helpless.
She glanced at him, her eyes locking with his for a fraction of a second. Then she bent her head, and the gathered tears rolled down her cheeks.
Ashwin looked away. He distracted himself by naming the muscles that had to flex to curl his fingers toward his palm. Flexor digitorum superficialis. Flexor digitorum profundus. Flexor pollicis—
A murmur of feminine voices seized his attention. He refocused his gaze in time to watch the string of robed acolytes filing toward where Gideon stood. Beside him, a sketched outline of Jaden decorated the tan stucco wall. One by one, the girls kissed their fingertips and pressed them to the drawing. Gideon’s sisters followed, and then Kora, her fingers trembling as they brushed the wall.
The tall priestess—Del—came last. She put her palm on the center of the drawing, eyes closed, fingers spread wide as her lips moved in a silent benediction. When she was done, she turned to touch Gideon’s arm. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, then raised his voice. “Thank you all for honoring our fallen brother. Tonight, you’ll help us celebrate his life. But for now…”
“We have somewhere else to be,” Del finished firmly, waving a hand at her charges. Each dropped a short curtsy to Gideon before heading for the door. Everyone who wasn’t a Rider was filing out, in fact, even Gideon’s sisters. Ashwin turned to follow Kora, but a hand on his arm stopped him.
“Stay.” The gentle kindness in Gideon’s voice did nothing to soften its command.
Kora hesitated, and even Maricela stared at Gideon with wide eyes. A moment later, an encouraging smile supplanted her shock, and she tugged Kora toward the exit.
Kora’s blue eyes stayed locked on him until the door closed behind her.
All around the room, the stiff, stoic posture of t
he Riders began to relax. Their line broke apart, and murmured conversation filled the cavernous silence. Some drifted around the room toward other portraits on the walls, while others followed Deacon to a table behind Gideon. A dozen handmade paintbrushes sat next to colorfully glazed stone bowls holding a rainbow’s worth of colors.
Gideon gestured for Ashwin to follow him to the center of the temple. From there, they had a view of the long walls and the paintings that adorned them. The figures started on the far wall behind the altar—thirteen men, ten of them painted in vibrant colors with elegant skill, the last three still simple black outlines.
One depicted Deacon. The second was Adrian Maddox, Gideon’s cousin who’d fled to Sector Four. The last was Gideon himself.
“The original Riders,” Gideon murmured. “Thirteen of us—a little on the nose, symbolically. Though, unlike my grandfather, I’ve never claimed to be directly descended from God himself.”
Ashwin watched Ana climb the steps to stand in front of one of the original thirteen—a tall, rangy black man exquisitely painted with closely cut hair, a square jaw, and piercing brown eyes.
“Her father,” Gideon supplied. “He died during the assault on the City Center inside Eden, and Ana petitioned to take his place. She put all of the men petitioning alongside her into the dirt during the initial tests.”
Ashwin remembered the wary, challenging look she’d given him the first night he stepped into the barracks. Women had, from time to time, demanded the right to fight alongside the soldiers on the Base. A very few had been accepted into the infantry in the early days, but the generals had quickly abolished the practice. No matter how the women excelled, the male soldiers seemed incapable of coping with their presence.
It was a foible Ashwin had never understood. Humans came with a limited range of skills. Most were terrible at almost everything. When one exhibited aptitude, wasting it over inconsequential details like gender was a criminal mismanagement of resources. “If she’s good at fighting, it’s smart to let her fight.”
Gideon’s lips twitched. “A very logical assessment.” He turned to the right and gestured to a spot halfway down the wall. Ana’s portrait was at the end of the line, a simple black outline that still managed to capture her tumble of curly black hair, the tilt of her nose, and the challenging set of her lips. “It’s the first ritual we experience as Riders. And the last. From the day they join, every Rider knows that death is coming for them. They face it on this wall. The beginnings of their own funerals.”
Ashwin let his gaze slide back along the wall. Plenty of people were already painted in, but there were other outlines—Reyes, sleepy-eyed and defiant. Ivan, looking as stern and unfeeling as any Makhai soldier. Zeke, with his clean-cut features and spiky hair. Hunter, tall and broad, his impressive strength captured as much by his commanding expression as the outline of his biceps.
On the opposite wall, Jaden’s outline was similarly large. Gabe approached with one of the brushes and carefully painted deep amber onto the hair falling over Jaden’s brow. Reyes joined him with a lighter shade of orange, blending the colors together.
“Some of them are quite good at this,” Gideon said quietly. “Del will come in later and finish the portrait, but the first brushstrokes are always fellow Riders.”
A bonding ritual, then. Ashwin could appreciate the cunning of it. The Base had refined such tactics, elevating the creation of a cohesive team unit to precise and cynical science. Even the Makhai soldiers weren’t immune—the ink decorating Ashwin’s back proved that. Until Kora questioned it, he’d never considered the rationale. He was too accustomed to mimicking the actions of those around him.
But the tattoo mattered. The bonds between soldiers on the Base—forged by shared experience—mattered. When Lorenzo Cruz had reached out to him, desperate to find assistance to save his mortally wounded lover, Ashwin hadn’t considered denying him, though he’d had to utilize Kora’s skills to do it.
It was a code on the Base. An understanding. A favor asked. A favor owed.
Seven months ago, Ashwin had redeemed that favor. With his mind fragmenting and his thoughts circling more and more frequently back to Kora, he’d asked Cruz to find a safe place to hide her. And he’d asked him not to reveal that location, even if Ashwin demanded it.
A favor owed. A favor redeemed. Cruz had come through. Not in the way Ashwin had anticipated—Ashwin had expected Cruz to find a safe house or get her away entirely, perhaps taking her up into the mountain communities. Not to move her all of half a mile, from the makeshift hospital to the home of the man running it.
But because he hadn’t anticipated it, it had worked. He hadn’t been able to find Kora, not even when he went looking. And Cruz had kept his favor. Faced with Ashwin’s destabilized rage, he’d shot Ashwin in the leg.
And after that, he’d hurt him.
Fear hurts, Ashwin. It can break a person. If you try to take her somewhere right now, you’ll terrify her. You’ll hurt her. You can’t keep her safe, not until you get yourself under control.
It was the hardest truth anyone had ever given him. Few else would have dared. But Ashwin had felt the muzzle of Cruz’s gun at the back of his head, had tasted his own death on the air—and he’d known Cruz was right.
He’d been no use to Kora like that. Breaking down. Wild. Obsessed with the scent of her, the sight of her, the thought of her. So he saw the sectors through their war, and then he went back to the Base to submit himself to recalibration.
They stripped Kora out of him. It had taken months of concentrated torture to return him to calm, reasoned logic. To cold numbness. To the peace of stillness.
She undid weeks of work every time she touched him.
“Malhotra.”
Ashwin turned to find Deacon standing a pace away, holding out a paintbrush, handle-first. Though the critical part of his brain had no problem recognizing the emotional manipulation Gideon had orchestrated, honest assessment revealed a...twinge. Surprise and something else, sharp and minty, like the herbal tea he’d acquired as a gift in order to subvert the loyalties of one of his domestic handlers.
Makhai soldiers didn’t belong. The other soldiers on the Base might be willing to trade favors and follow the code, but social moments were another matter. No one relaxed around a Makhai soldier. Few were willing to overtly shun them, but a thousand tiny comments and gestures carried the message clearly enough for even Ashwin to hear.
He was never wanted. He was not accepted. He was barely human.
Ashwin watched his fingers curl around the brush’s wooden handle. Someone had crafted it lovingly, polishing it until it was perfectly smooth. He gripped it between his thumb and fingers and battled the seductive lie it embodied.
Deacon stepped aside, clearing a path to the table and its colorful paints, and Ashwin recognized the precariousness of his situation.
Gideon Rios was fighting the battle for Ashwin’s soul on multiple fronts. With Kora, and the promise of affection and passion. With the Riders, and the possibility of brotherhood and belonging. No doubt Gideon would complete the assault by offering absolution for the terrible things Ashwin had done.
He was Makhai, beyond the frailty of human emotion. None of Gideon’s attacks should tempt him. It wasn’t just his duty to hold strong in the face of such an offensive, it was his nature.
Ashwin dipped the brush into the paint, then watched it obscure the tan brick with orange, the color so vibrant and alive it defied the grim sorrow that should have defined a memorial for the dead. Every last painting in the room seethed with life, bright and joyous in the face of loss.
Nothing followed the rules in Sector One.
Maybe he wouldn’t, either.
Chapter Twelve
The party in the Riders’ barracks wasn’t like the bonfire. It was smaller, more intimate, tucked away behind the thick adobe walls. There was still music and dancing, liquor and laughter, but the vibe in the air felt different to Kora. Not desperate, not exactly
, but focused. Intense.
It was still a celebration, but it was more careful than carefree, and not because the Riders were avoiding their grief. On the contrary, they seemed to be embracing it, folding it into the chaotic swirl of emotion that came with living.
That was Sector One—every moment experienced to the fullest, wide open, because every moment could be your last. It was fact, something to be mourned and revered in equal measure.
“Here.” A bottle of cider appeared in front of Kora. Nita Reyes waited until Kora accepted it before dropping to the couch beside her, her legs tucked up beneath her colorful patchwork skirt. “One of my cousins brews this. My parents sent four cases as a memorial gift.”
“Thanks.” Nita was curvy and self-assured, dressed simply in the patchwork and leather she seemed to prefer over her temple robes. She had the same coloring as her brother, but that was where the similarities ended. Whereas Reyes was irreverent and unpredictable, Nita was more serious, almost reserved.
She sipped her cider and sighed. “Honestly, it’s actually really good. Antonio has a gift for this. But my parents frown on anyone starting a business that isn’t a natural extension of the ranch. He only gets away with this much because he’s Tia Cristina’s favorite, and no one argues with my aunt. Not even my father.”
“I know how that feels.” Kora twisted the cap off the bottle. “My adoptive father was a doctor. He made it pretty clear I would be, too. No arguments.”
Nita tilted her head and studied her. “But you’re so good at it. I’m trying to imagine you doing something else. Though I suppose that’s the problem—of course we’re good at the things they make us do from the time we’re babies.”
Kora couldn’t fathom a life without medicine, without the ability to help those in need in an immediate, tangible way. “I would have become a doctor anyway,” she admitted. “Sometimes it’s more about wanting the choice than wanting something different.”
“I understand.” Nita leaned closer. “I always assumed that’s why my brother did it.” She nodded to where Reyes and Zeke were dancing with a pair of acolytes. “He was supposed to marry Maricela, you know. It had been arranged forever, and it was a huge scandal when he joined the Riders instead. But he wasn’t rejecting Maricela. He adores her. He simply refuses to have his choice taken away.”