A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck

by Jade Brieanne

  Seeing how it was Seff who assigned him to this duty, he wondered why

  the idiot was actively trying to distract him.

  “I spoke to you yesterday. At the debriefing? I said, ‘Pass me the kite’ and you said ‘Hn.’ Remember?”

  Seff walked from the upper level of their Causatum Chamber, his hand sliding across the rail as he approached the stairs and used them to join Jerome on the bottom level. “That wasn’t me,” Seff said, sourly. “That was Hector, a human and an auxiliary.”

  Jerome did react this time, his brow creasing as he rotated in his chair to look at the youngest Above member. “I’m pretty sure I would remember if it were you I was talking to or not.”

  “Oh, really? What was I wearing then?”

  “A shirt–”

  Seff rolled his eyes. “Way to be vague.”

  “–that I bought you. The one with the stain under the collar. Our fiftieth solstice together,” Jerome said as he turned back around towards the large glass computer screen in front of him. “You said you liked grey,” he muttered, smashing a key a little harder than he intended.

  He heard Seff shuffling his feet behind him like he wanted to say something else. He didn’t know Seff for being indecisive or nervous, however, that’s exactly how he’d been acting since Jerome returned to Caeli. Despite Seff’s newfound weirdness and subliminal need to discuss them, Jerome hadn’t come back to work out the closure he’d once wanted. He was here to do a job. They’d forced him back here so the least they could do, the least Seff could do, was let him do that job.

  “I heard The Above and Ahn got into it.”

  Seff made a noise before taking the seat next to him. “Diversion. If they think we’re at odds, the less they’ll think Ahn and I are working together.” He looked up at the screen. “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know. Most of this is about soul possession but not the reverse. But I’m thinking that since we’re not the experts on this, that maybe we should locate one.”

  “Christian is working on that.”

  Silence. Mostly silence where Jerome worked and Seff stared. And it felt like so much was being said in the silence. About Seff inability to emote when it was important and Jerome’s irritation that he couldn’t. That he was terrible at consoling or understanding or, hell, telling Jerome it was going to be okay, even when it wasn’t. That when he told him he’d stabbed a friend to death because of duty, he should have known that Jerome needed something more than a fucking pat on the back. He needed that…something, often. Jerome’s ‘neediness’ irritated Seff or it scared him or…Jerome didn’t know. He scowled at his thoughts. Scratch that. Jerome did want closure. He wanted a lot of things. “Seff…about that night–”

  They were interrupted by Hugo. He still hadn’t shaved, so he figured Hugo was still wandering on the male side of his identity. He jogged down the short set of steps, his hard bottom shoes smacking against the marble, and approached the workstation. He took a seat along the long clear glass desk, a look of heavy contemplation on his face and sighed. “Okay, so hear me out.”

  Jerome knew that look. If Cobra itself was the most secretive of the juntas, then Hugo was the most secretive of the Luminary Generals. He was also the most secretive between the four of them. They never asked him too many questions, because they already knew the answer. “Mind yours, I’ll mind mine,” was his motto. There were reasons–Hugo had been at this longer and had connections that weren’t always exactly ethical or legal. He did it to protect himself, the three under him and Caeli. He was a good General, one of the best Generals. Still, the few times that Hugo ran across a situation where he felt it necessary to share and not just “do”, was usually when it was too big for him to keep a secret.

  “You know how every time we have a mission, we tend to overstay our objective timeline on the realm, right? We did it when we were looking for you. Probably could have found you a lot faster but New York is fun.”

  Seff’s brow rose. “You do what?”

  “Take it out of my vacation hours. This isn’t the time for you to be my boss,” he grunted.

  “As if you’d ever acknowledge that.”

  “Well,” Hugo said, pressing on, “there was a reason. Other than my boys needing time to decompress, I was…visiting people.”

  Seff snorted. “Nobody cares what you were doing with your unofficial, undocumented PTO.”

  “You will care when I tell you who I was visiting.” Hugo stood and began to pace. Jerome hated when Hugo paced. “I’ve kept in close contact with Song–”

  Seff crossed his arms. “Not an actual issue.”

  “–and Shemhazi.”

  Jerome choked on his coffee. Seff stood up so fast that if his seat wasn’t bolted to the ground it would have fallen over. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “He was my friend, before, during, and after the war. He’s done some jacked up things but so have I. I’m the last person to judge or abandon him. He did sign the treaty, which means he is still a citizen of Caeli.”

  “Yeah! One who exiled himself! Not to mention Azrael, his grandson, is trying to take over the entire realm!”

  “You know just as well as I that Shemhazi has been nothing but absolutely quiet for centuries and most certainly peaceful. You’re working with century-old prejudices, Seff!”

  “It’s my job to be prejudicial!”

  “And I told you this was not the time for your job! This is your mission, yours and Ahn’s, and he has just given us a way to get information to Fox. So pull your head out of that unlubed ass and stop acting up in front of your boyfriend!”

  Jerome was going to kill him.

  “I am not acting up in front of my–he’s isn’t my–we broke up–now just wait a minute!”

  Hugo broke out into laughter. “You fall for that shit every time!” He continued to laugh at Seff’s sputtering and Jerome felt his anger waning a bit.

  “You gender bent asshole.”

  “Aww Seff, that’s so sweet of you. Now,” Hugo said, “let’s focus. And let me remind you the focus is not Shemhazi but what he has working access to on Earth.”

  “And that is?” Seff drawled.

  Hugo grinned. “A Causatum chamber.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  “So we’re traveling to Midtown?” Key asked, his hands on his hips as they stared up at map splayed across the three screens in Fox’s apartment. It showed a neighbor in central Manhattan that stretched across the borough and touched both rivers. Key was still unfamiliar with most of New York, despite how long he’d lived there.

  George grunted in answer and tapped the screen. “They originally placed a Causatum chamber in each of the realms in a half-assed idea to expand our territories outside of Caelian borders. The entire project was shut down when they tried to put one on Antris and Hatshepsut promptly raised hell. It’s still functional. Or it should be. It’s worth a shot.”

  “There is a comm-system in the chambers,” Tahir mentioned. “If we get to it, we can communicate with Cobra without Caeli’s authorization or knowledge, right?”

  “Yes and no. Nobody monitors the adjuvant chambers on Earth but they’d still have access to any recordings.”

  “Question,” Jon asked, hovering around Tahir’s bedroom, his ear close to the door. “If you can talk to this Hugo person, then why can’t they just

  relay the information they’ve found to you? Makes more sense than,” Jon paused to look at Rooke who was looping his computer cables around his hand and elbow before putting them in his bag, “whatever is going on.”

  “That would be the case if I were the one talking to Hugo. I wasn’t.”

  Jon frowned. “Okay?”

  “When a member of The Fallen or even The Above visits another plane, there is a communication link that is set up between the two realms, the “home” and the “away” realm. The link isn’t set up for anyone else outside of The Above or The Fallen authority because there can be nothing but the mission that alter
s the timeline,” Rooke explained. “The energy created by the communication link is in joules. Sound vibrates, vibration can cause heat. Too much vibration equals too much heat and then timeline gots nutso. It bends, warps, all of that. Think about string cheese under a magnifying glass in the middle of summer except it's not cheese, it’s TIME. So to–”

  Jon held his hand up. “Okay, someone explain what he just explained.”

  “What he’s trying to explain is, I, personally, do not have access to this communication system. Song does. Hugo has been talking to Song and Song has been talking to me.”

  “Plus,” Rooke continued, “The transmission length is too short to have a real conversation. Think of it as a very long wave walkie talkie except the other person keeps stepping out of range–because they have to…realms are funny. There’s not enough time to do whatever we need to do.”

  “And the problem is after today, the link will be severed. With Song returning back to her duties, there is no reason to keep her frequency open. So, we’re going out,” George finished.

  Jon’s eyes narrowed and George glanced at him.

  “Is there a problem?” George asked.

  Tahir exhaled loudly. “Oh, man, here we go.”

  “That is stupid. All of you? Stupid bug pixies who make everything so damn hard! Why set up something like that? How in the hell are you the protectors of the entire human race when everything you do is ass-backward? How have you managed to succeed at doing anything?” Jon opened Tahir’s bedroom door. “And another thing! Maybe if you dumbasses calculated how far a fucking “joules” reached, you could open up constant communication out of range of your stupid timelines! Ever thought about that?” The human stomped off and the door slammed behind him.

  “That does kind of make sense,” Rooke murmured.

  Tahir looked up at George from the weapons trunk she was putting away. “Don’t take anything he says personally. He’s…he’s just a little wary of everything that we do. And I mean every-thing.”

  “Yeah! Because I have some damn sense!” he yelled from the other side of the door.

  “If it weren’t for Aiden, we wouldn’t even have to deal with the idiot,” she whispered.

  “I heard that!”

  George turned to Key. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. About that Aiden guy.”

  Key regarded George with the same apprehension a guard would a prisoner out on the rec yard. “What about him?”

  “From what I’ve heard about you, you don’t seem like the type of person to go without questioning your orders and this seems…no, I know this is an order, this Aiden thing. You realize that keeping Aiden in the dark about what’s going on is not only ridiculous but pointless.”

  “It’s easier to deal with someone’s blank memory than their emotions.”

  George looked at him like he was stupid. He wasn’t the first, but the look was rare. Most knew better. “He’ll need his memories back eventually. And the truth.”

  “I know. He’s gonna kill me…” and Key paused, laughing a bit, “and I’ll deserve it for following stupid orders. For now, I’ll go apologize for Song knocking him over the head.”

  George laughed. “If you can around his guard dog, sure.”

  “He’s all bark, no bite.”

  Key made his way across the living room, almost tripping over Rooke’s bedroll before entering Tahir’s bedroom where Jon was staring at a very angry Aiden tied up inside the closet. He paused at the door and eyed the two of them, his gaze shifting and lingering on Jon.

  The look on Jon’s face was nothing short of miserable, the exact face a kicked puppy would make and…and Key felt a little sorry. A…lot sorry. For a lot of things but especially for making him do this to his friend. It would do things to their friendship, none of it good. Or maybe, just maybe their bond was strong enough to survive such a shitty situation. Key didn’t know. Key didn’t have friends. He had co-workers, peers…companions? Those he’d shared death with so maybe they were a little closer than most but…he didn’t know how friendships worked, especially friendship under stress. It didn’t matter. Key couldn’t afford to think about that, any of it. It was unnecessary.

  It still sucked, though. He could admit that.

  Key approached them and crouched until he was eye level with Aiden. “I’m going to take this gag out of your mouth. Are you going to be quiet?”

  The agent glared at them, his eyes jutting from his friend then back to Key before he nodded. Satisfied, he loosened the gag and pulled it away from Aiden’s mouth. True to his word, Aiden kept quiet, his lips pressed together and his nostrils flared.

  “Last few days have been rough for you.”

  “What an understatement!” Aiden said. “When are you going tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “There’s a lot to explain, and you’re not getting an explanation to all of it, I’m afraid. But,” he emphasized as he pulled some lip balm out of his pocket and gingerly applied it to Aiden’s chapped lips to the human’s surprise,” I can start off by apologizing for the things I’ve done to you, physically and mentally. I did it for your own good.”

  Aiden scoffed.

  “I didn’t mean to sound like a parent but when it clicks, when it all clicks, you might still be mad at me but you’ll understand why I did what I did.”

  “Don’t think I’m going to thank you when the time comes.”

  “For your cooperation up until now, it may be me thanking you.” Key glanced at Jon. “You can untie him. We’re leaving.”

  Jon worked to untie the ropes that were wrapped around Aiden’s wrist and ankles and Aiden began rubbing his wrist the moment he was free. Then Aiden frowned. “Where are we going? Can’t I just go home?” His gaze pivoted to Jon. “Why are you here? Why haven’t you explained?” That was an accusation. A justifiable one.

  Jon turned to Key, hopeless. “Maybe you can leak a little of his memory? Like, the whole angel bit was difficult to explain the first time.”

  “What?” Aiden asked, confused. “Angels?” His eyes narrowed to a point. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Jon flourished his arms as if to say “See.”

  Key agreed. They didn’t have the time to explain or babysit or cushion the shock. Some forewarning would make things go smoother.

  “I’ll have to manipulate it a bit to leave her out,” he murmured. “I’m not the best at this but I’ll try. I don’t want to scramble his brain.”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t want to scramble my what?”

  Key placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Aiden, I just have to…” Quick as lightning, Key reached out, grabbed Aiden’s head between his hands and concentrated. Aiden jumped and tried to pull his head free but he was stronger than Aiden so no matter how hard he jerked and pulled and grunted, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Key narrowed his focus, navigating through memories and history and the past and variant futures Aiden had collected and imagined in his mind. Bypassed watching a bride walk towards him down the aisle. Bypassed eulogizing a friend who died in the line of duty. Bypassed the vision of a daughter who had the same eyes as him but tawny skin and wild, kinky hair. Bypassed learning a secret as a young man. A black butterfly made an appearance in that one and Key…paused but kept going.

  He tried to place the memory of where he explained what they were and what they did and why they did it in the correct place in Aiden’s head without any triggering images of Jin.

  However, Key didn’t count on one thing–just how strongly Aiden’s subconscious wasn’t having that shit.

  The Luminary jumped back like he’d been shocked. “Oh, shit.” He stood up, staring at Aiden like he was a ghost or had grown another head or whatever stupid human colloquialisms he could think of. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

  “I’m going to guess something went wrong?” Jon said. “Mildly wrong or like horribly wrong?”

  Key rubbed his forehead. “Uh, I would say neithe
r. Unfortunate–”

  “Where the hell is Jin,” Aiden growled.

  “–and very, very annoying.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Key was right. Aiden was having a bad day.

  It had started off with him turning in his paperwork for his sabbatical. That sucked. He dealt with it as best as he could. His father taught him how to deal with disappointment in the worst way possible so he considered himself a master at masking the cons. He was going to take the six months he requested and do something–go to another country, maybe the one his mother was at, if he could track her down since communication wasn’t her thing. Or he could take a few classes at the community college, a dance class, learn how to cook a new meal. Go on a damn date.

  Something.

  That was the plan. He was going to go home, sit down and figure out why he felt so empty. Why he felt like something was missing, like everything he’d done to build his dreams all of a sudden wasn’t enough. And

  he was going to fill that void so he could get back to his job.

  Getting kidnapped put a kink in that mission.

  The ones who’d kidnapped him were a pack of premium grade A weirdos. It wasn’t often that agents were kidnapped. People usually just killed them. The weirdos hadn’t done that, to his great and grateful surprise. Aside from the handcuffs, they’d treated him rather nicely. Sheeda, if that was her real name, had even seemed to care about his wellbeing. She wanted to right some kind of wrong, show him the way as if Aiden was lost. He wasn’t lost, he just felt like he’d lost something.