And that’s when she said it.
“Yes,” Sheeda said softly. “The woman who died for you.”
He didn’t believe her. He would know if someone had “died” for him. Yet the way she said it, the conviction in her voice, the emotion in her eyes that relayed a secret untold, reverberated in every last fabric of his being and despite not knowing what the hell she was talking about, he felt irrevocably sad.
Right when he was about to ask her why, it was all over. Some middle-aged guy in a suit came in two guns blazing. Except it wasn’t two guns, it was his hands, glowing with some kind of energy and if Aiden hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it.
From there it got stranger…with more strangers. Now he was stuck in an apartment with a bunch of people who pretended like he wasn’t there. Even Jon, who was inexplicably present, wouldn’t give him anything.
Then they knocked him out.
Today really, really sucked.
When he woke up, he was bound and gagged and stuck somewhere dark. It was small and smelled a bit like the inside of shoes, so Aiden guessed a closet. For some time he tried to free himself but not only could he not get the gag to budge, but the ropes rubbed against his skin and caused an anxiety to build up in his chest that he couldn’t understand. So he stopped and redirected his energy into banging up against the door with his head.
When his captors returned, the man with pretty eyes that looked like they could kill laid his hands on his head. Aiden didn’t know what was happening but he knew it hurt like hell, as if all the words in the world were being crammed into his head. They whirled around inside of his mind, picking things up and slamming them back down. Things, memories, were torn from the walls and slapped against another. Carpet, thoughts, were ripped from the floor and rolled up in a corner somewhere. Then it all stopped. No hammering, no nailing anything down, no more repainting and repurposing of his mind. When the madness calmed, when the dust settled, something Key said clicked.
It clicked because the only thing that echoed in his head, in the lull after an upheaval, was one thing.
“Where the hell is Jin?” Aiden growled.
She wasn’t near him. She hadn’t been for a very long time. And damn him for not even realizing what the hole in his heart was, that the something that was missing was her.
The image of her lying in a pool of fire red water, blood everywhere, flashed in his head and Aiden’s raw curiosity turned into deep, profound fear.
The blood. There was so much blood.
Subsequent images flashed through his mind. Their bedroom. The subway. Her blood on the wall. Her blood on the ground. Her final quiet exhale.
His mind twisted like a Rubix cube and thoughts calmly slid to where they belonged. Locked into place, coalesced. “She’s–she’s dead, isn’t she?” he questioned in a horrified whisper.
“Shit, this was what I was worried about,” Key muttered, a hand on the back of his neck. “Tahir!” he called towards the door. The woman peeked in, frowning, then looked down at Aiden and his anger and her mouth dropped open. His rescuer, George, stood at the door, looking in, his face holding amusement that didn’t make sense, not here, not now, now when Jin was–
“She’s not dead, Aiden,” Jon countered.
Aiden’s head snapped to Jon’s and with it, something else clicked. Rage. All consuming, all-encompassing rage. All over, all over, rage. This was his friend, his best friend, his partner. To realize that he was complicit in this ignited a fire deep in his belly.
He remembered Jon’s slips, the near misses when he would say something that only Aiden, the Aiden with his memory intact, would pick up. His appearing on coincidence, disappearing, always with an excuse. The very fact he was here to begin with…
With a sharp growl, Aiden lunged forward, knocking Jon back onto the ground. “You knew they were doing this to me and you did nothing to help? They made me forget her and you let them?” Aiden screamed. “They tried to kill her, Jon! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Aiden!” someone screamed but Aiden couldn’t discern much in the red haze of anger. Punches rained down on Jon and Jon raised his arms to cover his face and body but did nothing to stop his attack. Aiden wished he would. Wish he would acknowledge his anger, his rage with…something. He was just sitting there. Taking it! He could take a lot of things, but not apathy.
Before Aiden could land another punch, a stiff arm slammed into his chest, knocking him back and off of Jon. Tahir was instant, like she’d been trained to do, flipping Aiden over, placing a knee right at the base of his neck and pulling his arm behind his back. “Dude, you have to calm down!”
“Get off of me!”
“Not until you calm down! I don’t want to hurt you!”
“All of you,” Aiden spat from his position, his face pressed into the ground, “all of you are full of shit!”
“Flip him over.”
Tahir followed her leader’s command, tipping Aiden so he was on his back. She resumed restraining him by twisting his wrist at a firm angle that pulled painfully when he tried to jerk away. “Stop moving or you’ll break your wrist,” Tahir growled.
Aiden stared up at her until he felt his anger start to fade and was replaced by the true emotion fueling his actions: betrayal.
Key crouched next to his head. “I understand why you’re mad. The reason I had to do this in the first place was because of this very reaction.” He brought his hand to Aiden’s forehead and gently pushed back his sweaty bangs, surely a sign of trust or one of insanity. “If you calm down, you’ll remember one important thing I managed to slip to you before I had to put you under. Think, Aiden. Remember.”
His thoughts flashed back to when they were in Sono, the hospital in Elysian. They’d separated Aiden from Jin in the only fashion they could, dragging him away, and the only thing he could think of was his memories of Jin was being carted off the morgue and them locking him in a room and strapping him down to a hospital bed. It was happening again, except for this time, it was some strange golden energy wrapped around his ankles and wrist and they weren’t carting Jin off to the morgue because she was a pillar of salt.
Key’d hovered over him and his golden prison, looking down at him with a look very similar to the look he was giving him now.
Then Aiden remembered.
“On everything I am as a Mutare, as a General, as a half-human, we will save her. We will not let her die. We will not let her become nothing. Be patient and understand. One day I will give you your memories back but for now, I have to do this.”
Key slipped Jin’s pocket watch necklace around his neck. “Know this is not the end. We have much work to do, Aiden Choi.”
The fight left Aiden and he slumped.
“Did it click yet?” Key asked, amused yet concerned. “You can let him go.”
“Are you sure?” Tahir asked, eyeing Aiden.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Tahir slowly released him and stood back but kept close, her fist flexing open and close as she watched him sit up.
Everyone stood around, silent, and the only sound in the room was the harsh inhale and exhale coming from both Jon and Aiden. Aiden stared at the ceiling, his mind blank, a void, because if he sat there and thought and drew conclusions and made assessments and…continued to just think, he would lose it.
“Can I have a moment?” Aiden said quietly. “Whatever this is…I just need a moment.”
“Take as much time as you need,” Key said. “We can do Midtown without you.”
“No, I didn’t say that,” Aiden said, firmly, turning his head to look Key in the eye. “You’ve been doing everything without me. That stops now. Just…let me talk to Jon first.”
Jon’s head lifted at the mention of his name. He was standing in a corner, thumbing at his bloody lip “Yeah,” the former agent muttered. “Yeah, just give us a moment.”
As Tahir and Key began to file out, the latter paused at Jon’s side to w
ipe the blood away from his lip, thumbing at the cut with the careful caress of a lover. Aiden would file that away for later. They shared a quiet word which Aiden couldn’t hear but some of the stress left Jon’s face. He nodded at whatever Key said before the angel left, closing Tahir’s bedroom door behind him.
The silence was palpable and heavy and Aiden felt like it sat on him and made it hard to breathe. So, he pulled himself up, leaning against the bed frame and tried to remember how breathing felt without this weight on his chest. He plucked at the carpet while Jon stared at the wall opposite of them.
Jon broke the silence with a grunt. “I didn’t want to do it, you know. I was so mad when they did what they did to you. I screamed, I kicked, I yelled. I was so mad that I wanted to defy whatever cockamamie plan they had and just find a way to keep us there, to keep you near her.”
“Why didn’t you?” Aiden asked quietly.
“Because…damn it, because I knew that you wouldn’t do anything to put her life in danger. That you’d suffer through anything, through this, even not remembering her, if it meant that she would be safe.” Jon moved from the wall and took a seat by his friend. “They say that your presence would have caused some kind of imbalance. That keeping you away from her was the best way to save her. I don’t know if I believe all of that, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”
“So me being around her might get her killed?” Aiden’s head dipped and his arms fell between his legs. “I see nothing has changed.”
Jon chuckled. “Except this is the one time I believe that. Kind of. Still real iffy about anything they say. They lie a lot, you know.” Jon was silent again and Aiden let him be silent. “I was always…jealous of Jin. Of you, too, but…I was really jealous of her.”
Aiden sighed and twisted the chain of Jin’s pocket watch necklace around his finger. “I know.”
Aiden could feel Jon looking at him, so he clarified. “I understand. It was us, it was always us. At school, in the lunchroom, on the pitch, then grabbing something to eat after school. We moved to Quantico together. We moved to Korea together. We served together. And then…and then it was Jin. Everything was Jin and…” He pulled at string hard enough for it to snap off from the rest of the carpet. “I lost myself in her. She filled a void and I let that consume me. There were times you’d try to pull me out and I was so angry you thought you could. I still don’t know if I want you to.”
Jon frowned. “You make it sound so unhealthy.”
“Sometimes it is,” Aiden murmured. “If I were you, I’d be jealous. It was unfair of me.”
“Nah,” Jon replied. “I said I was. Past tense. You grew up. I didn’t. I know what she means to you. I would never lie to you under any other circumstance. You’re my best friend.”
“Instant best friends…” Aiden said.
“Who love instant noodles,” Jon finished, elbowing Aiden with a smirk. “Happy Birthday by the way. I didn’t forget.”
“Thanks…”
They let the silence linger between them again. This time it was comfortable. “So, what do we do now?” Aiden asked, this time his voice full of all the unknown, his lack of answers, of control.
“Find her. I don’t have a great handle on all of this magical bullshit, but they know far better than I do on how to get her back. We gotta trust them on this one.” Jon stood, turned and put out his hand. Aiden took it, allowing his friend to pull him to standing. ”Although when this is over, I might kick Key’s ass.”
Aiden managed a laugh. “The last time you had a crush this bad was back at the FBI Academy. The Dominican computer specialist… what was her name?” Jon groaned as Aiden snapped his fingers, trying to remember.
“Lupita,” Jon said sullenly. “She wouldn’t give me the time of day. She told me I didn’t talk enough. Whatever that meant,” he muttered.
Aiden clapped him on the back. “Well, look on the bright side. Key wants you to shut up and has a number of ways of making you do so.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “Yay, me!”
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Midtown
Manhattan, New York
“The library?” Jon asked. “This chamber is in the New York public library? You guys make it a habit to hide things nearby, huh?”
Aiden stared at the face of the building. He’d had a case here once, a hostage situation where a man demanded answers from the police precinct where one of their officers had shot his son. New York is a melting pot of cultures and people but sometimes they clash, racial tensions boil over and you’ve got a problem on your hands. He remembered Jin being upset about it, murmuring about a similar case in the Missouri weeks before and another in Baltimore weeks before it. The situation was handled and the man was arrested but the vision of him standing on the stairs between the two lions–Patience and Fortitude–still stuck in Aiden’s mind.
“Keep in mind that everything you see today wasn’t everything that
always was,” George said, answering Jon’s question as he began walking up the pale grey stone steps towards the entrance. “Before it was a library, it was the Croton Distribution Reservoir. We used to,” George paused at the top step, a look of fondness on his face, “we used to take walks around it.” He chuckled. “It was a great place to meet girls. We were a constant presence, although I can’t say some of the other visitors were happy to see us,” he admitted. “Times were different back then.”
The sun had begun to set and Aiden was well aware of what time the library closed. He wasn’t sure how they were going to get inside, reach the chamber and do what they needed to do in the next thirty minutes.
He huffed but followed as the rest of the group trudged up the remaining steps. George walked through the front doors of the library, nodding to the security guard, ducking as he passed under the sensors. Key, Rooke, and Tahir followed. The two guns Aiden knew Tahir had on her didn’t send the alarms blaring off like he’d anticipated, but he tried his best to keep the shock off his face. He, too, followed without a word, walking through the detectors and scanning the great entrance of the library with mild disinterest.
“The Reservoir was a giant man-made lake and at the very center of the very bottom was the door to the Chamber. Chamber Pumbavu. The angel who helped create the chamber was from Rwanda and spoke Swahili. Pumbavu means foolish. She thought it was hilarious because she hated the idea.”
They passed through multiple rooms before they reached a pair of simple dark mahogany swinging doors with two circular windows. A sign above the door read “Rose Reading Room”. George pushed the doors open that led them into the mammoth room filled to the brim with late evening patrons, their noses stuffed in books or bent over stacks of notes, most beginning to pack their things up so they could leave before the library closed. Seeing that raised the question again to Aiden.
“George,” Aiden said his voice low, mindful of his surroundings. “Is the chamber still here or are we here to research where the chamber is because I doubt you’ll be able to get all of that done before the library locks up for the night.”
George shook his head. “I’m not concerned about that,” he stated before walking further into the library.”
“But–” Aiden paused when Rooke came abreast of him.
“Quick extra-terrestrial transhuman quiz while Shemhazi does what he does. It’s true that a lot of Mutare and even some fullbloods walk amongst humans. However, when too many of them are in the same place, it can cause a spiritual energy beacon of sorts. And although it isn’t harmful, we aren’t the only beings that walk the Earth. Since it’s not our job to deal with those creatures, we have to find a way for our collective energy to not attract them.”
Jon licked the tip of his finger. “There are like…four of you unicorns gathered right now. Exactly how many do you need to rouse trouble?”
“Subjective. Depends on the type, what kind of path restrictor they have, yada yada. But the key is removing the threat altogether. So, we use hollow planes.”
>
“Am I going to regret asking what the hell that is?”
Rooke shrugged. “You don’t have to ask. George is going to show us.”
George even walked deeper into the Rose Room, passing tables and rows of golden lampshades. When he got to his destination, he looked upwards. Along the ceiling of the Rose Room were three paintings of a cloud filled sky, a gradient of blues, pinks, and purple, all encased in intricate inlays of dark wood carvings. He stood just under the center one. To Aiden’s mild surprise, no one paid him too much attention, a phenomenon he attributed to New York–everybody had seen enough weird shit to ignore it.
George held his hands out to his sides, palms up, and closed his eyes. It was quiet for a few long tense moments. Without warning, his eyes flew open and they were the color of white foam. He slammed his hands together, and the clap sent orange tinted ripples through the room, slamming into the walls and floor. A deafening, powerful wind began whipping around the Rose Room from the epicenter of where George stood, roaring around tables and bookshelves.
“George is doing this?” Jon shouted out, his body crouched to avoid the wind.
“Yes!” Key had braced himself against the force of the wind, his head lowered and his feet staggered, hands over his ears as he continued to stare at George. “Five more seconds!”
Aiden looked around just as time slowed to a crawl. Those in the Rose Room, oblivious to whatever George was doing, were moving in dilated drops of time, their hair caught in the draft of the wind, their bodies moving in slow motion.
Key counted the seconds down with his hands, the wind growing so powerful that it made it hard to talk. George’s hands flew apart, a move reminiscent of what Aiden had seen on Caeli, as Kano and Penume opened the doors to The Dome. Aiden heard a sickly cracking sound and he knew what it was. George’s face began to contort, his jaw stretching out of place, elongating with ghastly crunching and breaking. White shone down on George and Aiden looked up to the painting above them. He gasped. The light was shining through the clouds as if Aiden were under an actual sky! The light filled the room to every corner, blotting out his vision. He held his hand up to shield his eyes but it was no use.
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 23