The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3)

by Alicia Kat Vancil

  Kira continued to watch me curiously before she spoke. “I’m glad he’s not gone, not—” Dead, I finished for her in my head.

  I’m right here, Kira. Even though I can’t hold you, I’m right here, Aku said with a desperate sadness coating the words. And there was something in that desperation that frightened me.

  “It’s not going to be like it was before, you know that, right?” I said suddenly. “You and me—or the part of me that was him anyways—it’s done. I may not be with Nualla right now, but someday I’ll figure out a way to get her to forgive me.”

  “For what?” Kira asked indignantly as if the idea that I owed Nualla anything, offended her.

  “He made me stab her,” I breathed through gritted teeth.

  “Who, Aku?” Kira asked, startled.

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head. I couldn’t remember his name, but his face was cut into my nightmares in crystal-clear detail. Blond wavy hair the color of honey and dark blue eyes that held an unfathomable cruelty behind them.

  His name is Director E, Aku said with loathing.

  “Director E?” I repeated out loud, accidentally.

  “Oh, him,” Kira spat, her tone echoing Aku’s.

  I looked at her questioningly.

  “Director E is the mossing jackass responsible for doing all of this to us,” Kira stated with an irritated huff.

  “Oh,” I replied with a heavy breath. He might have been the person responsible for nearly every horrible thing that had happened to me in my entire life, but knowing a code name wasn’t going to get me any closer to finding him.

  Or slitting his throat, Aku added with savage cruelty.

  “Director E? He didn’t have more of a name than that?” I asked Kira hopefully.

  “None of them did,” Kira answered with an angry snort. “I think they did it on purpose so we would never know who they really were.”

  “Probably,” I agreed, my shoulders sagging in defeat.

  After a few awkward minutes of silence, Kira flopped back onto the floor. “So why are you here?” she asked as she turned onto her side, and propped her head on her palm.

  “My brother’s on a date,” I said, staying where I was.

  “And?”

  “He might want to bring her back to the apartment,” I stated as I shifted my eyes to her.

  “Well I don’t see why that— Oh!” Kira said, her eyebrows jumping up when she realized what I was implying.

  “Yeah,” I agreed as I let my eyes wander away from her. “So, why are you here?”

  Kira was silent for a while before she answered, “I don’t like my apartment, it’s too big.”

  “Too big? Then why are you here? This place is huge!” I pointed out as I gestured around the training room.

  She shrugged. “It feels like home.”

  Then it hit me like a punch to the heart. The only “home” Kira had ever known was the Kakodemoss facility.

  I flopped back onto the mats, staring up at the ceiling. “No place feels like home anymore,” I said miserably.

  “The first few nights I slept in the bathroom, because it was…it was about the same size,” Kira admitted in a small voice.

  “As what?” I asked dubiously, but even as I asked it Aku pushed memories forward in my mind.

  Tiny rooms that were more like cells with barely more than a bed and a small table that acted as a nightstand. And a bathroom that was little more than a closet.

  Was this really your room? I asked him within my head.

  For twelve years, he answered with an odd tone to his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” I said around the lump in my throat. We were so impossibly broken. Me. Aku. Kira. Chan-rin. We may have escaped the Kakodemoss labs, but we could never truly leave them behind. The things that had happened to us there were practically etched into our bones.

  “It’s not your fault, it’s his. And when I eventually catch up with him, I’m going to shove a blade straight through his heart—before I chop him up into tiny little pieces,” Kira vowed with a dangerous, barely contained calm to her voice.

  “Just promise you’ll leave me some, okay?”

  “I’m serious,” Kira said flatly as she glared at me.

  “I didn’t say you weren’t” I countered, meeting her glare.

  Finally, I sighed heavily, letting all the air out of my lungs. It would have been unsettling to hear her plotting someone’s death, if I didn’t also think he deserved every horrible, pain-filled second that was coming to him.

  “Look it’s really late, do you mind if I get some sleep?” I asked her.

  “Not really. Do whatever you like,” Kira replied tersely with a shrug.

  “Thanks,” I said as I curled onto my side and closed my eyes.

  I let my breathing slow as I tried to think of anything other than that place. Of the sounds of shoes squeaking on the linoleum, and the distance sounds of lab equipment beeping. The tragic lullaby they had spent so much of their lives listing to as they fell asleep.

  I’m sorry, I whispered to him within my head.

  He was silent for a long moment before he answered, Just promise me you won’t send me back there.

  Where? To the facility?

  To that dark oblivion.

  What?

  When you are in control, I don’t just disappear. It’s not like falling asleep. I’m still here inside your head…forgotten.

  Thats… I really didn’t know what to say to that. It was unimaginably horrible. Like being a ghost trapped in a black hole.

  I promise.

  “Aku rona kira okuno chan-rin,” Kira whispered when I had just nearly lost consciousness.

  My eyes fluttered open again, and I stared at her. Into her eyes with their silver flecks like captured moonlight. So familiar and yet so strange and foreign in the same breath.

  Please say it, Aku said with an aching sadness.

  Say what?

  You know what, Aku answered as he filled my mind with a hundred tiny fragments of time all saying the same thing.

  If I do will you tell me why it’s so important?

  Aku was quiet for a moment before he answered, Yes.

  Okay.

  Can I…can you touch her? Aku asked hesitantly.

  What?! No. Absolutely not. I’m married to someone else.

  Please, just her hand, Aku pleaded desperately within my head. And the sound of his voice was so heartbreaking I finally gave in.

  “Aku rona kira okuno chan-rin,” I echoed after a moment, reaching out to hook my finger around Kira’s pinky.

  She looked at me with wide eyes for a moment before tears began to swim in her eyes. “He’s in there, isn’t he?”

  Yes, Kira I’m here, Aku said with such sadness.

  “Yes.”

  A barely contained sob escaped her lips. She reached out toward me with her other hand, her fingers nearly touching my cheek when she stopped.

  “Why didn’t you come save us, Aku? I waited for so, so long and you never came,” she asked accusingly, her eyes becoming glassy.

  The night we were going to escape they captured me, Kira. They took me to the Machanta room. They made me…

  Made you what?

  Made me you.

  “It’s my fault,” I said slowly, realizing that the reason that Aku had never rescued Kira and Chan-rin was because he had been trapped inside my mind.

  “What?” Kira asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.

  “The reason Aku never came, is because he was me,” I admitted, the horror of it all hitting me like a punch in the chest.

  Kira’s head jerked back as if I had slapped her. Her eyes welling with tears. And I knew that look, because I had seen it
in Nualla’s eyes.

  Betrayal.

  Kira angrily turned her back on me. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself so I wouldn’t notice she was crying.

  Can you say one more thing to her? Aku asked with a devastated sadness coating his voice.

  I think she’s stopped listening.

  Please, Patrick.

  I let out a heavy sigh. Okay.

  Kira, mai Chan, if I could have burned down the world to save you, I would have.

  I looked at Kira and repeated what Aku had said.

  I watched Kira’s back for a long time until my eyes became too heavy.

  So what does it mean? I finally asked Aku.

  You mean, ‘aku rona kira okuno chan-rin’? he asked.

  Yes.

  Eight plus six equals fourteen.

  I know that. I meant, what does it really mean?

  Ah, Aku said with an exhausted sigh that made me wonder if it was difficult for him to do this.

  To everyone else aku rona kira okuno chan-rin is just an equation in Daemotic. But to us—Kira, Chan-rin and me—it means…family.

  Family? I asked in confusion.

  Family.

  That’s…

  I know it’s stupid but—

  I don’t think it’s stupid.

  Aku was silent for a long time, and I began to wonder if he was still there. And it was so strange to be worried that he was gone. Because I had basically spent the last eleven weeks scared to death that if I let my guard down even for a moment that I might lose me and only be left with him. Because the sad, fucked up truth was that I had been him—Aku—far longer than I had ever been Patrick. That everything that was me was just some cobbled-together facade of genetic engineering, memory manipulation, and lies. But when I had finally let him in, it wasn’t the obliterating storm I had been expecting. Instead, it was more like remembering details of a dream you thought you had forgotten. Like I had been broken before with missing pieces and now those pieces were being slowly set back into place.

  When I was in that space between dreams and reality, Aku finally spoke again. Patrick?

  Yeah? I replied groggily.

  Thank you.

  For what?

  For not sending me back there.

  The Worst Hangover in the World

  Friday, November 16th

  TRAVIS

  I woke up groggily, my head pounding. I really had to stop drinking so much, it wasn’t good for my—

  I stopped rubbing the sleep from my eyes abruptly. There was a black lacy bra flung over my bedside lamp. Which I didn’t register as strange for all of five seconds before I heard a soft moan. I froze, my eyebrows shooting up as I turned slowly to look for the source of the moan.

  There was a girl in my bed. A blond girl. A blond naked girl. A blond naked girl with red horns—Oh FUCK!

  NUALLA

  I sat on the edge of Ms. Navarro’s class, the seat closest to the door, just in case Roy needed me. It was ironic that I spent so little time in class nowadays not because I was ditching, but because Roy had to keep pulling me out for meetings or other problems that needed chancellarius approval. I had known that my dad was basically the center of our government, but I hadn’t thought it was so literal. Just thinking about it all was a little exhausting, and I wasn’t getting a whole hell of a lot of sleep in the first place.

  Ms. Navarro was a good half hour into a lecture on the sections of The Kalo Book of Law that could not be altered by any chancellarius without approval by the Avaya Chancellarius, when Travis burst through the door. He looked down at me, panic filling his eyes, and opened his mouth to say something. Then he seemed to notice the rest of the room was full of students.

  “Uh…can I borrow Arius Nualla for awhile?” he asked Ms. Navarro in an anxious voice.

  “We are in the middle of class, Director Centrina Viliyata,” Ms. Navarro stated sternly, a hand on her hip.

  “It’s really important,” Travis all but pleaded.

  “Is it official Embassy business?” Ms. Navarro asked skeptically, folding her arms.

  “You could say that?” he replied quickly as he grabbed my hand and all but dragged me out from behind the desk. Not giving her an opportunity to object again.

  Travis walked quickly down the hall with me barely able to keep up as he towed me along. Which was saying a lot considering I had damn near impeccable balance.

  “Travis, where are we going? Your lab’s that way,” I pointed out as I gestured toward the opposite direction from where we were currently heading.

  He didn’t look at me, didn’t stop, didn’t even slow down. “We aren’t going to my lab. Akiko’s in my lab. We’re going to the roof.”

  “The roof?!” I asked in startled disbelief. We used to go to the roof a lot before Emmy and Travis graduated high school, but since then we hadn’t really been up there much, if at all.

  A sick twisting feeling settled in my stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

  When we burst through the door and onto the roof, Travis finally let my hand go. He walked on a few more steps and ran both his hands back through his hair. Halting them just at the base of his skull, his back to me.

  “Travis, what’s wrong?” I asked in a deadly still voice as I took a step closer.

  He finally looked at me, his hands dropping to his sides. “Wrong? Who said anything was wrong?”

  I folded my arms under my chest and glared at him dubiously, because he wasn’t fooling anyone. “You’re wearing two different shoes, your shirt is on backwards and you just pulled me out of the middle of class for ‘official Embassy business.’”

  His mouth fell open and then closed quickly as he swallowed hard.

  “Travis,” I said as I tapped my foot impatiently.

  He held up a finger and opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then he turned and started pacing back and forth.

  “Travis, will you please just tell me what the hell is going on?”

  He covered his face with his hands as he continued pacing. “I fucked up, and I mean really fucked up and—”

  “Travis, just spit it out already!” I snapped in exasperation because his anxiousness was really starting to scare me.

  He stopped abruptly. “I slept with Parker and she’s a Kakodaemon,” he said in such a hurried rush I almost didn’t understand him. As it was, I just stood there blinking at him for a few moments.

  “Excuse me?!”

  “I slept with Parker, and she’s a Kakodaemon,” he repeated in a voice that almost made it seem like it was a question.

  “You slept with a Kakodaemon?!” I asked in horror, my eyes going huge.

  “Well I didn’t know she was one when I was—”

  “How could you not know?! Were you fucking blindfolded or something? Because last time I checked, sleeping with someone generally involves them being naked!” I shouted at him.

  “I swear to the gods Parker had blue horns last night, but this morning they were red.”

  My mind raced in a thousand different directions that made my head hurt.

  “Oh, gods, Travis, this is bad,” I said as I ran both my hands over my face. This was a fucking disaster. Maybe I had fallen asleep in Ms. Navarro’s class and this was all just some terrible dream.

  “You think I don’t fucking know that?!” Travis snapped a little hysterically. And that, more than anything, told me I wasn’t dreaming. Because in my dreams—even my nightmares—Travis was never an irrational mess.

  “What did she say?” I asked, looking over at him.

  Travis’ brow furrowed, but the manic gleam in his eyes didn’t lessen. “What do you mean? Today? Today she didn’t say anything.”

  “Okay, well, then what did y
ou say?”

  “I…kinda just ran out without saying anything,” Travis admitted, looking at his shoes.

  “You left her there?! Travis, are you insane?!”

  You Are So on Your Own

  Friday, November 16th

  TRAVIS

  “Parker?” I called out uncertainly as I pushed the door to my apartment open.

  There was no answer.

  I shrugged at Nualla and we both stepped cautiously into the apartment. Something crunched under Nualla’s boot and she looked down. The shattered remains of the tequila bottle covered the dark wooden floor along with my now-cracked iPhone, a book on mixing sci-fi inspired cocktails, and a few DVDs. Her eyebrows shot up, and then her eyes darted around, surveying the rest of the wreckage.

  “From the looks of this place, I’d say Parker was pissed with you when she woke up and realized you’d bailed,” Nualla stated as she lifted her boot back up off the sticky floor.

  ”No…I’m pretty sure this is all from last night,” I admitted, avoiding her eyes as the blush crept across my cheeks.

  “Kinky,” Nualla snorted, unable to conceal her smirk.

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Shut up.”

  “I can’t believe you just left her here,” Nualla said as she leaned down and picked up a picture of me, her, and Emmy at the Coffee Press. The corner of the frame was smashed, but the glass was miraculously still intact.

  “I panicked, okay? Geez,” I said sourly as I picked the collection of DVDs off the floor and shoved them back onto the bookcase. “What would you do if you woke up and found you were in bed with—”

  “Is that the shower running?” Nualla asked abruptly.

  I looked up in the direction of my bedroom and sure enough, a sound like distant rain was coming from down the hall.

  “Uh…”

  “You are so on your own with this one,” Nualla stated as she shoved the picture frame at me and turned on her heel. I clutched it with numb fingers as she stalked past me back toward the front door of the apartment.