by V. St. Clair
I’m two streets over from Hera’s house.
He had no idea why the doorway had brought him here, of all places, or why it hadn’t just let him out at Hera’s house directly if he was thinking of going there. All in all, he decided to be grateful he hadn’t popped out in the Silver River or in the terrifying dungeon once again.
Max tucked his emblem back into his shirt and began walking towards Hera’s without any real idea of why he was headed there. Knowing her, she may not even be home yet, as meetings kept her out late on most evenings and she wasn’t really the type to sit at home reading even when she had free time.
Still, he was rattled by the recent encounter and he didn’t feel safe, not even in her neighborhood, so he continued quickly down the street. If he could just get into her house, whether she was there or not, he would be able to turn on all the lights and lock the doors and take a few minutes to recover his wits. Surely the murderer couldn’t track him here once he disappeared through the door; even a Major needed some clue of where he went to follow him.
He took a right at the next intersection, walking the path by rote. He would call Ana when he got inside the house, whether Hera was home or not. She would yell at him for being stupid enough to wander around downtown looking for murderers—and horrified at him maybe actually finding one—but she would gather up a few friends and they would come and meet him here so they could all go back to the Academy together. Max would cheerfully endure whatever she wanted to curse at him as long as they could all get back safely.
He turned up the path to Hera’s front door, noting immediately that the lights were out. Either she was out of the house or already asleep.
Max scanned his biochip and pushed open the door, relieved to find his credentials still valid. He had no idea whether she would remove his automatic access once he stopped living with her or not, but was glad for the show of loyalty.
The door got caught on something partway through opening, and Max frowned and pushed harder, opening a slice wide enough for him to slip into the house, allowing the door to close behind him.
He flipped on the lights and cried out in horror.
The house had been nearly destroyed. Furniture was ripped to shreds, floorboards were pried up in various spots around the living room, and there was blood everywhere. The thing blocking the doorway turned out to be the living room table—what was left of it, at least.
“Hera?” Max whispered, afraid to call out too loudly in case whoever did this to the house was still here, though if they were, he had just announced his presence by turning on the living room lights like an idiot.
No one had come running out at him yet, so Max swallowed bile and clasped his emblem for the semblance of protection, picking his way slowly through the living room and trying to avoid all the blood.
Focus. Hera would tell you to stop panicking and use your senses to gather as much information as possible. What does the room tell me?
It was comforting to think in Hera’s clipped, measured voice. She almost never gave in to her emotions, and had spent weeks teaching him to be cool in the face of danger, using logic and cunning rather than panicking and getting himself killed. Swallowing the urge to vomit, Max looked slowly around the room.
The couch cushions were all cut, and the stuffing is everywhere. Floorboards are pulled up. Drawers are open and overturned. Someone was looking for something.
But did they find it? It was a question Max had no way of answering just yet, so he pushed it to the side for now.
There’s blood all around the room. Some kind of fight, obviously. Is there enough blood for more than one person?
He didn’t see a body, though there was a trail of blood leading into the kitchen he hadn’t followed yet. He was almost positive he didn’t want to see what it led to.
The blood may not be Hera’s. She’s tough as hell, and she might have been having a meeting here tonight when they were attacked. Maybe it’s the assailant who bled everywhere, and Hera and her people have gone to ground.
He took a deep breath to steady himself and rounded the corner into the kitchen, stopping dead in his tracks.
Hera was lying in a crumpled heap on the white tile, making the blood all around her stand out starkly by contrast. Max’s legs shook as he walked unsteadily towards her, determined to check for signs of life even though he knew it was far too late for it.
She looked diminished in death, older and frailer than she ever had in life. Max’s brain seemed to completely shut down as he knelt down beside her and stared at her lifeless eyes. He hadn’t taken any precautions to protect himself from whoever might still be in the house; he wasn’t even listening for intruders or searching for information.
I don’t even know her real name.
After a long moment that may have lasted an hour, he dragged his eyes away from hers and noticed that one of her arms was extended oddly, as though reaching for something. Frowning, he traced the path with his eyes and saw what he had missed before.
Letters were scrawled hastily in blood across the tile; her blood-stained index finger had stopped moving in the middle of writing an ‘H’ and had smeared it when she finally died.
Even in her last moments of life, she was planning.
But whatever the message had been, it was incomplete. As Maxton looked down at it from above, all he could make out was: Warn Toph
She was obviously trying to spell out ‘Topher,’ but what was the warning supposed to be? That Hera was dead? That one of his peers had killed her? Something else entirely?
Max blinked away some of his mental fog as a thrill of terror went through him. If someone connected to the Augenspire had found out who Hera was, and if they had come here to kill her and search for information on her organization, and if they had done any amount of research on her bio afterwards…
“They know she’s his mother!” Maxton jumped to his feet, nearly slipping in the blood and scrambling to call Ana. Someone had to tell Topher his cover was blown before he walked into a trap.
25
Topher Augen
~
It isn’t your power—
I loaned it to you.
It never belonged to any of you.
You were supposed to help.
~
Topher paced the room, unable to sleep.
He knew he needed rest; his body was exhausted and he could barely focus in meetings, but every time he tried to lie down, sleep eluded him. Lying there only incensed him, which inevitably drove him back to his feet and set him pacing again.
Who is the voice in my head? Why did it choose me to talk to? What’s so important about its memories of the past that it’s trying to tell me?
It felt like he was trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle, but he only had half of the pieces and no picture of what the finished product was supposed to look like. If he could only figure out how they fit together, maybe he would have enough of the picture to fill in the blanks.
Preferably before we’re all murdered and Jessamine’s overthrown.
He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall, exhaling deeply and focusing on the feel of his pulse pounding in his chest and neck, like an echo from a drum. He slid further down the wall, fatigue finally settling over him like a heavy blanket, pulling him seductively towards sleep.
You should have said goodbye, a quiet voice mumbled in his head, and even half-asleep he hated the intrusion into his thoughts by the foreign voice.
You should not have trusted her…
Another echo in his head.
“What’re you talking about?” he mumbled sleepily, desperately trying to pull himself back into consciousness. Who was he supposed to say goodbye to? Jessamine? Was she in danger? But that didn’t make sense, because he definitely knew he could trust Jessamine—if she was untrustworthy then he might as well throw himself off of the Augenspire now, because she was Elaria’s only hope for the future.
She loved you until the end.
Topher felt a pang of sorrow so profound it wrenched him from sleep at last. He blinked and realized he was still sitting on the floor, slumped against the wall with his back aching. His communicator was buzzing, and at first he thought this was what woke him. The message from the voice in his head was already slipping away; he could barely remember what it said, but it seemed important.
“Talk to me, damn it,” he groaned, forcing himself to stand up and reaching for his communicator right as it stopped buzzing. A glance showed he had missed several calls from Ana, and she had left at least one voicemail.
Wondering what in the world could be happening that warranted Ana calling him in the dead of night, he was about to check the message when he heard a knock on his door.
“Does no one sleep anymore?” he grumbled, dropping the communicator and stumbling towards the door in a drowsy fog, throwing it open without even checking to see who was on the other end.
He was far too slow to prevent the needle from being plunged into his neck, and far too tired to fight the heaviness suddenly washing over him, burning his veins and making his arms and legs feel like hundred-pound weights. He felt himself sway towards the wall, and then his eyelids were too heavy to hold open and he fell into the blackness at last.
His dreams were a confusing tangle of voices and flashes of images. He was standing on the spaceship with the scientist and his captain, watching them argue over the value of elarium.
He was nine, and his mother had just been handed her husband’s folded uniform after being told he was killed. She hadn’t cried. She pursed her lips as though biting back the urge, and Topher saw the straightening of her body, the tension projecting both incredible strength and terrible vulnerability.
He was running to the Tetra to find Lorna, frantically trying to get to her before she could return to the Augenspire without him, needing to know if she was an enemy.
Topher was six years old, sitting on his father’s shoulders so he could see over the crowd as they watched the military parade go by. The Provo-Major looked like deities in their heavy armor, walking apart from the others, their cold, calculating expressions in stark contrast to the cheers and smiles of the others.
“Did they really put down the entire rebellion at Veraxia with just four of them?” Topher had called down to his father from above, tugging a little on his hair to get the man’s attention.
Topher’s father had laughed. His smiles always came easily, in contrast to his wife, who rarely showed emotion at all.
“The ground troops did most of the work up front, but the Majors came in and clinched the victory, yes.” He was silent a moment before asking, “Do you want to be a Major someday?”
“Me?” Topher was stunned by the question. “I thought you had to be really rich and important to even try out. You and Mom are nobodies.”
Topher’s father barked out a laugh, startling the people nearest them.
“God, you’re like your mother. Candid to a fault.”
Topher felt his cheeks burn as he realized he said something offensive.
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“I know what you meant, and you’re right. I’ll be lucky to make Captain before I’m fifty at the rate I’m going, but I promise I’ll keep trying to make you proud.”
Topher considered this for a moment.
“I don’t care how many stripes you have on your uniform.” He said truthfully, watching the Majors walk past until they were out of sight and feeling a detached sort of disdain for them. “You and the ground troops do all of the real work and the Majors come in at the end with their special suits and get all the glory. Who would ever dream of being like them?” He sounded resolute when he said, “I’m going to be a foot soldier like you when I grow up. Then you can be proud of me, too.”
His father had an odd hitch in his voice when he said, “I have always been proud of you, Topher.”
Topher’s head was pounding as he gradually became aware again, his mind trying to wrest itself back into consciousness. There was silence all around him, and he was lying on something hard, cold, and horribly uncomfortable. The echo of his last dream still clung to him, and for a few moments more he could still feel the texture of his father’s hair as he sat on his shoulders, proudly announcing his desire to follow in his footsteps.
They come.
A throb of pain accompanied the voice in his head, and Topher shook off the last vestiges of the dream, almost wishing he could stay submerged in it. He groaned and opened his eyes, not recognizing the stone floor he was sprawled awkwardly on, or the room he was in. He couldn’t remember anything about where he last was, or what he was doing.
Where the hell am I?
He blinked and forced himself to sit up, which was much more difficult than it should be, as parts of his body still felt oddly heavy and his neck ached. Dimly, the part of his brain still functioning properly floated the word ‘ethryn’ past him.
Ethryn? Topher frowned. Ethryn was a powerful anesthetic, usually administered as a gas. It could also be injected into the bloodstream, though it had a higher likelihood of fatality when done this way.
He finally noticed the metal cuffs around his wrists, attached to chains anchored to the stone wall behind him. The chains were long enough for him to rest his arms by his sides, and he had about a two-foot radius of motion, but couldn’t reach anything else in the room.
Growing seriously alarmed, adrenaline burned through the remnants of the ethryn more rapidly, and Topher took in his surroundings fully. The room he was in was completely made of stone, with no windows and only one door—a door without a biochip scanner, which was shocking. The room was bare, with the exception of a wooden table at the far end, on which rested a belt of weapons and a ring of Talents.
Panicking, Topher checked his own waist and realized the weapons on the table belonged to him. He rapidly checked his person for any weaponry, anything that might help him escape or give him an advantage in a fight, but there was nothing but the clothes he was wearing.
“What in the hell?” He got to his feet, pulling experimentally on the chains, but they were fastened securely to the wall. Even worse, they were set far enough apart that he couldn’t really get both hands up to either one of them, which prevented any attempts at pulling on them. Vaguely, he recalled Ana describing a room very much like this, except there was someone screaming in her version and Topher heard only silence. He wished he had shown more interest in where the room was located at the time; he should have insisted that Maxton take him and Reya here to do some investigating.
He racked his memory, trying desperately to fill in the gaps. He vaguely remembered being in his room—was it last night? He had been dead tired, and someone called his communicator, though right now he couldn’t remember who it was. Then there was a knock on the door, and then—nothing.
I’m an idiot. I should never have answered the door unarmed. I should never have let my guard down. I should never have allowed myself to become so tired.
There was no point in berating himself in hindsight, but it was all he was able to do right now. It looked like whoever had him—and wherever they were holding him—he was stuck until they chose to come down here and talk to him. For whatever reason, they had kept him alive instead of killing him outright, which was surprising in itself, though perhaps they were hoping to get information from him about Jessamine before finishing him.
They might as well kill me now. He would go cheerfully to a hideous death before betraying Jessamine.
Please don’t let them have her. Please let me be the only one stupid enough to be blindsided.
Before he could go too much further along this dark thought he heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. A manual key was inserted into the lock on the other end—where on Elaria were old-fashioned keys still used?—and the door swung open.
Kristoff walked into the room with such a smug expression on his face it ought to be punishable by law.
&n
bsp; “Hey, Toph. Good to see you awake at last.”
“You absolute jackass,” Topher greeted him in disgust, wishing he’d taken any of the last dozen opportunities he’d had to kill the man.
“I see being outsmarted hasn’t improved your temperament.” Kristoff smirked, arms crossed in front of him. As he was wearing his light armor, the gesture made him look broader and more powerful. Topher felt particularly vulnerable in his civilian clothing.
“What’s your endgame?” He cut to the chase, in no mood to banter with Kristoff. “You and Parl and Fox are trying to kill Jessamine, presumably to put Shellina in power because for whatever reason she doesn’t see how worthless you are. Then what?”
Topher cursed himself mentally for ever believing that Kristoff had changed, that he had been shaken by the betrayal of his friends and was trying to be better. The man had always been a snake, and he always would be.
Kristoff picked up Topher’s ring of Talents from the table and twirled it idly around one finger, obviously delighting in having Topher in such a position of weakness.
“Like you said, Shellina is more—”
“Malleable?” Topher supplied.
“—sensible, than her sister.” Kristoff grinned. “With her in power, we can put an end to this integration bullshit, and put the Gifted back in their fishbowl where they belong.”
“So it’s really just about oppressing the Gifted?” Topher scoffed. “You’re even less imaginative than I thought. I was really hoping for something of substance behind your bid for power, but no, you traitors really just get off on having someone else to beat up.”
Kristoff gave him a nasty smirk.
“There are other perks to having Shellina in power—though I’m not going to sit here and spill all of my plans to you.” He winked. “Anyway, I just came down here to make sure you’re alive, not that I care particularly if you die.”
Topher scowled.
“Not going to torture me for information on Jessamine?” If he could just get Kristoff within arm’s reach, maybe…