Heart of Annihilation

by C. R. Asay

  “What’s that?”

  “After we have gotten your friend and Rannen back, I want you to stay the hell away from me. I don’t ever want to see your face again. I don’t want to answer your questions. I don’t even want to remember we ever knew each other.”

  I nodded quickly.

  “Anything you want.”

  “And I’m warning you—keep that temper in check. You try to assault me again and my bodyguard has orders to shoot to kill. Do you understand?”

  I understood better than someone like Xavier Coy could ever comprehend. I understood the feeling of being at the point of a loaded weapon, not to mention the deep and maiming desire to avoid any more pain remotely associated with being shot. I also understood that I couldn’t promise self-control when it wasn’t myself that needed the control.

  A cold chuckle echoed inside my head. I drew a sharp breath and gave a dishonest nod.

  CHAPTER 31

  The elevator door slid open with a cheerful chime, and I stepped into the entryway of Xavier’s elegant penthouse. The beautiful high-rise building looked out over a private beach, although twenty-five floors up made the beach part hard to see. Three half-circle steps descended into a masculine sitting room and an accompanying stainless steel kitchen. Four dark marble pillars separated the rooms, rising twenty feet to the second story balcony and what must be the bedrooms. The sun shone through the vast wall-sized windows, cutting patterns of light across the polished, mahogany floors, zebra skins, and black leather couches. As I watched the light turned a brilliant orange, then faded as the sun sank out of sight over the bay.

  I felt dirty and out of place. Xavier and Angie, on the other hand, matched the room perfectly. They tossed their jackets on the couch and moved about like lead actors in a soap opera.

  Boderick appeared about as uncomfortable as I felt. He shifted from foot to foot, his eyes darting around the room. The bodyguard stationed himself near the elevator so he could watch the entire room.

  I stood on the top step, running a finger across my lips and trying to sort through what needed to be done. Get the Heart replica. That shouldn’t be too hard. Xavier said it was here in the penthouse. Second: contact the commander—that would be more difficult. I fingered the flip phone in my pocket. She said she would be in touch. I guess that meant waiting for her to call—I hated waiting. And third: attempt not to kill anyone in the meantime.

  That one was going to be a challenge. Every thought in my head invited Caz to surface, to flout her influence and drive me to madness.

  “Ang, why don’t you take Boderick upstairs and show him a place to clean up?” Xavier said from somewhere deep in the kitchen. “Oh, and while you’re up there, get something for Miss Rose to change into so she doesn’t bleed all over the furniture.”

  I glowered at Xavier’s back, wanting to smear blood on his disgustingly chic zebra rugs and scratch my nails across his horribly flawless couches. Angie smiled at Boderick. He cast me a frightened glance as she took his hand, whispered something in his ear while leading him up the stairs.

  They disappeared into a room. Xavier beckoned to me. “Come have a seat, Miss Rose.”

  He indicated some high barstools next to a marble-covered island. Without waiting to see if I would comply he turned his back and pulled a large first aid kit from a cupboard above the microwave. I narrowed my eyes. So he hated me so much he wanted to tend to my shoulder? I didn’t understand Rethans.

  What’s to understand? It wouldn’t be proper etiquette to let you suffer. And if there’s one thing Rethans are good at it’s—

  “Leave me alone,” I said under my breath.

  Xavier paused, eyeing me, and then spoke.

  “Angie called Dr. Tolman, but he can’t be here until later tonight. Let’s patch you up the best we can, shall we?” Xavier pulled out a swath of gauze and soaked it in peroxide. “Why don’t you take off that shirt so we can see the damage?”

  I folded my arms. I think I would rather be shot again than strip down to my bra in front of Xavier Coy, even if he was my brother. He stared at me in expectation for a moment before releasing a gruff, aggravated sound. He turned and pulled a pair of kitchen shears from the knife block. With a tired sigh, I limped into the kitchen and took a seat on the padded, black barstool.

  Xavier worked the scissors next to my skin, cutting off my butchered shirtsleeve. The cold metal of the scissors raised the hair on my arms. He dabbed at the crusted blood with peroxide and slowly worked off the fabric where the blood had glued it to my skin. Fortunately the shirt wasn’t burned onto my flesh but rather the bandages, and with a bit of care he was finally able to remove it. He tossed the whole mess into the trash behind him.

  I felt the pain worsen as I saw the blood oozing in a gooey, unhealthy way from the injury. The majority of the stitches split open along the four-inch horizontal gash below my clavicle. The skin around it and across my chest was red and terribly tender. Probably burned.

  Xavier Coy, movie star, dabbed and cleaned the wound with brusque, efficient hands. I blinked back tears and bit my lip to stop the trembling.

  “Were you a doctor on Retha?” I asked to break the silence.

  “No,” His response was curt, but then he continued more gently. “I started off my career on Earth playing a doctor on a soap opera. I had to spend a lot of time observing real doctors in order to make my acting more authentic. I picked up a thing or two.”

  He tore off a piece of surgical tape. I flinched as he stretched it across the wound to hold it closed.

  “Oh. Well, thanks,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.” He almost sounded genuine.

  “So, you and Angie, huh?”

  He lifted his chin. The overhead light caught his eyes in a flash of silver. Then he chuckled in spite of himself.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry. I don’t think your minions have a clue.”

  “Did you really call my people minions?” The underlying tension crept back into his voice.

  “Maybe.” I released a laugh and covered my mouth to stop it.

  He relaxed again and reached for a bandage.

  “Sure, they give me whatever I want.” He placed a thick pad on top of the wound and busied himself winding a roll of gauze over my shoulder and under my armpit again and again. “That’s the benefit of being rich and mysterious.”

  “Do they know you’re a Rethan—besides Angie I mean?” I asked.

  “Of course not. They, like most people in the Third Dimension, have no clue about the realities of our planet. I don’t think they could handle it anyway.” Xavier tied off the bandage, turned to the sink, and started scrubbing the blood from his fingers.

  “So was I . . . am I . . . really your sister? This terrible Rethan person?” The words were out before I could stop them.

  Xavier turned. Soap dripped from his hands. Somehow I knew whatever he said I would believe, and then any residual denial would go right out the window.

  “Yes.” The word was not as cold as I would have expected.

  I rested my cheek on the cool countertop, so filled with discouragement I didn’t think I’d be able to lift my head again. I felt like some hodge-podge person. A Frankenstein. A single body with a fragile, stitched together mind. And the stitches were unraveling.

  “You know, Miss Rose, there’s something about you . . . as in you,” Xavier pointed at me, “that is very different than I expected. I see Caz in you for sure, but I see someone else as well. Then again . . .”

  His cheeks sucked in, and he looked somewhere behind me. My breath made foggy circles on the counter.

  “I remember my dad telling me once that the course of our lives is never set in stone,” I said. “We always have the ability to change it.”

  Xavier’s face took on an odd look. “Your dad? He never would have said something like—I mean, you hated your father.”

  “You mean our father?”

  His eyebrows we
nt up in surprise and then lowered in resignation. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean my dad here—on Earth. He said that.”

  “Oh.” He looked into my eyes. “Perhaps. But I think there are some things that can’t be atoned for.”

  “Like murder?”

  “Like murder,” Xavier agreed.

  “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

  “No.” Coolness crept back into his voice. Whatever brief truce we’d had vanished.

  “I’m sorry anyway,” I said.

  Xavier turned back to the sink. A loud cracking sound rattled the windows. Xavier jerked his head around. I rotated on the stool.

  A shimmer of blue erupted around the edges of a door near the elevator. My heart leapt into my throat, choking off the word of warning I wanted to scream at the bodyguard. The door smashed inward. One hinge tore into the man’s chest. He landed with a heavy flump on his back. The other hinges ripped from the doorframe. The door swung from a single screw, revealing a mass of black figures shrouded in a fogbank of smoke.

  I toppled off the stool. The counter struck my hip and grated across my ribs before I hit the floor on my back.

  A black boot stepped onto the glossy floor. A second followed. Electricity retreated into the commander’s fingertips. Her silver eyes glowed. A self-satisfied smile lifted her lips.

  I scrambled to take cover behind the island and found myself next to Xavier. His shaking hand could barely hold the .357.

  “I told you I’d be in touch, Specialist Rose!” The commander’s voice bounced off the high ceilings, marble pillars, and floors before settling with deep fear in my chest.

  “Are you kidding me?” I shouted. I don’t know why I was yelling at her. She’d saved me an agonizing wait near the phone. “This is not in touch! When you say ‘in touch’ it usually means a phone call!”

  Xavier gripped my arm. His face was ashen, his lips tight against his teeth, his eyes popping.

  “This is much more efficient. No depending on all this primeval Earth technology, not to mention the opportunity it gives me to provide you with a demonstration.” Her voice crackled in a very Rethan-like way. The tang of ozone filled the room.

  Boots thumped in the entry—a lot of boots. I couldn’t see them from where Xavier and I cowered, but there was no doubt we were heavily outnumbered and outrageously outgunned.

  “Xavier,” I whispered, “Don’t you have an alarm system or something? It sure would be nice if the cops came to our rescue again.”

  “Of course I do, but it didn’t go off. She must’ve fried it before blasting the door off its hinges.”

  “What about another gun?”

  “Why do you need a gun? Can’t you, I don’t know, volt them?”

  “You’ve been here for a while, can’t you volt too?” I said, wanting to punch him in the face.

  I heard the crashing of ceramic and wood splintering. With a crunch, one of Xavier’s couches knocked over a spindly side table and shattered the lamp perched on top. The couch flipped up once and came to rest against the window. Xavier and I huddled closer together. He made a noise in his throat.

  “Of course I can, I just prefer not to.”

  “Now might be an excellent time to shove your preferences up your—”

  “I want you to come out here, Specialist Rose,” the commander shouted, “and you, Xander. I know you’re in here somewhere. Come out. Come and see what I have to show the both of you.”

  Whispering and snickering accompanied her remark. I couldn’t help myself. I needed to see what I already suspected. My glance around the corner of the counter was brief, the image everlasting.

  All the furniture in the room was toppled, and anything that could be thrown or broken was. I made a rough estimate of thirteen people, all carrying either a rifle or a pistol, all wearing camouflage. The commander herself still wore her black SWAT-like uniform and a white bandage around her left hand. She ran two fingers across the scar on her face.

  I recognized Sergeant Sanderford, wearing a knee brace over his uniform; and Lieutenant Justet looking rumpled, splotchy, and sour. Luginbeel slunk next to the window wall. A white bandage covered his nose. There was a large bruise on one side of his face, and his arm was in a sling. He could barely grip his rifle. His expression seemed dead, fear having left him a battered empty shell in the midst of an incomprehensible war.

  More men poured from the concrete stairwell, jostling a fighting figure into the room. Thurmond’s shirt was torn along the seam of one sleeve, and a ragged hole jagged across the knee of his jeans. Tendons stood out on his arms, which were tied behind his back. From the smears of dirt and dried blood on his skin and clothing, it appeared he’d given them quite a fight. They wrestled him to the center of the room.

  “As you can see, Specialist Rose, I have your friend as a hostage,” the commander said. “I am also aware that this is the home of a person by the name of Xavier Coy, otherwise known as Xander Fisk. Xander, why don’t you come out and see what we brought you!”

  I shot a look at Xavier. His eyes were closed and white knuckles clenched against his mouth. For a moment I wanted to join him, curl into a ball and forget who and what and where I came from. Let the debilitating fear send my mind far away from here.

  “Xavier,” I whispered, shocking myself into action. I bumped him with my elbow. He didn’t move. His shoulders shook so badly I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t rattling the entire island. “Xavier! Give me your gun!”

  He drew it closer to himself and his fingers tightened on the grip.

  I could have wrestled him for it, but the outcome seemed sketchy at best. What else did I have? I closed my eyes. I had my Rethan-born internal weaponry. I only hoped the commander had used the majority of her energy frying the door. It wasn’t like they were going to shoot me dead on the spot, anyway—they thought I knew where the Heart was.

  Right. The Heart. My eyes flew open.

  “Xavier. At least tell me where that Heart replica thingy is.”

  Xavier shook his head. His hand still covered his mouth. I was afraid he was going to hurl.

  “Jerk,” I said, pounding my head twice against the cupboards. I exhaled three tight breaths and pushed to my feet.

  Every eye and weapon adjusted to me. Other movement ceased. I skimmed the room, taking in the dark scowls, the weapons, and Thurmond’s face before finding the brightest spot. Sergeant Sanderford and three other soldiers stood near the stairwell, with Marshal Rannen towering over them like a tank next to an array of army trucks. Every visible inch of his translucent skin had taken on a bruised, purple hue. A thick gash started at his collarbone and disappeared under his filthy, bloodstained uniform. His eyelids slouched over unfocused eyes, his lips slack. His hands were behind his head, feet wide apart. I couldn’t help wishing he’d take one of those ham-sized arms and start knocking the heads off his captors. He flinched a look at me.

  Something in my mind recoiled as the-voice-that-was-Caz beat a hasty retreat without so much as a whisper, taking with her the empowering rage I just then realized I was depending on. I felt as weak and vulnerable as any one person would be in a room full of gun-toting hostiles.

  With an effort I pulled my gaze from Rannen. I showed everyone my empty hands.

  “Specialist Rose.” The commander smiled, tapping a pistol against her leg.

  “Where’s Sergeant Wichman?” I asked.

  The question of his absence was more out of curiosity than anything. I wasn’t entirely sure where his loyalties lay, but at the moment all I cared about was that he wasn’t here to help any more than the last four times.

  “Bottom of the bay by now,” the commander said with a conversational smirk. She rested her shoulder against a pillar and folded her arms. “Did you know he works for the DLA? I couldn’t have one of those on my crew no matter how useful he was.”

  “So what now? You’re going to kill me?” I kept my tone aggressive in an attempt to keep them
at a respectful distance. I nodded in Luginbeel’s direction. He backed up, his eyes wild at being singled out by the likes of me. “If not, you might want to take the rifle away from the private over there. ’Cause I swear if he shoots me again, you’ll never find the Heart.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, Specialist Rose?” the commander said. “You’re not the DCC Slayer anymore, and this impotent little thing you’ve become is nothing.” She placed her hand in her pocket. “Now. You were probably asking yourself why I bothered to take your friend here as a hostage when I already had Rannen. Well, I figured a demonstration would be in order. To show you just how serious I am.”

  The commander snapped her fingers, and the two soldier’s flanking Thurmond forced him to his knees. One placed a pistol to his spine.

  My heart took a longer pause between beats and a chill swept my body. A cackle started in my throat before erupting into a brief explosion of laughter.

  Everyone jumped, including me. I fell silent again. The rest of the men followed suit.

  “You’re not going to shoot him,” I said.

  “And why is that?”

  “’Cause if you do I’ll force you to kill me, leaving you nowhere nearer to finding the Heart than you were twenty years ago.” I rubbed the sudden ache above my ear, only slightly surprised to realize that I was completely serious. My eyes watered. “And I’ll take out a hell of a lot of your troops in the process. Starting with you, ma’am.”

  Our eyes locked, the commander’s wide and mine narrowed and tearing. A general shifting of feet preceded the lowering of weapons.

  “That’s better.” The commander’s face relaxed into a smile. “I knew you were in there somewhere, Caz. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Wish I could say the same.” Caz broke the surface. The words were painfully rough against my vocal cords. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth.

  The commander snorted a laugh and pulled her hand out of her pocket. The chain for my dog tags was shorter than ever, with only enough chain to wrap around two fingers. The tags themselves had been discarded, and the tiny key dangled brightly on the dull chain. The small half circle, once such an essential part of me, looked like a foreign object with the addition of the other half of the key. As always, the sudden and intoxicating rage welled in my chest, accompanied by a desperate longing to slash throats and remove heads in order to retrieve it.