“It won’t matter now. Those three will have everyone in a ten-mile radius knowing you’re in the area.”
“What should we do? I should probably carry my knives. I had thought in a city I wouldn’t need them.” Selah felt her pants pocket where she usually kept her kapos. That presented another problem. She’d brandished a knife a time or two, but never to kill someone with it. She would rather have the ability to knock them out and run away if it became that serious, instead of ending their life.
“That’s why Glade hired me as your navigator. I’ll travel with you to TicCity as added protection. Glade’s authority is more than sufficient to keep the blood hunters at bay once we’re in the city.”
“I’ve never heard the term blood hunter before. What does it mean?”
“It means they’re out for your blood. The new life you’re going to have now is knowing that every stranger who looks at you could be calculating how to steal you for a radical faction that wants to control your person.”
The shock became a little more real. At least with the Mountain, the enemy had uniforms and could be readily identified. This . . . this included every citizen in every colony around her.
Light-headed, Selah started to sway. She grabbed the table edge.
“Easy there.” Jaenen steadied her grip on the cool stone surface.
Selah grimaced. “Thanks. I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Jaenen smiled softly.
“No thank you. I’ve got Bodhi,” Selah said.
“No offense, but Bodhi is going to gradually lose most of his abilities. He’s not a candidate for the level of protection you need.”
“Glade made the same reference to that, and Bodhi seemed to understand but I don’t. What do you mean, ‘lose his abilities’?”
Jaenen pursed his lips. “I guess there’s no reason for you not to know. When a novarium gets transitioned, it’s as though something passes from the initiator to the subject to start the subject’s new cycle. But after it happens, the initiator shuts down like an AirWagon out of a charge.”
“What happens when they shut down?”
“I’ve never actually seen one go through the whole process. Some people theorize they eventually lose their mark and become regular people. Some say they die.”
Selah tensed. Her head felt buoyant, and stars winked in and out of her vision. “Transitioning me is going to kill Bodhi?” Her voice echoed as though trapped in a tunnel, resounding over and over. Kill Bodhi . . . Kill Bodhi. She faded to black.
3
Selah, can you hear me?”
Selah heard her name from far away, and as the sentence repeated, the words crashed to earth, loud in her head.
“Selah, are you all right?”
She recognized the voice before she opened her eyes. Bodhi. Her eyes flew open, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. He struggled to free himself under her father’s irritated glare.
“Bodhi, I thought I’d lost you,” Selah cried, nuzzling her head in his shoulder.
“It’s all right. You’re safe. Why would you think something happened to me?” Bodhi patted her on the back despite Glade’s icy stare.
Selah glanced at Jaenen. He gave an imperceptible shake of his head. Selah dropped her hands from Bodhi’s neck and tried to escape his grasp. “I feel ridiculous down here on the ground. It must be the heat getting to me.” She squinted, daring Jaenen to move. He wasn’t going to brush off his last comments without a lot of explanation.
“You fainted. You need to take it easy for a little while. Maybe it’s some kind of novarium change,” Bodhi said, a worried expression spread across his face.
Feeling remarkably stronger in many ways, Selah sat up and pushed Bodhi’s arm aside, still focused on Jaenen. He’d tell, or there’d be a major disagreement.
Bodhi’s face registered bewilderment at first, then anger. She shouldn’t have been so abrupt in pushing him away. It hurt her heart to see his emotions that bare. But he couldn’t know she was asking another man’s opinion of his condition. “I have to finish a conversation. We were talking about novarium.” She thought fast. “He’s going to tell me who I can talk to about female novarium . . . things.” Selah gulped. Was he going to be fooled by this story?
Now Glade looked at Jaenen with the same bewildered expression. Selah grabbed Jaenen by the arm and pulled him around the two men. “We’ll be back. Stay in the same spot and try not to hurt one another.” Selah dragged Jaenen toward the other end of the plaza.
Jaenen grinned and allowed himself to be led. “You have an upset boyfriend, but I understand your reluctance to disclose what I said about his condition. That’s good judgment. I know I would feel . . . less than a man if my woman knew my flaws.”
His bronzed complexion brightened with a blush. It was nice to see that Mr. Ladies’ Man had a weakness.
Selah looked directly into his eyes. How would she know if he was telling the truth? Or could this be a plan of her father’s to keep her away from Bodhi? After all, he did just hire this man. “Tell me what you know about someone with Bodhi’s condition. What did you call it?”
“I didn’t call it anything. No one knows for sure whether it’s airborne, tactile transference, or some kind of a proximity switch. Maybe all three. But once it happens, you increase and he decreases. Simple as that.” Jaenen showed no emotion, as though this were an everyday occurrence.
“And you’ve seen this happen more than once?”
Jaenen nodded. “Many times, but there are other flaws . . .”
Sparkles danced behind her eyes. Selah tensed. Sparkles were a prelude to . . . Tiny streaks of sharp white light burst into her vision. Selah stumbled back. Jaenen grabbed her to steady her.
She held up both hands and Jaenen pulled back.
Selah looked up to see Glade and Bodhi moving toward them. They probably had seen her stumble. She raised a hand toward them. They stopped, but from the side of the building came Cleon and Treva to join them. She’d never get any peace now. They’d storm her as a group.
Selah snatched Jaenen by the arm again. “Come on. I want to finish this conversation in private.”
“Hey! Why do you get to grab me, but I can’t return the favor?” He grinned as he let himself be pulled forward.
Selah glared. “Because I wanted you to come that second, not a minute later. And you don’t know how to be gentle. You leave bruises!” She led him around the side of the courtyard and onto the main street. Her gait slowed. She glanced left and right and jerked to a stop.
Her group had arrived in Baltimore in the dark and remained away from community life during the day. It surprised her to see so many AirStream vehicles on the same road with horses and wagons, and individuals in single-person vehicles. And lots of people! People wearing bright-colored clothes, walking and riding everywhere. She liked the shops with colorful goods on display, especially the ladies’ shop they were about to pass.
“We should probably stop in here.” Jaenen motioned to the shop. He pushed her into the store after allowing several women dressed in bright colors to exit first.
The door closed behind them, and she whipped around to face him. “What do you mean by this? My father will have you—”
“You need to cover up your mark now,” Jaenen said. “I meant it when I said it could be a catalyst for harm. A couple strangers are watching us from that free space across the road.”
Selah bent around him to look outside. He pulled her back. “Shirt first.”
Selah narrowed her eyes at him. Well, maybe he was right this time. Unlike those overly dressed women, her Dominion people wore more calming earth tones. She walked the racks for something suitable, pulled a beige, brown, and green split-front tunic from a display, and slipped it on over her T-shirt. Jaenen moved to the counter and swiped his bio-coin link to pay for it.
Selah stopped. “I don’t want you paying for my clothing. It’s not appropriate.”
“I didn’t buy your clothing, your father did. I’m officially your bodyguard when you’re traveling until your father says I’m not. He commissioned me to take care of your needs, and that includes bio-coin.” Jaenen went through the doorway first, checking in both directions.
As they returned to the bustling street, Selah’s thoughts dove back to Bodhi’s condition. “So what’s the treatment for it?” She was getting thirsty again. Her tongue ran along the inside of her lips, trying to catch extra moisture.
“Woman, you change subjects faster than you change clothes.” Jaenen noticed her thirst and offered his flask.
Selah drank deep. The cold water sliced her insides like an icy dagger while her outsides broiled in the heat. She wondered about Bodhi. Was his core cooling from the inside while he burned on the outside? Or was he winding down like the sun in the evening? Selah took another drink.
“Did you hear me?” Jaenen looked at her sideways.
Selah put down the flask. Her thoughts had wandered. “Were you talking to me?” They approached a little park between two brown buildings. Selah sat on one of the stone benches.
Jaenen studied the faces around them before he sat down. “There’s no one else here for me to tell. I said there’s no cure for what Bodhi has passed into.”
Selah stared at him, hoping to spot deception, wanting this to be a lie. “How can this still happen? After 150 years, someone must have come up with some understanding of the process.”
Jaenen shrugged and played with his hands as he mumbled something.
Selah tipped her head to the side. “What did you just say about a Repository?”
“I said there is a certain file I heard about in the Repository.”
Selah moved closer on the seat so she could lower her voice. “What’s a Repository? And where is it?”
“The Repository is the hall of records in TicCity. It’s everything the core group of First Protocol collected from the Time of Sorrows forward. They planned on curing conditions like Bodhi’s from the beginning. There were remedies, but the radical factions wanted to get rid of their competition. I don’t know if the file really exists, though,” Jaenen continued. “But with access to the Repository, I could direct you to the location to investigate.”
Selah ran those facts through her head and stored them in the book she’d created in her mind for this new world. It helped her cope. She needed to know everything about this file and find a way to get at it. “What do you know about the file?”
Selah talked to Jaenen for at least half an hour, making him repeat over and over the steps to finding the file buried in healer medical records. Selah knew her way around computers, thanks to her school training. It struck her as funny that she’d spent four years whining about computer studies because she would never need them in Dominion. And now those skills were going to play a center role in the future and saving Bodhi’s life.
The sun had ended its angular evening trek to the west behind the trees on their left. Street illuminators hummed to life. The road traffic had slowed to a man on horseback and a Sand Run. She watched the Sand Run, not having seen many since leaving home. It brought feelings of homesickness for the beach and her own bed. She rose from the bench at the same time Jaenen did.
A loop of rope dropped in front of her head. By instinct, she threw both hands up to her face. The rope stung as it pulled tight across her forearms. That could have been her neck, she realized. Selah panicked, not seeing or hearing an alert from Jaenen. She dropped, slipping under the rope and sliding it off her fingertips. Her head snapped forward as she was slammed to the grass without a sound, except for her own scuffling and grunting. She struggled, but her arms were forced together behind her, angling her body enough to press her to the grass, muffling her screams.
“Jaenen!” No answer. She bucked and kicked out behind her, throwing off the assailant. She scrambled to her feet and clawed away from her attacker. Her breath came in huge gulps. She fought to turn to where Jaenen had been last. Her heart pounded so loud she couldn’t have heard him if he did answer.
This had to be a man overpowering her. The solid weight drove her back to her knees. She tried to turn again. He lost his footing, slid in the grass, and dropped on top of her, driving her back into the ground and knocking the breath from her.
Powerless. Selah struggled to get her arms under herself for leverage as her face was shoved into the thick grass. She groped at grass and air, searching for something defensive to grab, her yells muffled as dirt and grass invaded her mouth.
She gulped in air, inhaling a blade of grass, then coughed, gagging. Her stomach tried to retch, but fear was the only emotion she could direct at the moment. Hands were pressing her head through the grass, trying to smother her in the dirt. She tried to climb to her knees, kicking out behind her in open air. Where was he positioned? The weight overwhelmed her. She was losing. Her nose was pushed tight to the dirt. It felt broken. Her ribs could no longer expand. Lack of oxygen made her arms run out of power. They started to cramp.
Where was Jaenen? Selah whimpered a last cry for help.
4
The weight on her shoulders jerked away. Selah gasped for air and rolled onto her back for unrestricted room to inflate her lungs. She could see a scuffle in the waning rays of daylight. Then as the outdoor illumination glowed on, the attackers were gone. She could clearly see two dark and separate forms. Jaenen had delivered a series of blows to one while the other was already in flight. She sat up, wiped her face, and shook her head to get the dirt from her hair.
Selah stood up. She inhaled deeply and tested her extremities. Jaenen ran to her side, breathless. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?” He looked her over, brushing grass from her back.
“Grass stains on my new shirt.” Deep breath. Selah stared at the shirt hem and rubbed it between shaking hands. Focus on the shirt. She looked up at Jaenen with frightened eyes. Her voice broke. “They got grass stains on my new shirt.” Deep breath. Dizzy. Her insides felt funny, like they didn’t belong to her anymore. Her voice sounded far away, foreign.
“Selah, sit down on the bench,” Jaenen directed her.
On rubbery legs, she moved to the stone bench. Without the sun, the temperature had dropped and the stone cooled quickly. It jolted her, shocking her system. She gasped. But the worms in her stomach stopped roiling, and her chest grabbed enough oxygen to slow her pounding heart. She rubbed at her shirt hem again. Why was she rubbing at her hem? She let it go and smoothed out the wrinkled material. Small flashes of lightning snapped in her vision, then her head cleared.
Selah pursed her lips, brought both hands together, and raised them toward her face. Touching shaking fingers to her lips, she blinked several times to clear her eyes. “Were those the strangers you saw before?”
“I don’t know.” Jaenen finished checking her over. “It could have been. It’s gotten too dark to get a good look at them.” He sat beside her with a huge sigh.
“I think I saw a tattoo on one of his arms, and it extended to his fingers.” Selah drew in a long breath, ran her hand across the material of her new shirt, and smoothed it across her legs.
Jaenen sputtered but recovered quickly. “I didn’t see any markings on either of them. The light was too dim. All I could make out were their shadows.”
“Maybe it was my imagination. I’ve felt strange lately with all these little flashes.”
Jaenen turned serious. “I’ve never attended to a novarium. Are the flashes part of the change?”
Selah gave a half smile. “I don’t have any idea. I guess we’ll learn about this together, since no one has ever completed the process.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more vigilant. I didn’t prepare for that to happen in town. I thought they’d wait till we were on the road.”
“Is this really all about me?” Selah raised her head and took another long breath, trying to release the hundred feelings trying to bubble to the surface. Concentrate on something. Her
forearms stung—rope burns.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is. There are contradictory opinions now that there is an actual novarium.” Jaenen sighed and slammed his fist to his knee. “You deserve to know the truth, but Glade doesn’t want you to know what’s going on.”
Selah sat up straight. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Yes, but if you’ve caught your breath, I think we need to head back to where it’s safe. I don’t like keeping you out in the open like this.” Jaenen looked around. He helped Selah to her feet, and they turned toward the Town Center building.
“Do you think they’ll come back? I’m feeling naked without a weapon,” Selah said as they made their way down the street.
“Baltimore’s no-weapon policy is a little troubling, but with good hand-to-hand skills, anyone could more than even up a situation,” Jaenen said.
Selah added that note to her new list of things to learn. “So tell me what you know.”
“You have to promise to never tell anyone that I told you.” Jaenen gave her a hard look.
It rattled Selah. “Are you risking something?”
“Yes, but I feel you deserve to know the truth. It’s one of those things that evens up the situation.”
Selah turned to look at him. There was something in his tone, and his words didn’t make sense. But she could figure that part out later. She shivered. “I promise I’ll never tell on you.”
“You know about Glade being from the First Protocol—the first Landers. But what none of them ever talk about is that they started as several hundred individuals who were here before the Sorrows—”
“Where here? You mean in this country here?” Selah stopped.
Jaenen took her by the elbow to keep her moving. “In the Mountain here. The original Landers were people from inside the Mountain who fled right after the Sorrows.”
“But how could that many people not be noted in Mountain chronology?” Selah lengthened her gait to keep up with him.
Aftershock: A Stone Braide Chronicles Story Page 2