by Laurie Roma
“Did you enjoy your ice cream last night?” he asked, his dark eyes glittering with anger.
Oh, hell...
Obviously, Dom knew about her encounter with Arik and wasn’t taking it well. She forced herself not to wince, even though she cringed internally. Unwilling to take any shit from him in front of a room full of people, Skylar raised a brow. “Really, you want to talk about this now?”
“No,” he replied with a growl. “Damn it, I haven’t had any coffee yet.”
“Neither have I, so don’t you start with me.”
Dom all but bared his teeth at her as he got up and made his way to the food console. Serra’s assistant, Officer Troy Takeshi was hunched over his portable data unit at the other end of the table, not bothering to look up as he muttered, “Snarling at her is not exactly the way to win your lady over.”
“Shut it, kid,” Dom snapped. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
Troy looked up and paled slightly at the ominous glare the other man was shooting him. “Shit...”
“Dom, leave Troy alone,” Serra ordered with a laugh.
Dom continued muttering to himself as he got two large mugs of coffee from the FC unit. He carried them back to the table and set one down in front Skylar. She smiled up at him in thanks and he squeezed her shoulder before walking back to take his seat again.
“I’m hungry. Does anyone one else want some food?” Reva said from where she was sitting next to Troy.
“I have that covered,” Officer Cal Ryans announced from the doorway as he pushed in a large cart laden with platters of food. “I thought everyone could use some breakfast.”
“Cal! What are you doing up and about? Shouldn’t you be resting?” Serra jumped up from her chair and hurried over to the young officer, hovering like a mother hen. Cal Ryans was Jax and Archer’s assistant, and Serra thought of him as part of their family, just like she did her own assistant Troy. Cal had been seriously wounded when she and Skylar had been kidnapped. Because he hadn’t had any of the drugged coffee, he had been stabbed in the chest and left to bleed out while the others had been passed out on the floor.
Officer Ryans beamed as Serra fussed over him. “I’m fine, really. Medical cleared me for light duty and I really would like to get back to work.”
“Just don’t overdo it.”
“Glad to see you up and about, Cal,” Skylar said, making the younger man blush slightly.
Jax huffed out an impatient breath as everyone got up to fill plates with food. Raising his voice over the din, he growled, “This isn’t fucking social hour. Sit your asses back down.”
Archer shot him an amused glance. “Get a grip, man.”
“What’s up with you?” Dom asked as he sat back down at the table with a plate piled high with food. “I’m usually the one who is pissed off at morning meetings. You’re the one who called this briefing at the crack of dawn, so why are you so cranky?”
“I don’t think he slept well last night. Maybe he needs a nap.”
Jax let out a feral growl and took a step toward his best friend. Serra slapped Archer on the arm. “Stop baiting him.”
“But it’s so damn easy...and fun.”
“Cranky? I’m not cranky. Don’t ever call me such a stupid word again. Is it so wrong to think that a meeting scheduled for eight o’clock would actually start at eight? I’m—”
“Cranky,” Skylar murmured, then wished she hadn’t spoken as Jax turned his piercing eyes on her again.
Serra laughed. “He really is cranky.”
“Who’s cranky?” Arik asked as he walked into the room, making everyone but Jax laugh.
“Keep it up, damn you. I’m this close to booting all of you out the fucking air locks,” Jax threatened, holding up his thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. He turned his scowl on Arik. “Nice of you to finally show up.”
Arik studied him with a bland expression. “Since you’re the one who asked me to get an update from Ambassador M’Dor for the meeting, you shouldn’t have any issue with me being a few minutes late.”
Jax muttered under his breath as Arik turned away. When he spotted Skylar, his eyes lit up and he closed the few feet between them to press a gentle kiss down on her forehead in greeting. “Good rising, beautiful one.”
Skylar tried not to fidget as everyone in the room shot her a speculative glance as Arik got himself a plate of food before moving around the table to the empty seat next to Dom. Both men stared at her as they ate their breakfast while she did her best to avoid looking at both of them.
Talk about fucking awkward.
“Can we start the damn meeting now?” Jax asked.
“Not yet.” Serra heaved out a breath, then got up from her seat and went back over to the food cart. She carefully chose a selection of items and took it over to an impatient Jax, setting it down on the table in front of him. She pushed at his broad shoulders until he was sitting in his chair, and he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?”
“Eat,” she whispered in his ear. “And stop snapping at everyone.” She kissed him lightly, then pulled away to go back to her seat. They stared at one another in a silent battle of wills until he finally gave in. Picking up the fork he shoveled a fork full of eggs into his mouth. making her smile. “Now we’re ready.”
Archer stroked a hand over Serra’s dark hair before announcing, “Since Reva is new to our team, why don’t we start off the meeting with a brief recap of what we know so far, then we can get into the new details that we have.”
“I would appreciate it. The only thing I was told was that you were launching an investigation that would benefit from having someone from Helix take part.”
“That’s true, but you might also give us some insight, so feel free to jump in and fill in some of the background if you can,” Jax said, to which Reva nodded.
Archer took a sip of his coffee before he began. “About a month ago, before we claimed Serra, there was an investigation regarding the black market sale of her stealth technology.”
Reva let out a low rumbling growl, her eyes flashing with anger. “That is why that bitch kidnapped us, right?”
“Yes, but before all of that occurred, I was taken into questioning on Earth and we discovered that my memories had been altered years ago. My mother had wanted to keep me away from Jax and Sully. She’d taken me to Tartarus, where she had someone there drug me with xili, then program me to have an extremely adverse reaction whenever I thought about them,” Serra explained.
“That’s...” Reva paused for a moment. “Your mother sounds like a crazy woman. Did you kill her?”
“Ah...no.”
“Not that we didn’t want to,” Jax muttered under his breath.
Reva frowned in reaction. “In my world, a betrayal such as that would have earned death.”
“Well, she might be wishing for that, since she is now currently imprisoned on the Mars penal colony. For her that would be worse than death, and she deserves every second of misery she suffers there for the crimes she committed,” Serra said with conviction. Archer reached over and held onto her hand. She looked over to see Jax frowning at them, but his expression softened as she smiled at him.
“Xili is a nasty substance,” Reva told everyone at the table. “Helix can be seen as a primitive world by some humans because we don’t have cities with buildings that reach for the sky like you do. Instead, we have chosen to preserve our jungle, keeping most of it as it has been for millennia. We do have cities and villages, but they usually compliment the natural surrounding where they are located. Centuries ago, my people believed that all the plant-life on my planet should be left as is, but as we discovered harmful effects some of them had on us, those views changed. One of the main reasons that things began to change was because so many of us never returned from the Hunt.”
“What is the Hunt?” Officer Cal Ryans asked, then took a quick glance around the table to see if anyone was
annoyed by his question.
Reva wasn’t bothered at all, and was happy to explain. “The Hunt is a special ceremony of sorts for my people that occurs four times a year when both of our moons are full in the night sky. For each Hunt, the Helios of the tribe that have just turned twenty are gathered together and are sent into the jungle. Although we are sent out in a group, each Helios is instructed to go out and survive alone for a full week to prove ourselves. Those of us who succeed receive a thin scar over our hearts as a badge of honor that is presented to us at a festival the night we return.”
“Wow, I’ve never heard of that before,” Cal said. “I’ve read about, and seen vids and pictures of your planet, but I can’t imagine surviving a full week out there.”
She smiled at the awe in his voice. “My planet is a dangerous place, as are my people. Being able to shift into cats helps us adapt to surviving out there on our own, but it isn’t easy. The other inhabitants of my world are vicious creatures whose only goal is to kill and eat whatever they find, and that’s not even mentioning that there are a few carnivorous plants in the jungle as well.”
“I remember seeing one of those the last time we were on Helix,” Troy said. “If our guide hadn’t warned me, I could have been its lunch that day. It still freaks me out thinking about it.”
“I remember that,” Serra said with a shiver. “That thing gave me nightmares for a week.”
Reva cat-like eyes glittered with amusement. “Which is why we never allow visitors to wander off alone. You’d never come back. So many humans are fascinated by the luminescence of our plant-life at night, but they don’t realize that half of what they are admiring could and would probably kill them. And that’s why our rules were finally changed.”
“What do you mean by that?” Dom asked.
“Too many that went out on the Hunt never came back. It’s one thing to survive on our own skill and prove that we could provide for our tribes, but it is another to know there are things out in the jungle that could kill us by simply breathing it in and do nothing about those dangers.”
“Damn, you have plants that can do that?” Skylar asked. “Remind me to scratch Helix off my list of places to visit.”
Reva laughed. “Things are better now, but yes, there was a plant that could kill anyone who breathed in its spores. It was eradicated after we discovered what it did. The xili was one of those plants we didn’t know was dangerous until after we had studied the effects a little. We found that if we were infected with the xili plant, it’s almost impossible for us to fight our shift, bringing our more primal instincts out. If that occurred during the Hunt and two Helios came across one another, they would have attacked, unable to help themselves.”
“Used on humans, xili is a mind-altering drug used to implant suggestions. When was it discovered what it was doing to humans, the Alliance worked with the tribe leaders on Helix to destroy as much of the plant as possible,” Jax added.
Troy’s fingers flew over the keypad of his data unit and a picture of the xili plant popped up on the large wall screen. The xili plant was an interesting looking specimen, with dark-green stalk that grew into bright purple spikes.
He pointed toward the screen. “This is the xili plant, and even though most of it has been eradicated, it still grows wild in some of the more remote locations on Helix. The purple spikes at the end glow at night and contain the substance that is used to drug someone. It can pierce the skin, or the plant could be harvested to be used later. The good news is that the plant dies quickly once it’s uprooted if not carefully contained.”
“Xili takes away free will and that is something the Helios would never allow. Therefore, it’s now law that no Helios may use that drug, especially on any human,” Reva insisted. “The penalty for such a thing is death.”
Arik sighed as he leaned back in his chair. “We realized just how dangerous xili really was when neither humans nor the Helios could detect when someone was under the influence of the drug. Only we seemed to be able to see the shadow when a mind has been altered.”
The D’Aire had the ability to slip into someone’s mind and do a scan or something they called a mind-merge, although they never did something like that without permission. It went against their code to do so, and it would be dangerous for both the D’Aire and the person being scanned if it wasn’t consensual. Still, Arik knew an older D’Aire like him could tell if a person had been tainted by xili just by being in their presence.
“That’s what makes this such a high-risk situation,” Jax said. “As far as we know, the D’Aire are our only defense to this drug. Even though the effects are more dangerous and physical to the Helios, they are able to work the drug out of their systems quite quickly. However, humans are at greater risk due to the lasting effects of the whatever suggestions are implanted. Arik was able to show Serra what had really happened to her, and since then, there have been no other effects from the drug. It gives us hope that we can effectively counteract the drug and cure anyone who has been influenced by xili.”
“Okay, I have to ask. Have there been others? I understand you’re pissed that Serra was drugged. Hell, I am, too, but you said that most of the plant has been killed off, and what happened to Serra was years ago. So, why is this top priority now?” Skylar asked.
Jax’s jaw tightened in anger. “We’ve have little luck tracking down the Tarin that Serra’s mother hired to drug her, but I want to find the fucker. Just knowing a Tarin is out there using this drug is enough to open an investigation. However, when we started looking into this matter, we stumbled onto a clusterfuck of a problem.”
“I’d say that’s an accurate description,” Archer agreed. “Initially, we thought we were dealing with an isolated issue on Tartarus, but about six months ago twelve xili specimens were requisitioned by the Alliance-run lab on the planet Avox.”
“Are they studying mind control?” Reva asked with a frown.
“In a way. It’s really quite fascinating,” Serra interjected, her eyes bright with excitement. “One of the scientists there believes that the xili plant can be used to create a better formula for the enhancements given to all elites. If we look at the cognitive function applications for the drug—”
“Oh, fuck no. You want to give this shit to people on a widespread scale?” Dom asked incredulously. “After what was done to you, do you really think this is a good idea? Because I sure as hell don’t.”
“It wouldn’t be used in the same way that was done to me. I’ve read Dr. Catherine Whitmer-Fields’ proposal, and what she is attempting to do is extrapolate the basic enzyme from the root of the—”
“Wait...what?” Dom looked liked he wanted to slam his head down on the table. “I don’t want to hear all the scientific crap. Dumb it down for me and just give us the basics.”
Serra frowned at him, at a loss for what to say. Her assistant Troy took pity on her and explained, “In a nutshell, they want to alter the xili drug so it can be added to the enhancements to help people learn and process at an increased level, without taking away someone’s free will.”
Dom heaved out a breath. “Well...fuck.”
“Well said. I still think it’s a bad idea, regardless of what the possible benefits could be,” Archer said. He held up a hand to stall Serra from arguing. “You’re never going to convince me that using this drug is a good thing, and I won’t be the only one who feels that way.”
“You aren’t,” Dom confirmed.
“This will be groundbreaking if Dr. Whitmer-Fields succeeds,” Serra insisted. “Can you imagine all we can accomplish if our ability to learn is expanded?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think it’s possible for you to be any smarter than you already are.”
Serra looked over at Jax and smiled at him. “Thank you, sweetie. Anyways, I believe all of you are being short-sighted if you aren’t willing to attempt to see the potential of this new version of the enhancements. We modify the elites for strength and physical endurance, why not attem
pt to do the same with our mental capabilities?”
“Because anything that fucks with people’s minds is never a good thing,” Skylar said with conviction.
“I agree,” Jax said. “There are too many variables we don’t understand yet, and they have just started with their research, so they have no clue if they can actually do what they claim. But that isn’t our problem right now. What is would be the fact that twelve xili plants were requested and shipped from Helix, but there are only ten on Avox.”
Dom blinked in astonishment. “They lost two of those fucking plants?”
“Not lost,” Archer said. “They claim only ten were requisitioned. I contacted the lab on Avox and spoke with Dr. Whitmer-Fields when we found out about her project, but she was confused when I insisted on seeing the twelve plants and said they only had ten.”
Reva’s spine stiffened as she sat up in her chair. “There are strict protocols my people follow when allowing anything to be shipped off planet. The only way they would have allowed twelve xili plants to leave the surface is if twelve were officially asked for.”
Archer nodded. “We know. I spoke to the commander of the vessel that transported the plants to Avox, and he also confirmed that twelve were delivered. Someone is lying, and that person is on Avox. Since those plants have gone missing, we’ve discovered six other individuals that have been drugged with shadows in their memories.”
“Six?” Dom asked. “I thought there were only five.”
“Based on Arik’s recommendation, we had Commander Hale tested on the way back to Earth. He was very cooperative, and was pretty adamant that we’d made a mistake replacing him as the commander of X7,” Jax explained. “When a D’Aire on board did a closer scan on Hale, they found that he had been coerced to basically give over control to two generals under his command.”
Dom slammed his fist down on the table. “I knew those two were fucking dirty!”