Fates Unsparing

by K. J. McPike

  Koldon held up his hands in a peaceful gesture. “I am not here to hurt you. I simply had to make it look convincing back there.”

  “Convincing?” I wasn’t following.

  “He didn’t want Xavia to doubt that he was going to get rid of us,” Kai explained softly, keeping his eyes on the wall behind me. Apparently, he’d been filled in while I was still unconscious. And apparently, the scare in Alea had taken its toll on him.

  The corner of Koldon’s mouth turned up in a way that reminded me of Kai’s signature smirk. “Thankfully, my brother was not home.” He approached the bed slowly, and I couldn’t help but feel the urge to shield my siblings. “Cadon fears semmies as Xavia does, and he surely would have dragged you off to the lab.”

  Then it clicked. Brother. Koldon was Cade’s brother. That was why their voices sounded so much alike. But if he was Cade’s brother, then that meant…

  Every part of me went numb. Koldon was Kai’s dad. My eyes shot to Kai, and he nodded once, almost imperceptibly, to confirm. In that instant, my heart split down the middle.

  “My name is Koldon. You may call me Kole.” He held out his hand, and I slowly reached to shake it.

  “Lali,” I squeaked, still trying to recover from my realization. Now that I thought it through, it should have been obvious. If Kai’s uncle was Mom’s neighbor growing up, then it made sense that Kai’s dad would be, as well. I just hadn’t taken the time to process that.

  Questions hammered into my mind, one after the other. Had Kai realized it back in Alea? Had he told Kole the truth? Would he? Did my siblings know? Did Kala?

  Kala must have recognized Kole from what she’d seen in Dixon’s projection. I glanced at her, but she kept her features stoic, giving nothing away. Kole couldn’t have known. He seemed far too at ease for someone who had just discovered his future son and daughter were standing right next to him.

  “Nice to meet you, Lali,” Kole said, releasing my hand. I studied his face, unable to help noticing every similarity to Kai’s. Kole had fair skin to Kai’s bronze tone, but his angular features, dominant brow, and bright green eyes were all similar. If he had brought us here, did that mean he had already met Kai’s mother in this timeline? Was she here, too?

  Poor Kai. I couldn’t even fathom—

  “As you may have gathered,” Kole went on, breaking into my thoughts again. “I am in charge of disposing of semmies that the Eyes and Ears deem unusable.”

  A sour taste formed in my mouth. “Unusable?” I spat. As if we simply existed to fulfill their purposes.

  “That is their term, not mine,” he said. “I do not play by their rules. Ever since they began entrusting me with disposal, I have collected semmies and brought them here.” His face seemed kinder now that he wasn’t pretending to have evil intentions for us, but something about him still made me uncomfortable. He’d fooled me before. It seemed like he’d fooled Mom, as well.

  Crap! Mom! What was happening to her right now? “Where’s my—where’s Xiomara?” I stammered.

  “Back at home, or at work, I imagine.” Kole looked around at my siblings still curled up around me. “I know she will be worried, but I will find a good time to tell her the truth about where you are.”

  I sank back into the pillows, realizing I didn’t know where we were. “And what is this place, exactly?”

  “The Hill,” Ulyxses informed me, as if I would know what that meant.

  “It’s actually kind of cool,” Oxanna added, and Dixon nodded his agreement.

  “We are in a city called San Francisco,” Kole said, “in the hill below Coit Tower.”

  I gasped. “In the hill?”

  “Yes.” He offered me another crooked smile. “It seemed best to stay hidden when we created this place. It is a safe space for semmies and their families.”

  The underground community. Mom had told us about this place, but when she said it was underground, I’d thought she meant figuratively, not literally buried beneath a hill.

  “You are welcome to stay here as long as you like,” Kole went on. “Paris will take good care of all of you.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed, exchanging looks with the rest of the group. I hoped they were as relieved as I was to have a home base of sorts. “So Mom—er, Xiomara doesn’t know about this place at all?”

  “Not yet,” Kole said. “I have told very few about it. Many Astralii believe semmies are dangerous.”

  “Why don’t you?” I asked. The question came out more direct than I’d intended, but Kole didn’t seem to mind.

  “Because I have met plenty,” he said. “One day I hope to get the rest of Alea to see what I see.”

  I dropped my gaze to the blanket covering my lap, unsure how to respond.

  “Speaking of,” he continued, “I must get back. I am glad you are awake, and I hope you can hate me a little less now.” With a wink, he closed his eyes, and his astral form appeared next to his body.

  I frowned. “This place isn’t blocked?”

  Kole shook his astral head. “We aren’t fortunate enough to have anyone on our side who knows how to block this area.” He gave me a wry smile. “Maybe one day.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if a block would have helped them during the raid.

  The raid! I turned to Kai, my chest constricting. His family had lived in this community at the time the Eyes and Ears murdered his parents and kidnapped his sister. I knew Kala had only just found out about the attack and didn’t have any memory of it, but Kai remembered everything. It must have been awful for him to be here. How could we stay and subject him to that?

  “Be well.” Kole’s astral form waved before drifting through the cinderblock next to my bed, leaving his physical body standing unnaturally still. I realized Kai was staring at him. I wanted to reach out to Kai, but I didn’t know if that would make it worse.

  “Hungry?” Paris scurried back into the room carrying a steaming bowl. “I made a vegetable stew if you’d like some.”

  “Um, yes, please.” I looked at my brothers and sisters.

  “We already ate,” Dixon said.

  Oh. How long had that tranquilizer knocked me out? And why didn’t it keep Kai down as long as me? Sure, he was over half a foot taller than me, but still.

  “Okay, kids,” Paris called out. “Let your sister eat while you go get cleaned up.”

  Oxanna reluctantly slid off the bed, and she and my brothers made their way out of the room with Kai and Kala. Paris handed me the bowl, the ceramic warm to the touch.

  “Thanks.” I scooped up a spoonful of the still-steaming stew and blew on it before putting it in my mouth. The hot liquid was like heaven against my throat. Noticing Paris was standing with her hands clasped, I blinked up at her through my overgrown bangs.

  “Your friend Kai told me what happened,” she said.

  “Oh?” I set the spoon back in the bowl with a clink. “You mean in Alea?”

  “I mean everything.” She gave me a long look. “Now, I’m not here to judge you, but that was a very dangerous thing you did, traveling back in time.”

  Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. I sighed, averting my gaze. I couldn’t handle a lecture right now, especially from someone I’d just met. Especially when we’d come back for nothing.

  “Like I said, I’m not here to judge you,” Paris went on, though it sounded to me like she was doing just that. “But I do have a responsibility to keep the other kids here safe. Now, I’ve already spoken to the rest of your group about this, and I’m going to ask you the same thing I asked them.” She paused until I looked up at her again. “Please don’t tell any of the other kids about what you did.”

  “Oh.” I stared at her. It wasn’t like I was dying to talk about what we’d been through anyway. My mind already forced me to relive everything too often as it was. “I won’t say anything,” I promised.

  “It’s just that there have to be rules in place, for everyone’s safety. One of the biggest rules here is that the kids d
on’t use their abilities to do anything immoral, and well…”

  “You think what we did was immoral?” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my voice. Who was she to tell me about right and wrong when I’d given up the chance to get my sister back for the sake of trying to do the noble thing?

  She pressed her lips into a thin line. “That’s not for me to decide. I’m just here to keep everyone safe.”

  “That’s all I want, too,” I mumbled.

  “Okay then.” Paris forced a smile that revealed a crooked incisor. “Eat up. When you’re done, I’ll show you to the showers and get you some fresh clothes. Then I’ll give you the tour.”

  Chapter 15

  Community

  The Hill was nothing like the underground community I pictured when Mom told us about it. Instead of the bunker vibe I had imagined, it managed a bright, cheery ambiance—even with the complete lack of windows. An ongoing mural of an underwater seascape covered the hallways in a peaceful baby blue hue. Dish-shaped wall lamps jutted out every so often, their combined light creating a warm glow as Paris led the way down the back hall.

  “Each of these doors leads to an apartment,” she noted, holding out both arms to point to the wooden doors evenly spaced on either side of us. Kai, Kala, my siblings, and I—all freshly showered and dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs—followed, taking in the details. “The families that live in them keep to themselves mostly, but you might see them out in the common spaces every so often,” she added without breaking stride.

  I couldn’t help myself from glancing at Kai. Again. I knew his family must have lived in one of the apartments here when he was little, and the fact that we were strolling through the setting of his unimaginable childhood trauma wasn’t lost on me. As if the unexpected encounter with his father wasn’t bad enough…

  He hadn’t said much of anything since Kole left, and I wished I could pull him aside and check in—or at least give him a hug. But there was no way to sneak off from the group without it being obvious, and I didn’t want to draw more attention to him. From the strain in his jaw to the splay of his nostrils, he made it clear he was trying to keep his composure, and I knew how hard it was to keep emotions dammed up when another person offered a compassionate touch.

  “There’s a row of apartments back that way, too,” Paris continued as we reached another hall running perpendicular to the one we’d just cleared. She pointed to our right but turned to walk in the opposite direction. “The area for the orphaned semmies is this way.”

  I cringed, my gaze shifting to Oxanna, Dixon, and Ulyxses. I guessed we were essentially orphans in this timeline. Orphans, and bereaved siblings. I exhaled the thought, pushing my mind back to neutral territory.

  “How many other semmies are there?” Oxanna looked absently at the painted image of an orca on the wall. Her long dark waves had started to air-dry, the strands framing her borrowed, oversized sweatshirt that read If You Love Me Let Me Sleep In.

  Paris turned to face us, walking backward as she answered. “There are six other children who live here without parents. About a dozen and a half more live here with their families.”

  Hope bloomed in my chest. Maybe one of the other semmies would have an ability similar to Sariah’s. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to wait for Delta to awaken Trace’s astral energy.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, eager to get a read on who could do what.

  “In school, of course,” Paris said.

  Oh. Well, that made sense. It wasn’t like everyone could stay down here forever, and semmies deserved an education too. But weren’t they risking themselves by trying to blend into a school with normal kids?

  Then again, that was exactly what my family did back in Browshire. Of course, I hadn’t grown up knowing the truth about what I was—I’d only discovered that recently. Still, I couldn’t imagine being closed off from the rest of the world simply because of my ability, whether I’d known about it early on or not.

  “I thought the point of this place was to hide,” Oxanna said, echoing my thoughts.

  Paris nodded, spinning around to walk the hall facing forward again. “To a certain degree, yes. But it’s mostly so the kids can feel safe and exercise their abilities without the fear of being found out.”

  “Do you change their names?” Kala asked, her sharp features appearing softer now that she wore her black hair loose instead of in that tight ponytail. In her baggy sweats, she looked like a regular fourteen-year-old girl. “Otherwise, it would be easy to find them.”

  “No one is looking for them,” Paris explained. “Kole was instructed to kill the ones the Eyes and Ears know about, and the rest aren’t on their radar. Still, we have ways of getting documents with fake names and addresses for the children who are brought here from Alea, just in case. That way, their lives can be as normal as possible. They know better than to talk about their abilities with anyone outside of our community.”

  A gulp slid down my throat as I remembered Paris’ request that we not tell the other semmies what we had done to land ourselves here. Though I could tell she had a kind heart, I didn’t want to get on her bad side by spilling that secret. We weren’t exactly in a place to risk getting kicked out of our best—and honestly, only—housing option. That was, if Kai could handle it. He hadn’t said a word about it yet.

  I glanced at my brothers, both of them unusually quiet too. Dixon’s face was blank, as if he’d checked out of his body, and Ulyxses tried for a pleasant expression but didn’t quite succeed. For their sake, I wanted to ask about the other semmies’ abilities, but it was probably better to wait. I didn’t want Paris to think we just wanted to use the kids she cared for.

  “And we’re back to the infirmary,” Paris announced as we turned left down a corridor that ran parallel to the one we’d seen with the apartments. We passed a half-open door that led to the room where I’d first regained consciousness. Directly across from it was the shared bathroom where we’d cleaned up, the multiple showers and toilet stalls set up the way I had always pictured college dorms.

  We moved past the infirmary, and the hall opened to a large square room with beanbags scattered across the floor. “This is the common area.” Paris gave a small flourish of her hand.

  The mural from the hallway extended over the walls here, too, but a good chunk of it was blocked by an enormous TV stand lined with packed bookshelves across the top and along the sides. A boxy, U-shaped sofa faced the television, its brown polyester sides effectively creating a little room within the room. Beside it, a long table with mismatched chairs offered seating for ten.

  I noticed the door-sized opening just beyond the table connected this room to another hall, and the shape of things came together in my mind. The Hill was laid out like a ladder, with two long stretches along the sides and rungs running between them. The only exception was that the rung we were on now widened into the common area and narrowed back behind the table before it connected to the other side.

  “This is where the semmies with no families spend time?” Kala asked, running a tentative palm along the worn back of the sofa.

  Paris nodded. “Even the ones who stay with their families will come and socialize every now and then, or play video games out here.”

  Ulyxses’ face lifted. “You have video games?”

  “Of course.” Paris winked at him. “We even have a Super Nintendo.”

  I watched my brother’s expression fall again. He must have forgotten we were back in the 1990s. I was sure the gaming systems of this time weren’t even close to what he was used to playing.

  “What is a Nintendo?” Kala inquired.

  “Are you serious?” Dixon looked scandalized, but I was just happy he had any expression at all.

  “I doubt video games are a thing in Alea,” Kai said flatly.

  My brother shook his head. “Still.”

  Paris’ eyes sparkled with amusement. “Well, you’ll have to show her.”

  “What’s this?” Oxanna moved
toward a poster-sized sheet of paper attached to the wall above the dining area.

  “Those are the ground rules,” Paris replied as the rest of us crowded around my sister to read the hand-drawn list. The letters of each one were outlined in black and filled in with different colors.

  Be kind and respectful to others.

  Take care of shared property.

  Clean up after yourself.

  No free time until your chores are done.

  Do NOT use your abilities against each other.

  The last rule made me tense. Against each other? What kind of powers would we be dealing with here?

  “We’ll get your chores sorted out later,” Paris said. “Right now, I need to start getting a snack ready for when the kids get home.” She started toward a doorway to our right that I hadn’t noticed at first. It led to a small kitchen with white appliances and cabinets, all of them marked with the tell-tale chips and scratches that came with being well used. An enormous silver pot took up a burner and a half on the stove, and I assumed it housed the vegetable stew.

  Inching toward the doorway, I pulled my still-damp hair to one side. “Um, could I make my chore helping out in the kitchen? There was a stretch of time where I got used to making food for these guys.” I tilted my head toward my siblings. “I kind of miss cooking.”

  Paris beamed. “Of course. I’d love a sous chef.” She moved over to the sink to wash her hands, and I spotted a watery, dreamlike painting just above the faucet. The image made me think of the posters featuring Salvador Dalí’s art that covered my ceiling back home.

  Home. Would I ever get to see my house again? The question hurt more than I cared to admit.

  A girl’s singing drifted into the room, and we all looked toward the sound. “That’ll be Bianca,” Paris said. “She has a study hall at the end of the day, and she likes to come home early.” Given that Paris made no effort to move out of the kitchen, I assumed Bianca wouldn’t have any issues letting herself in. Though I realized that we never saw The Hill’s entrance on our tour.