The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  And if you can hear me, then you must also be weird.

  “Hey!” she protested. “Don’t call me weird. Not nice. And unjustified. How are you doing that anyway? It’s like I can hear you, but I can’t hear you at the same time.”

  Her arms ached through that last shock, she tried to ignore it while wondering if she could jimmy them loose with the Kjarn, give herself a reprieve.

  I do not know. I simply am.

  It wouldn’t be a good idea. Once she got them off, there was no guarantee she’d be able to get them on again when they came for her. And when they came for her, there might be more of them. Without a weapon, her chances grew smaller with the greater their numbers. No, better they thought her beaten and tamed. A docile animal is regarded as less of a threat than a feral one. Everyone expects a feral beast to bite you. Everyone is surprised when the domesticated one does it to you.

  “I’m not weird,” she insisted. “I’m just… well, I’m just me. Nothing else.”

  I do not know. I do therefore I am.

  “Uh huh.” It had come out of the blue, she hadn’t expected it but there was just no way to answer that. She wondered what was in there once again, the whole thing a question burning through her very being. So curious and yet no way of assuaging it because of the distance between them. So near and yet so very far from answers. They could at least have given her some light. “I need to know. Who are you?”

  Beat.

  I do not know.

  It felt like the unseen speaker was getting the hang of the whole conversation thing gradually. The gaps between answers were growing shorter every time she heard that booming voice in her head.

  “Everyone has a name. Everyone.”

  If I do, then I do not know. What is a name?

  She hesitated, closed her eyes and sucked in stale breath of air. Before all this, she’d felt carefree. Now look at her. Talking with someone for whom strange wasn’t just an option but a choice by the sounds of it. “Are you genuinely asking? Or are you being philosophical?” Kyra decided very quickly to just assume he… Was it a he? She decided very quickly to just assume he was genuinely asking. She didn’t want to start explaining or debating philosophy right now. “A name is a brand. It’s how we identify each other. It’s what makes us who we are, if you get my meaning. My name is Kyra Eve Sinclair. It’s the name my parents gave me.” Well, it wasn’t, but she didn’t know her original name. Nobody in her position did.

  I see. I think. You didn’t choose it yourself?

  She shook her head. “No. Nobody does. It’s like the first gift you ever get. It’s who you’ll always be no matter what happens. You’re born, and you get a name, welcome to the world.”

  You talk a lot. I don’t have a name.

  That was a little rude, she thought. Being told she talked a lot was a bit impolite considering all she was doing to answer his questions She still didn’t know if it was a he or not. Questions, questions and not an answer in sight.

  Have I angered you?

  That caught her by surprise. He had, but… There was no way he should have been able to know. She couldn’t get anything off him and yet he’d just read her even through that Kjarn-proof cage. With that there, she wasn’t getting anything. Weird. Very weird. There was that word again.

  “No, not really,” she said. “I’m just surprised. How did you get here? Do you know?” It might have come off a little sarcastic, perhaps unnecessary but her patience was hanging by a thread growing tauter by the minute. She tried to flex her fingers, felt them growing numb and winced as a smattering of static danced across her skin.

  I awoke. I was caged.

  Amnesia? Maybe he couldn’t remember. It wasn’t impossible. If he was who they’d being shooting at in that cavern, it was likely they’d had to incapacitate him the same way they had her. Waking up, she’d found it a struggle to compose her thoughts. If he’d been hit with several stun blasts, it could have caused untold cognitive damage. Stun blasts interfered with mental functions, especially when those shooting were under the impression more is better. Her body still ached where they’d hit her, felt like being kicked by a wild roo.

  I was caged until I wasn’t. I reached out into the world and everything broke. The walls, those small weak apes, nothing could hold me back. I tasted freedom and it was sweet. The air was delicious, I’ve never felt anything so beautiful. I flew through worlds unimaginable, but they followed me. They hounded me to a hole in the sky and I fought them for a long time, but they overcame me eventually. I was exhausted inside and out. Now I am caged once more.

  Oh… They were the most words she’d heard him speak at once and she felt they were also the most illuminating

  “You’re not human, are you?” She couldn’t help herself, the words just came out. She knew they lacked tact, at the same time she didn’t care. Thinking back to the cave, she tried to remember what she’d felt when she’d cast her mind towards whatever those guys had been trying to lock down. If there had been something, then she couldn’t recall but it hadn’t been anywhere approaching human. She knew what a human felt like in the Kjarn and she knew what an animal felt like in it. Yet that aura hadn’t felt like either. What was going on?

  Like those who attacked me? Caged me? Flesh and bone? No. Never. I am not like them. I would wipe more of them out if I could.

  That hurt like a slap and she recoiled, shuffling back along the floor to the other side of her cage, keeping going until her spine was pressed up against the opposite end. The bars dug into her flesh. “Erm… Okay. You definitely can’t get out of there, can you?”

  She tried to sound offhand. Failed miserably, the implications of what was going on in front of her too staggering to ignore. Not human. Not animal. But existing regardless. Capable of actual speech. Emotion. Intelligence. This really wasn’t right. Something messed up was going on and she didn’t know what.

  For the first time for as long as she could remember, Kyra felt staggered. She hadn’t felt this way since the first day she’d met her master and he’d told her about the Kjarn. That had opened a raft of new worlds to her she’d never even dreamed of and it had changed her life forever. This could change everything forever. Across the darkened room, the impervious block rattled faintly, then all sound ceased.

  No. It remains sealed to me. But I will escape.

  Oh goodie… That was a relief. Maybe she could sic this thing on her captors and flee in the confusion. That wouldn’t be a bad plan. At least until you considered the two downsides. One, he might just as easily take her out, two, there was still the matter of them being airborne.

  They cannot hold me. They failed once. They will fail again. I will await my time. It will come, and everyone else’s will run out.

  “I hope you don’t include me in that,” she said, regretted it as she physically felt the void of sound erupt from the direction of the block ahead of her. Oops…

  You are one of them, Kyra Eve Sinclair?

  The voice sounded surprised and she didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. “Yes. I’m human. Very human. Super human in fact. Can’t get more human than me.” She was babbling now, maybe with nerves, she couldn’t stop her mouth moving. All her training was threatening to bleed through her ears, she privately hated herself. She shouldn’t feel fear like this, but there it was, a big void in her stomach sucking in everything else.

  For the longest time, he didn’t respond, and she wondered if he was plotting her demise. She wondered if he’d made up his mind to no longer speak to her because of that discovery, if his hatred had now extended to her despite the conversation they’d being having. They’d been getting on so well as well. Probably never be best friends but they might have become prison break buddies together. Now who knew?

  She didn’t know how long it was before he spoke again. Might have been minutes. It felt like hours.

  I did not know.

  That stung a little, caught her by surprise as she stared thoughtfully into the da
rkness beyond, wondering more than she wanted to admit at the revelation. Eventually she couldn’t keep it in and she let it spill out.

  “What?! What the hells did you think I was then? Some sort of talking machine? I mean, we’ve been talking for… I don’t know how long.”

  I thought you were like me. Different.

  “Yeah, you’re different all right. But so am I. I’m not like those guys who caught you. I tried to save them. I fought them, don’t you remember?”

  I know that violence will begat violence. Where there is some, there will always be more.

  “You wouldn’t have been complaining if I’d…” Killed them? She had done just that. Didn’t seem prudent to mention it. “… If I’d saved you now, would you? You wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here…”

  And neither would they. I did not fight them. I have no desire to fight.

  “Are you saying you didn’t fight back?” That felt like an incredibly selfish attitude if she was honest, though she held her tongue. She couldn’t imagine not fighting for her freedom. Even now, she was just waiting for the moment to strike when she could be free, and they couldn’t stop her.

  I did not. Nor did I ask you to for me.

  “I didn’t plan to. It happened by accident. I was in the wrong place. I couldn’t have known what would happen. I was looking for something else and I found all this. I was unlucky. I only struck back.”

  What is unlucky?

  That question took her by surprise, she considered the answer before debating whether to give one or not. They didn’t have time for this, she didn’t know how long before they landed, and it could be spent better. Kyra also took a few seconds to consider this as well. She was having a conversation with something that freely admitted it wasn’t human, it hated humans. Now she knew that, it was easier to think of it as an it than it had been to think of it as male.

  “It’s when something favours you fortunately or unfortunately in a tight situation,” she said tersely. “It goes for you, it’s lucky. It lets you down, it’s unlucky.”

  I see.

  “Well good for you,” she said. Her master had always encouraged patience, but it was wearing away now, and she was considering escape plans. Already she’d ruled out doing it here but was it possible? Maybe. Perhaps in the right circumstances.

  Perhaps I was lucky in my escape.

  “You didn’t seem so hesitant to kill then,” she said. After all, hadn’t it moments earlier more or less said it’d cheerfully kill any human it came across. And now it was talking about refusing to fight back and hating violence. “You’re one messed up creature, do you know that?”

  Perhaps that, I am.

  The voice took on a solemn note and just for a moment she felt guilty by what she’d just said. A little. Not a lot. “Then again, I think we all are to a point,” she added. There wasn’t any point in being cruel for the sake of it, you won more friends with honey than whips. She doubted they’d be friends now. They’d gotten on okay at the start before words had been exchanged and identities compromised. “You’re not alone in that regard I think.”

  The response that came back to her sent a cold tinge through her skin and she had to draw several deep breaths to keep her composure.

  I don’t believe I’m alone in this room in that regard when I talk to you.

  “What?!” Even with her composure, it still came out sharp, couldn’t keep it from her voice. She didn’t want to, didn’t care if it knew the words had struck a nerve, she was having it out. “What did you just say?!”

  Kyra Eve Sinclair, you profess to be human, but you don’t feel it. You claim to be different from those who hounded me and yet somehow you are just the same. I can feel the darkness in you. You are different from those men in there. You are worse. I can see inside you and you know what I can see?

  It was almost shouting now, she cringed at the volume of the words splitting her head and tried to reach for her ears, anything to shut it out. Everything just went straight to her brain like white hot needles, no chance of preparing a way to shut it out. The Kjarn left her, any thought of control lost to her, like snatching at thin air and she wanted to weep.

  You are rotten from within, worms in your meat, parasites in your blood and sins in your soul. You mock my status; you are the worst of the worse.

  All this was making her sick, she thought she heard the engines, was the ship descending? She didn’t know, all she could hear was the booming voice and the anger flowing through her, not just her own anger but that of the bastard in the impervious cage. It made her insides crawl, she couldn’t stop shaking, even as the cuffs discharged into her. She barely felt them, electricity arcing about her fingertips, sending them into uncontrolled spasms. At least one snapped, she heard the faint crack of bone. The pain was intense yet felt like it should be a thousand times worse amidst her spinning mind.

  There is no hope for you. When you die, it will be in an empty grave, people will spit on you and say here lies a nameless nobody… Worthless, weak, pathetic…

  She blinked, a brief schism in the torrent of anger rupturing through her, tearing her entire being to shreds and she tried to focus on what had just been said. Wasn’t easy. But easy wasn’t what she did. She did hard. She did so very hard and she was too damn stubborn to do anything else. Still she felt the anger, but it no longer demanded every fibre of her attention as she quashed it for the moment, despite it bubbling beneath the surface of her being.

  What had been said to her? Dying alone. Unknown. Scorned. All the things she’d feared. All the things her master had promised her categorically would not happen to her if she took his hand. She focused on the face of her master, or what little of it she could remember that wasn’t hidden beneath his cowl and mask and her lips broke into a cruel smile.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “I don’t know how you can read me when I can’t read you. But you’ve overreached yourself. Badly. You don’t know shit about me despite what you’ve being doing.”

  What is it I’ve being doing?

  The anger in the voice had been replaced by faux innocence that didn’t fool her for a moment. Slowly her own anger faded, her fingers and hands and arms chafed sore from excess electricity and she flexed them, ignorant to the stun cuffs’ discharge. Maybe there’d be some permanent damage inflicted, it hadn’t affected her dexterity. Even her broken one felt unhampering. She’d fix it in no time.

  Good. Her master had displayed similar abilities, had been able to deaden himself to pain, an ability he’d trumpeted as handy but dangerous. Pain was there for a reason. For the next several seconds she took the opportunity to scratch a spot on the side of her head until the gradual sensations of pain came slipping back, spiking through her skin without warning.

  “All the questions, all the chatting, the way you got handier with words as the conversation went on… You’re a psychic. You’ve been in my mind, you know what I am and what I can do. You knew my buttons to push. You found them, and you thought you’d use me to break you out. Maybe I could have done.” She let out a burst of laughter, it felt good to clear her lungs of the staidness she wasn’t aware had been filling her. “But you know what? You’ll never know now if I could have or not. And you know what else?”

  Kyra let her voice drop a few octaves, just so anyone listening outside couldn’t hear her. But she knew the thing in the box would. “The first chance I get; I’m going to kill you for it. You know what I am, you knew what risk you ran and yet you did it anyway. I am the future heir to the Cavanda, you poor deluded son of a bitch and you just made my shit list. You better watch out while you can.”

  With that, she dropped to a sitting position and closed her eyes, slipping into a meditative stance. If there was anything else for it to say, it chose not to.

  When the lights came on and they came to drag her out, Kyra rose to her feet in a docile manner, doing her very best not to look threatening. For the first time she saw the impervious box and wasn’t
impressed, it looked little more than a white featureless cube. Certainly nothing special. They didn’t unlock her cage, just surrounded her, and she glanced around, not seeing her kjarnblade with them. If she had, she might have called it to her, cut her way free and made a run for it. But she didn’t, and she couldn’t.

  “Errr…” she said instead, glancing nervously around. Play the part. Lead them into assumptions. She’d learnt that lesson long before her master had come along. If people underestimate you, then so much worse for them. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.” She let a note of panic creep in, the volume and the urgency rising as she continued. “I mean it, I’m sorry, I don’t know what it is I did, I was just out looking for something and I didn’t mean to… Please let me go… Please?!” She even added a sob to the end, a convincing one she thought and even toyed with prodding them mentally with the Kjarn to lead them down her path. She rejected that idea. It wasn’t her strongest skill. And with this many, it wasn’t a good idea.

  Kjarn or not, they weren’t buying it. They continued to stare impassively at her and she got the same impressions through the Kjarn she had before. The overlapping puddles. Hard to tell where one began, and another ended, too many parts of a same whole.

  She considered pleading again. What harm could it do? Except to her ego and that was far from important here compared with her survival.

  Chapter Fifteen. Siege.

  “We’re getting breaking news out of Carcaradis Island, our sources there are saying there’s been some sort of attack, another one. Unidentified figures have taken control, we’re hearing, of the hospital there…”

  Five Kingdoms Media anchor-man, Jarvis Timothy breaking the news.

  The fifteenth day of Summerpeak.

  “Okay,” Brendan said, already clad in a composite carbon vest and an X7 holstered at his waist even though he wasn’t going to be anywhere near the shooting. Wilsin had to give him the kudos for making the effort to look the part. “Here’s what we know. An hour ago, a group of armed hostiles entered the hospital and opened fire. There are between ten and twenty hostiles in there, all armed with what looks like BRO-60 assault rifles.”