by K. T. Hanna
“What did you do?” Deign picks her way through the entryway, distaste apparent in her tone.
Bastian shrugs. “A training mishap with my protégé.”
Deign’s brown eyes narrow. “I warned you about choosing her.”
“You’ve warned me about a lot of things, Deign.” He takes a deep breath. The woman always puts him on edge.
She smiles, the same predatory smile she wears in board meetings, and taps the side of her almost too pointy nose. “I took a lot of chances letting you take over from your father when you were barely eighteen, Bastian. You should heed me more, or I might take it away.”
There are probably a lot of responses she expects, but Bastian laughing is not one of them. She scowls at the hearty sound. “You find this funny.”
“Slightly, yes.” He crosses his arms and looks her in the eye. Her height is, as usual, accentuated by old-fashioned heels so high she is almost level with him. Sometimes he wonders if it’s difficult to balance on the stiletto ends. “You might have been able to take it away when he died suddenly three years ago or even shortly afterward. I’ve cemented my reputation since then. You know too many people fear me to go against me now.”
The line on Deign’s brow furrows, briefly exhibiting the faint wrinkles she tries to hide. She flicks her dark-brown hair over her shoulder, in a subtle show of irritation. “Watch your tone with me, Bastian. I’ve had people exterminated for less.”
The I know sits on the tip of his tongue, but Bastian chokes it down. This isn’t one of the battles he should choose. So, instead, he nods.
She leans in, the long fingernail on her pointer finger dragging down the shirt on his chest. “After all, you really should know best, shouldn’t you, dear boy.”
Her words stab like icicles all the way down his back, and she smiles, the corners turning up like a Cheshire cat as she deliberately licks her lips—once. With his attention on her, she exits the room with a flounce to her step. Bastian can’t help shudder at the implications in the reminder that Deign is indeed the director of GNW.
Bastian flicks the collar of his coat up to ward off the withdrawal chills. The rate his body burns Shine has increased.
“Do that thing before we enter her room? I don’t want anyone overhearing.” Bastian motions pressing with his fingertips
Dom nods.
The rest of the walk is spent in silence. The soft swoosh of their steps makes him feel like he’s hunting his student. Right now Bastian’s happy he requested Sai not be given a roommate. Hopefully she’ll feel more at ease in her own environment.
Just before they reach her room, Dom whites himself out from the domino connection, and his eyes change hue.
Bastian raises his hand and knocks, ready for the tentative probe that comes his way and even her indignation. The door opens just a crack.
“What do you want?”
Bastian feels her temper rising and chooses his words carefully. “I thought you might be more comfortable if we talk here.”
The door closes and he hears a chain slide across. Resourceful of the girl to find an old latch for a tiny bit of added security, even if most people in the facility could just force it open.
She opens the door, gestures for them both to sit on the lilac bed, and curls up with her knees against her chest on her own. Her eyes dart between them and she frowns. “There’s almost no trace now...” The result seems to confuse her.
“Precisely.” Bastian splays his hands against each other and studies his fingertips for a few seconds while he gathers the thoughts in his head, before looking back up at her. “You know your histories, correct?”
“Of the Psionic Wars?” Sai’s words are clipped, and the scowl hasn’t disappeared.
Bastian suppresses the sigh in his throat and clings to his patience. “And everything that came before them.”
She fidgets and switches position on the bed. “You know I did well in my history class, Bastian.”
Patience has never been Bastian’s strength, though. “But did you really listen, Sai? If you had, you wouldn’t be acting like a child.”
“A child?” She clenches her fists and takes a deep breath. “I haven’t been a child for a long time.”
“My point exactly.” He waves his hand to dismiss her protest and holds it up in a stop gesture. “Give me a chance to explain. I promise I didn’t save you just to destroy you four years later. I don’t have that sort of time to waste.”
She glares at him, but doesn’t say anything.
“Shine is a drug conceived by the brains behind Gerts, Newton & Williams Pharmaceuticals during the Psionic Wars. It was created to control psionic abilities. To limit us. To make our abilities more manageable.” He waits for a moment and watches the immediate reaction. How her mouth parts slightly. The shock on her face as she fights against the truth. “Shine doesn’t affect psionics except to diminish their abilities.”
Sai shakes her head, then clutches her knees and leans forward. “But it affects people without an active gene?”
He smiles, lips thinly pressed together. She’s so damn perceptive. “Heavily. They never intended it to go live on the streets. If there are no psionic abilities, it attacks the imagination centers of the human brain. The original drug can only be made in the lab, but there was some experimentation with a synthetic version that somehow got out. And now there are so many shoddy Shine producers, GNW can’t contain it.”
“Wait—they use it to control us?” She shivers and shakes her head. “Will they control me? Have they already done it?”
Bastian shakes his head. “It’s not like that. They only control what people ask them to—”
“Ask them to?” Sai interrupts him incredulously.
“Families who don’t know what to do with children who’ve awakened. Not everyone wants these abilities.”
Sai slumps down, and the air whooshes out of her.
“Or people who they deem dangerous.” He catches her gaze for emphasis. “Like me.”
“But you’re not...” She pauses, looking away for a moment before meeting his eyes again. “Surely they wouldn’t do that.”
“Only because I don’t let them gauge me without Shine.”
Sai’s eyes open wide as it dawns on her. “Because you’re a Rare?”
“Exactly.”
Sai opens her mouth a couple of times only to sigh in frustration.
“What’s wrong?”
“What do they do with the volunteers, with the people who don’t want to be psionic?” She almost whispers the question.
He meets her eyes steadily. “Research.”
“Would they do that to you? To us?”
Both Bastian and Dom nod.
“So if they find you out, you’ll end up a research ...volunteer? What about me? Will I have to hide, too?”
Bastian smiles at her, relieved at her reaction. He can’t lie to her, and she knows that. “Not at all, if I can help it. Shine was made with good intentions—it’s just escalated out of control. As long as we’re not a threat, we’re GNW’s greatest asset.”
“And that’s why only the strongest survive the final exam?” Her shoulders shake a little as she asks the question. “Because assets have to be strong?”
Bastian only hesitates a moment before nodding. “Exactly.” He reinforces his smile and hopes the bitterness doesn’t leak into his words.
Sai returns the smile tentatively. “I think I’ll work on my shields.”
“Good.” Bastian stands. “Any more questions before I head out?” His knees threaten to buckle, but he wants to show her his Shine consumption isn’t a big deal.
“The Exiled are the bad guys? Our enemies?”
Bastian pauses for a moment, choosing his words carefully. “How many people died in the Psionic Wars?”
She contemplates for a second. “Thousands upon thousands.”
“Exactly. Regardless of original intentions, the Exiled helped start the war, and GNW finished it. As
far as GNW is concerned, there is no greater threat.”
“I thought so.” Sai sets her jaw. “Thank you.”
Bastian nods at her and leaves the room with Dom in tow.
Sai stares at her sparse and tidy room. She’s not used to having a whole day off. Normally even her weekend afternoons are spent sparring with Dom.
She goes over her personal shields again, building and rebuilding around her mind, tightening the mortar. It’s like constructing a tightly woven brick wall, so she’s not sure what else she should call it. Every time she practices the exercise, she improves her defenses.
Recently she added outer defenses to the routine in the same way she builds walls for her mind. They’re not nearly as secure as they should be. Nothing like Bastian’s office protection. That’s a different type of reinforcement and requires a whole other level of concentration—concentration she can’t find right now.
Regardless of how much she tries to distract herself, all thoughts center back in on Bastian the night before. She should never have let him get that close, but he’d just made her so very angry and scared.
Sai looks at her fingers and flexes them while she fits the last brick in the protective shield around her room. Perfect.
Bastian was still a little weak when he visited. Maybe she could help him. Perhaps what she’s learned healing and shielding-wise will be of use in his recovery. Maybe even help others, normal people like her parents were.
With an energetic push up from her bed, she throws the door open, only to find Nimue there with her hand raised, about to knock on the now-open door.
“Nim?” Damn, had she really made her shields that tight? Sai checks, only to find Nimue is a tightly sealed block. “Are you okay?” she asks since the older girl hasn’t moved.
Nimue blushes a little. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting the door to open.”
“You seem shell-shocked.” Sai waits and realizes it’s probably rude not to invite someone into your room. “Want to come in?” She wonders if her reluctance shows.
Nimue smiles, and Sai’s stomach twists as the guilt starts to boil. How much can it hurt to be polite?
She motions for Nimue to sit on the spare bed while she takes a seat on her own, knees pulled up to her chin. “What’s up?”
Sai’s never really understood the mechanics of friendship and chatter. Until recently, she and Nimue hard hardly exchanged more than a few words. The other girl always had her own group of friends to hang around with and generally appeared to have a lot more fun than Sai ever did. Most people treated her like a leper, but Nimue had always smiled, always been upfront about how she reacted.
“Not much.” Nimue sits down on the bed with a frown and pats at the mattress. “Who is your roommate?”
“I don’t have a roommate.”
A sound like tiny cascading bells echoes through the room as Nimue laughs. “Lucky!”
Sai rocks a little, wondering why she doesn’t have one. “Yeah...”
For a few moments Nimue is quiet. She chews on a few strands of her dark brown hair. “I’ve always admired you, you know.”
“You have?” Sai’s tone is dubious despite her effort to sound neutral.
Nimue takes a deep breath and continues. “They used to call you a monster, but all I ever saw was someone who woke badly.”
“All I ever wanted was to be normal.” Sai says the words so softly she’s not even sure she said them out loud.
“Normal?”
Sai shrugs. “You know. Not psionic.”
To her surprise, Nimue laughs again, but this time the sound is more bitter than Sai ever thought it could be. Chills run down her back.
“Normal isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, Sai. My family was normal.” Nimue spits the word out like it’s tainted.
Sai stares at the girl, unsure of how to respond.
“Sorry.” Nimue leans back and takes a deep breath, her brow momentarily furrowed with shadows Sai can’t begin to fathom. “No one in my family is psionic. They didn’t know what to do with me, so when I awoke they gave me away.”
“Gave you away?” Sai isn’t sure it’s wise to let her know that, in order to be given away, someone had to sort of care where you ended up.
“Gave away. Swapped for a couple of years’ worth of my father’s wages.” Nimue looks down, and for a moment before she wipes her cheek, Sai is certain she sees tears.
“Did you know I woke badly?” Nimue’s voice is soft and tinged with sadness. “Worse than the majority of those people we schooled with, anyway. I maimed my babysitter and killed my cat. We were never sure how.”
“Maimed?” Sai can’t help herself.
“Sent her insane. She’s never been the same. They keep her at Saint George’s back in UC 17.” Nimue worries at her fingernails. “After that, GNW took me off my parents’ hands. I haven’t seen them since.”
Sai pauses for a moment, watching the other girl for her reaction. “I guess there are two sides to normal then.”
“You think?”
Sai nods, a half-smile spreading across her face at the veiled sarcasm in the other girl’s voice.
Nimue’s shoulders drop as she continues. “I can make people feel better. Soothe their fears and worries. Make them feel like everything is fine. Deign says I’ll fit in well here. Maybe I can make up for things...”
“That’s a feeling I know all too well.” Sai speaks softly, schooling her expression. Nimue is mentored by Deign? Talk about landing the higher-ups.
“I get so lonely around here. Even if they weren’t really my friends, I miss having people around me. Here...I feel alone.” Nimue pulls her arms together, clutching her knees while she studies the floor.
“I never really notice, to be honest. I like keeping to myself.”
“Yeah.” Nimue looks straight at her. “You always did.”
“Self-sufficient, that’s me,” Sai quips.
Nimue glances back down at the floor. “I wish I could be. Sometimes I feel so dependent.”
“You never came across that way, Nim, ever.” Sai leans back and stretches out her legs. “Tell you what. We could have breakfast together if you like? Lessen that loneliness early in the morning to hold you through the day?”
It’s a generous offer for Sai to make, and the way Nimue beams is an amazing reward. Maybe the worry in the pit of Sai’s stomach is indigestion.
“I’d like that. Thank you.” Nimue stands up and smoothes down the purple track pants that are part of her training uniform. They fall loosely on the lanky girl. “I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
“It’s okay.” Sai ushers her out of the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she shouts over her shoulder as she switches focus and jogs to Bastian’s quarters, a million questions inside her head.
Sai cringes at the sight of the doors when she arrives at Bastian’s rooms. She steps carefully around the twisted one, wondering how the other got fixed so quickly. Bastian is bent over several glowing panels in his desk, dark hair falling over his eyes. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him without that coat, if she doesn’t count seeing him in bed the previous night. Her cheeks flush.
“You know, I have one good door again. The least you could do is knock,” He says without lifting his head. “Dom is busy regaining energy so he can fix the other one.”
She interrupts him, curious. “I didn’t think dominos had to regenerate.”
“Not generally. This type of ability is different.” Bastian pauses, his fingers flying over the panels. “I’ll get the masons in to fix the rest.”
“Those walls are stone?” she blurts out, before clapping her hands over her mouth.
Bastian finally looks up. “Some, and a mix of concrete interspersed with metal reinforcements.” He watches her for a few seconds before continuing. “What’re you doing here? I don’t remember scheduling you.”
“You didn’t.” Now that she’s here, she can’t bring herself to say what she wants to. Surely he’s t
hought of fixing his Shine hangover through healing before. It’s stupid to think she can help him. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Sai. Stop.” His voice has that commanding quality to it, every bit as forceful as usual.
She stops and glowers at him.
“Tell me why you’re here. You’re not the sort of person to jog this far in order to say hi and leave.”
“It was stupid of me. I...” She takes a deep breath. “I thought I might be able to help you.”
“With?” He raises an eyebrow, waiting.
“Getting over that hangover.” She wiggles her fingers for emphasis.
“Oh,” he says and settles back into his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That’s an interesting thought. This dose seems to have gone sooner than I thought it would, but we could try it next time.”
“It might be worth a shot.” Sai kicks the toe of her shoe against the ground and tries to avoid his eyes.
“It’s not a bad idea. It’s a good one, just ill-timed right now. We can try next time.”
She looks over at him and nods, pushing down the anger at the need for a next time. “I’ll be going, then.”
“Wait.” He reaches forward and picks up one of the shining screens on his desk. The reader glints, reflecting the light from the windows. “Well done on your first mission. We’re cutting things a little close lately. You’ll be expected to do more fieldwork than I anticipated. I should know your next assignment in a day or two.”
“In the next day or two?” Sai takes a step back. “I’m still a student, though. What if these people realize I don’t really have authority?” What if they see through her pretense? What if they know making decisions terrifies her? What if she screws up? What if ...
“Stop it. Dammit, Sai. Get that chaotic thought process under control.” He rounds the table and grabs her shoulders. “Regardless of how well you build those shields, they crumble when you stress. You’re broadcasting distress to anyone with half a psionic gene. Control it!”
Sai pulls away, still able to feel the heat of his hands on her skin. “You’re hot!”
Bastian shrugs. “I have a high basal body temperature.”