by Theresa Kay
“Jace, you’re hurting me,” I say, resting my hand on top of his.
I’ve finally drawn his attention. Horror washes over his features. He shakes his head and yanks his hand back as if I’ve burned him. “No. No. No.” His head jerks to the side with each repetition. Faster than I thought possible, he leaps into a crouching position on the cot. He plasters his palms to his temples and grimaces as if in pain. “Make it stop.” He smacks his hands on his head. “Make it stop.” Again. “Make it stop.” And again. “Make it stop.”
I grab at his hands, but he shoves me away. I go tumbling into Lir, who keeps me upright.
“No!” Jace yells, pressing his back into the wall. His whole body jerks and twists, contorting into strange curled positions, as he mumbles something unintelligible under his breath over and over again. He doubles over, arms tightly wrapped around his stomach—
And finally, the contortions stop.
Then he screams—a ragged, screeching cry that barely sounds human. He’s ripping at his face, his throat, his hair. His nails leave bloody trails in his skin, and tufts of hair flutter down around him.
I’m frozen, bile rising in the back of my throat, my vision blurry with tears. All that’s keeping me upright is Lir’s steadfast presence behind me. I want to leave. I want to hide. But I can’t leave my brother alone with his suffering. I can’t bear to desert him again. Not like this.
There’s a commotion in the hallway. Words and voices I can’t make out. There’s nothing I can do to help Jace, but there is something that can stop his pain. At least for a little while.
“Gavin!” I choke out. “He needs more drugs. Please! Drug him.”
Much too long later, when Jace has nearly exhausted himself with screaming and crying and ripping and tearing, someone finally shoves a needle into his arm, and he collapses onto the cot.
I MANAGE TO MAKE IT back outside before I puke. I expected… I don’t know what I expected. But not that. Not that broken creature wearing Jace’s face that, unconsciously, was able to manipulate me without me noticing.
Lir gathers my hair and holds it away from my face as he rubs a hand over my back. “It will be okay,” he murmurs.
“Will it?” A harsh laugh makes its way from my chest. “Will it ever be okay? Will he ever be okay?” I swipe at my mouth with the back of my hand and shake my head. “How…? What…? How did he become… that so quickly? Did Jastren do that?”
“I don’t know.” Lir’s chin drops to his chest. “With your multiple enhancements, you and your brother are anomalies, unknowns. My best guess is that your brother has been using his abilities without the knowledge or training to do so. At the cost of his physical health. If he has also been trying to fight off Jastren’s influence, it could be that the conflicting thoughts and feelings…”
“Are eating his mind alive, ripping it apart until there’s nothing left,” I finish for him in a flat voice. “You said we would find a way to help him. Is there one?”
He refuses to meet my eyes. “I don’t know.”
I want to scream at him, to yell and rail against the unfairness of it all, but none of this is Lir’s fault. I curl my fingers into my palms. There was a moment there with Jace where he was almost… present. Those first few seconds of interaction when he told me not to cry for him. He’s still in there somewhere. There has to be a way to bring him back. And there is one person who might know what that way is.
“I’m going to see my dad.” I grab one of Lir’s hands and wait for him to meet my eyes. “I need to do it alone. At least this time. I’m—”
He places two fingers over my lips. “Do not apologize. I understand.”
Thank you. I let every bit of gratitude I’m feeling flow across to him. Closing my eyes, I lean forward and rest my head on his chest. For everything. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
He wraps his arms around my shoulders and hugs me. I am going to find Trel and make sure there’s nothing else she needs.
I pull out of his hold and press a kiss to his cheek. Okay. I’ll see you later.
I shoot him a wave as he rounds the corner and walks out of sight. My stomach is tied in knots and my hands are still shaky, but I push that all away. I have to do this. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? I run a hand over my face and set off down the street.
It isn’t until I walk a few blocks that I realize I have no idea where I’m going. I know the general area my dad’s house is in, and I vaguely remember Gavin pointing it out to me when we first arrived, but I don’t think knocking on random doors in a four-block radius would be helpful.
A uniform catches my eye—two soldiers on patrol walking down the street. They might know where my dad lives, or can direct me to someone who does.
“Excuse me.”
They ignore me and keep walking.
Louder this time. “Excuse me.”
No response.
“Hey!”
Finally they stop, and one of them turns to acknowledge me. Irritation is written on his face, but he forces a bland expression before speaking. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for… Dr. Mitchell. His house. Can you give me directions?”
The soldier looks me up and down and jerks his chin to the right. “Two blocks down and to the left. It’s white with blue shutters.”
“Thanks,” I say as I dash off down the street on my right.
And a couple of blocks later, there it is. My steps falter, and I slow to a stop.
What if he tells me there is no way to get Jace back? What if Jace will have to spend the rest of his life…?
No. I can’t think like that.
I slowly take the three steps up to the small porch. And I stand there. Doing nothing.
My hand is poised to knock, yet I can’t bring myself to do it. No matter what kind of resolve I felt yesterday, after seeing Jace, seeing what he’s become… the idea of making nice with Dad makes me feel like I’m betraying my brother. This man deserted me. He deserted Jace. If he’d stuck around, things would be so much different, and…
I don’t know if I can do this right now. I should just—
The door swings open. There stands my father, framed in the doorway and looking at me expectantly.
“Are you planning to stand out here all day?” he asks.
I thought out a million different speeches in my head on the way here, but right now not a single word of any of them sticks in my mind. My tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. I thought I was ready for this. I’m not.
The smile drops from his face, and many different emotions flicker in its place: sadness, regret, longing. He closes his eyes, brushing away everything he just showed me, then opens them again with a carefully blank expression. “Why don’t you come in, Jax?” He steps aside.
After a moment of debate, I enter. He shuts the door behind me and directs me to a den, where two big easy chairs sit in front of a fireplace. Cozy. His movements are slow, and he favors one side. The side he was shot on? He’s also a little pale and tired-looking, but he plasters an inane smile on his face.
I drop my eyes to my hands in my lap. “I saw him,” I say, the words working up from my throat slowly.
No response.
I glance up to find Dad staring at me with a look of utter confusion. “Jace,” I say. “He’s here. Locked up in that jail, or whatever it is. He’s not doing so well.”
Dad presses his lips together and looks at the floor. “I’m aware. I’m sorry.”
Silence fills the room, and the two of us sit there looking anywhere but at each other. I bite at my lower lip, searching for the words I need to ask the questions I came here to get answered. No words come. The fear over what the answers might be keeps my questions locked inside my chest. This was a stupid idea.
It’s Dad who finally speaks. “I’m glad you came,” he says. “I… I’ve been hoping you would stop by when you got back. There are so many things I have to apologize for, but I didn’t want to pressure you
into listening to me or meeting with me, or really anything at all. I know it’s up to you whether we can ever have a relationship again, but I wanted you to know that I want one. A relationship with you, that is.”
My eyebrows go up. This is… unexpected, but not exactly surprising. And no matter how much I try to shove it down, something like hope flares in my stomach. I loved him once. He is my father, after all. He raised me the first thirteen years of my life. But when it came down to it…
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut.
“And Jace?” I ask in a quietly controlled voice.
“What about him?” Despite the word choice, the question isn’t nonchalant, but it is cautious, and that’s not what I needed to hear to keep my temper in check.
“Do you want a relationship with him too, or are you planning on letting him spend the rest of his life drugged and insane?” The words are sharp, and they hit their target well.
He sits back in his chair, a stunned look on his face. “I… I don’t know how to answer that.”
“It’s simple, really. Lir said you showed very little concern for Jace’s situation when you were in the city. Almost as if you knew what was going on and did nothing.” I lean forward. “Since Matt was somehow reporting to you, I think Lir’s assumption is correct. You knew what Dane was doing and you just let him do it. You let him take Jace. The way I see it, Jace is locked up going crazy right now because you sat by and did nothing. And now you want a relationship with me? Why should I trust you?”
Instead of answering, he sits there and stares at me. He opens his mouth a couple of times but closes it again before speaking. Finally, he shakes his head and lets his shoulders fall. He looks away.
“By the time I knew the full extent of it, there was nothing I could do for him,” he says in a quiet, broken voice. “I thought… Well, I guess it doesn’t matter much what I thought. But if I’d known Jastren was involved, I would have done something. I don’t know what, but I would have done something.”
I have no response to that, so I wait for him to continue.
His eyes are far away now. Lost in memories? Lost in regrets? “You two were my bright lights in this world. If I had brought you here with me, you both would have grown up in a laboratory, nothing more than test subjects. That was the last thing I wanted for you. I thought I was doing what was best for both of you. At least now you have a chance, you have a life…”
“A life? Is that what you call it? There’s a war brewing, and me and Jace are pawns for opposing sides. It’s only by pure luck—or divine intervention, if that’s what you want to call Peter’s rescue mission—that Jace is here instead of somewhere Jastren can pit us against each other.”
If possible, Dad’s shoulders slump even more. “I should have been there.”
“Hell yeah you should have.”
His hazel eyes come up to meet mine. The defeat and regret evident in their depths knocks some of the power out of my anger, but not all of it.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll try. I can give you at least that much.”
“Thank you,” he whispers.
We’re back to studying each other in silence. He’s aged since he left us. The lines around his mouth are deeper, and there’s gray sprinkled through his hair. He’s frailer too, smaller somehow, as if he’s shrunk. It could be I’ve gotten bigger, but I think it’s more like he lost that larger-than-life quality I used to assign to him when he was… well, when he was my dad instead of this near stranger who let my brother down in the biggest way imaginable.
I let out a long breath and steel myself for the rest of the conversation we need to have. Bonding time is over. It’s time to get what I came for: answers.
“Is there a way to get him back? Jace, I mean.”
“Maybe.” He stares down at his hands. “I… I don’t know. I’d need to examine him more closely. There are tests I could do. I’d have to find a way to block the shikiza. He’s not strong enough to undergo the emhasin, and I don’t know if it would work even if he was. I haven’t had the opportunity to do much research on hybrids, and the samples I’ve worked with are from unenhanced E’rikon.”
“Examine me then. Take samples from me. If you can figure something out… then you can try with Jace.”
He flinches. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want for you.”
“What you want doesn’t matter right now.”
“You’re right.” He looks up, then immediately back down at his hands. “I could get started this afternoon if… if you want to meet me at my lab later.”
“I’m supposed to train with… Never mind. Is four okay?”
“Sure.”
Silence descends again.
“So,” I say after a bit. “You said you’d have to find a way to block the shikiza. What about the other enhancements? From what Lir has said, just the fact that Jace and I have multiple enhancements is dangerous to us and could be why we’re… unstable.”
Dad frowns. “You’re not unstable. Well, not like you mean, I don’t think. Your mother had multiple enhancements, and she was fine. However, the shikiza never manifested in her. That’s the dangerous one. Obviously she passed it down, so it was still in her genetic code, but…” He sighs. “Yes, to the E’rikon the idea of multiple enhancements is unheard of—or should I say, to the E’rikon you know. At one time the enhancements occurred naturally, and it was somewhat common to have two or three low-level ones. Most of the enhancements the E’rikon have now are at least somewhat similar to the natural ones, but not the shikiza. Especially not as Jastren has twisted it to fit his needs.”
“Trel told me the Council placed restrictions on the enhancements. If it’s so dangerous, and apparently unnatural, why wasn’t the shikiza outlawed or something?”
Dad pinches the bridge of his nose. “I wouldn’t call it a restriction exactly. It wasn’t until those from the lower castes developed stronger natural abilities that the Council took steps to regulate them. Their solution was to find a way to keep the stronger abilities within the upper classes. Jastren’s family—this was a few great-grandmothers up the line—was the one tasked with creating the method of doing that. They developed the kitus and the first of the artificial enhancements, as well as the technology to strip abilities away.”
“But I thought…”
“They always had kitus? Nope. Those were a creation of the Reva scientists. They were originally supposed to only regulate the enhancements, but over a couple generations, the E’rikon became biologically dependent on them, and even their natural telepathic abilities became tied into the kitus.”
“So Lir…”
“Will not be able to communicate with any of the other E’rikon in the city telepathically unless his kitu can be repaired.”
“But I was able to communicate with his little sister, and she doesn’t have a kitu.”
Dad shrugs. “I don’t know if that’s because of what you are, because she’s never had a kitu, or because of some other reason.” Another sigh, and he picks up from before I interrupted him. “The kitus eventually became more trouble than they were worth. The E’rikon were dependent on them, and the metal ore used to make the kitus and the other biological interfaces the E’rikon use is unique to Rikonos.” He lets out a sardonic chuckle. “Your grandmother, Tess, told me a lot about the E’rikon. Both good and bad. They like to pretend to be all high and mighty, but they destroyed their own planet much like we did. They mined the hell out of it for that metal ore, and that didn’t do their planet any favors. As the planet deteriorated, people began speaking out against the enhancements, against the castes, against a lot of things. The major family lines had been in power for what must have been centuries, and none of this was going over well with them.”
I forgot how much Dad tends to go on and on about a subject, and I’m fighting the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t ask for a history lesson—I just want answers. “If there’s a point to all this, maybe you cou
ld get to it?”
Dad chuckles. “Still impatient as ever, I see. I’ll try to stick to the important parts.” He takes a deep breath. “The Revas weren’t one of the major family lines, but they controlled the science behind the enhancements and the kitus, so they pretty much had free rein in developing their own line’s enhancement—the shikiza. That’s how they got it past the Council in the first place. But eventually the Council decided that freedom had made the Revas, and Jastren in particular, a little… uppity. They stripped him of his abilities and shipped his bondmate here to Earth.”
“That’s—”
“Don’t feel bad for him. Your grandmother was happy to be away from him. Not all bonds are… well matched, and theirs was nothing like what you have with Lir. Jastren was never a nice person, and when they performed the emhasin he became even worse. His main focus became bringing down the Council and those elite family lines who were a part of it.”
“So the Revas were allowed the shikiza because they controlled the science behind it, but you said the other day that Jastren’s shikiza was stronger than normal—that he somehow enhanced himself. Wouldn’t someone have noticed if Jastren was experimenting with that type of thing back in the city?”
Dad lets out a soft chuckle. “The E’rikon and the Council members in particular are nothing if not arrogant. Jastren was the last of the Reva line. Regardless of how the Council felt about him or what they had done to him, they still wanted to make use of his scientific knowledge. So they gave him a lab. It never even occurred to them that this shamed lower-caste E’rikon who had undergone emhasin could possibly decide to work against them instead of for them.”
“Okay,” I say, “so he got his enhancement back. And he attacked the city because he wants revenge. But why is he so focused on hybrids?”
Dad sucks in a breath through his teeth and shakes his head. “I don’t know for sure, but my best guess is he needs a hybrid with the ability to counteract the new, more powerful shikiza he created in himself. There is an enhancement that—”