by Maura Milan
Brinn’s eyes widened as the blood drained from her face. No, please no. She combed her fingers through her hair. She had touched up her roots the morning of her flight, but was it possible that she had missed a few blue strands?
But then Cammo laughed. “It’s sticking up.”
“Oh.” She let out a sigh, silently cursing herself for letting her guard down with Angie. “I slept a lot on the flight so…” She retied her ponytail, trying to smooth any stray strands behind her ears.
Liam angled his head, watching her. “You missed a piece.”
He reached a hand to the top of her head, and she stiffened, her eyes focusing on the deck as he gently pulled a stubborn piece back into its place.
“There,” he said.
She cleared her throat, but even so, her voice stumbled upon itself when she spoke. “Thanks.”
“Attention,” one of the Second Years ordered. And immediately everyone looked to the stage. Five instructors filed onto the platform and stopped in a line behind the podium.
One of them, a ruddy-faced man dressed in a three-piece suit stepped up to the microphone at the center of the stage.
Before he could say anything, the Second Years clapped their hands to their sides.
“Attention!” Their collective voices echoed through the flight deck as they synced up their salute. The first-year cadets followed their lead. As if they belonged to one mind and one body, they stood straight, their fists pressed against their hearts.
The man took off his glasses and began polishing them. “Good evening. I am Marik Jolinksy, your history professor. I know that you all must be tired from your travels, but the headmaster is running late with a prior engagement. If you could just wait for one…”
Just then, a sharp whirr buzzed from the far end of the flight deck where a vertical rail jutted upward, its gears activating as the platform lowered.
“Ah, there he is,” Professor Jolinsky announced, balancing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. Everyone, including the staff, turned their heads to the cargo elevator as it settled with a deep metallic thud. The doors slid open, revealing the headmaster standing in the center of the lift.
Brinn had researched him before her arrival. Headmaster Bastian Weathers was a celebrated Commonwealth scientist, notable for his work in dimensional and multi-universal physics. Behind him was a young man who Brinn guessed was another member of the Aphelion teaching staff.
And then…
“Holy Deus,” Brinn whispered under her breath.
Time stopped the instant she saw her. Even though the skin on the girl’s cheek was bruised and her eyes were bloodshot, Brinn recognized that face.
Ia Cōcha.
The cadets, who had been of one body and mind, had broken from their salutes, fists off their hearts and mouths open, murmuring in unspoken terror. Their whispers swelled to a shattering panic, like waves feeding a tsunami.
Liam looked over at Brinn. “What the mif is that criminal doing here?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered as the headmaster led Ia Cōcha onto the stage. He approached the microphone, his expression cool and calm.
“Simmer down. There is no reason to panic. Ms. Cōcha will be studying here from now on.”
Brinn’s jaw went slack. Around her, everyone had started to inch back, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the most wanted criminal in all the Commonwealth. “We came here to catch people like her, not work with them,” she heard someone grumble in the row behind her. Anger and betrayal swelled through the crowd, and a girl near Brinn burst into tears.
“I understand you may all be concerned, but from now on, we are all fighting on the same side. I expect you to treat your colleagues with respect. And I mean everyone.” The headmaster’s hand opened to gesture at Ia Cōcha, who was eyeing them all like a vulture at carrion.
Everyone was too busy avoiding her gaze. No one else realized Ia Cōcha had already freed herself from her handcuffs.
CHAPTER 7
IA
THE HYDRAULICS on the locking mechanism hissed, and the cuffs dropped to the floor. Ia was free.
She looked up as one of the guards pointed his energy pistol straight at her. With a swift kick, she knocked the weapon out of his hands, and it slid far out of reach. She quick-stepped forward, grabbing the guard by the neck, then swung him into the other guard who was barreling toward her. The two of them toppled to the ground. Ia quickly snatched a knife and a grenade from one of their packs.
Screams echoed around her. The cadets crowded together, eager to veer out of her way. But before she could take off running, she caught a flash of movement and felt someone’s shoulder buried deep in her side. Ia crashed to the deck, so hard the impact rattled her lungs. She rubbed at her rib cage, growling at the person who’d attacked her. It was the flight master.
In the distance, she saw the headmaster stare at them. “Knives! Apprehend her at once.”
Ia’s lips quirked. “Knives, huh? What is that? Some sort of nickname?”
“Knives is my real name,” he said, then pounced toward her. She rolled out of his way. All the while, she sized him up, watching his reflexes. The lazy slump in his shoulders was gone, replaced with quick shifts of movement—from the balanced angle of his feet to the flexed muscles of his arms, waiting to react to whatever move she would make. He was more agile than she had thought he would be. And by the dogged look in his cold, blue eyes, she knew he wasn’t going to back off. She would have loved to go up against him in the battlefield, but not today. Instead, she pulled the pin off the grenade she’d nicked and flung it at his feet.
It exploded, not with fire, but with plumes of smoke, thick enough to shroud their eyes. It wasn’t lethal, but it gave her more than enough cover to buy some time. There had to be a way out somewhere. The starjets were locked up above. It would take too long for her to steal one. So she ran, her boots hitting hard against the pavement. She couldn’t see ahead, but she followed the yellow lines painted on the tarmac until she felt the ice-chilled air from outside whip toward her face.
An exit.
Ia stopped at the edge of the runway, surveying the outside world. Snow cascaded from high peaks, swirling through the gap before her. This place was built into a mountain, which meant the only way out was down into a rocky chasm. She wouldn’t survive a fall from this height.
Behind her, the flight master charged through the clearing smoke. He would be upon her in seconds. He’d wrestle her to the deck or use that damn silver orb to stop her heart and end her life.
She didn’t like those options.
If today was the day she was going to die, she would meet Deus on her own terms. Her eyes sharpened into focus, and she took her mark. Her muscles activated all at once, and she ran like hell to the end of the runway, where the sky opened up and the world was once again a large and beautiful place.
With arms wide open, she jumped.
As she plummeted, Ia screamed with glee, the sound echoing through the icy chasm. The cold air bristled bitterly against her face, but she kept her eyes open. She squinted her left eye until she heard the soft buzz of her eye mod activating. Numbers rushed across her vision, calculating the depths of the chasm.
1,045 meters.
Mif, that’s deep, she thought.
It also meant she still had time.
As Ia fell, she twisted her body to face the mountain and unsheathed the knife she had stolen. With both hands, she plunged it straight into the thick layer of ice and snow blanketing the mountainside. The knife dug through the thick layer of ice, slowing down her fall. The vibration shook through her, creating a sharp ache from her fingers to her forearms. Her arms were too drained of strength to hold on for much longer.
She scanned the white expanse around her.
There. Her eye mod anchored onto a small cliff about three paces long. It wasn’t big, but it would do. A number flashed before her. 20 meters.
Ia brought her legs up,
kicking off the side of the mountain. She dove, arms clapped straight along her sides as she aimed for that tiny ledge. The wind cascaded across the skin of her suit as her body sliced through the chasm. Her left eye counted down the distance 15m. 10m. 5m.
She raised her arms over her head and tucked in her knees. Then, contact. She hit the ground, the impact crashing into her bones. She curled her body into a ball and rolled to keep her joints from shattering.
She made it. But there was no time to pat herself on the back. Like a cat, she was back up on her feet.
And then a voice called out to her. “You shouldn’t have run.”
Above her, through the swirling snowfall, she saw those same cold, blue eyes trained on her again. Ia glanced at the contraption Knives wore on his back.
Great. A windpack.
Knives soared down toward her, expertly navigating the gusts of the chasm, and landed nimbly on the ground before her. He tapped the button in the middle of his chest, turning off the fans on his pack, and raised a pistol at her. At this range, he’d hit her where he aimed. Right through her skull.
Ia sized him up. The only option she had was to fight him, and she was going to make sure she was the only one left standing.
She charged.
Knives fired his pistol. Ia dodged low, then lunged upward toward his chest, her blade slicing at his face. The flight master blocked her attack and grabbed her arm, trying to wrestle the knife out of her grip. Ia twisted her body, twirling out of his grasp, and kicked him in the back of his knee. He stumbled forward, out of control on the ice underneath his feet. His arms scrambled outward as he fell over the edge. Out of Deus’s good graces, he managed to grab hold of the rocky ledge of the cliff.
Ia walked toward him, her stride regaining her usual confidence. Towering over him, she stared down at the boy’s face, now red and strained with effort. Right now, he was barely a threat. Hell, he’d never been one to begin with.
She crouched down. Her fingers flew to the windpack’s locking mechanism near the back of his neck, and with a beep, it unlatched. She slipped the windpack off him and placed it around her chest. At this point, she could have pressed her heel against his fingers until he simply let go.
But she wasn’t finished with him. Not yet.
Maintaining a safe distance, she lowered herself into a stable stance as she reached over the cliffside, patting down his flight suit for a certain silver tracker.
She knew she was being ridiculously daring right now, but sometimes you had to do stupid things to survive. Beside her, Knives grunted, making no move to pull her over; he was too focused on keeping himself alive.
“Where is it?” she asked, her tone almost frantic. Her hands dove into his chest pocket, and she finally felt the smooth, curved metal against her fingertips. She snatched it out, looking at the silver device in her hands. Her fingers, now trembling, closed around it to keep it safe.
With the tracker in her possession, her fate was no longer set in stone. It had become a moldable, wonderful thing. Her eyes squinted through the wind. She needed to find a path through the converging gusts of wind above.
“You won’t make it,” Knives said. “The competing jet streams will knock you right into the rock wall. You’ll die.”
Ia laughed, her voice once again filled with the braggadocio of her old self. “I cleared the Harix Corridor in fifteen seconds. I can manage.” She held her hand up in a lazy goodbye.
“Only fifteen seconds?” he taunted. “I know someone who flew that same corridor in ten.”
“You’re full of mung,” she said, turning away, immediately dismissing his claims. The Harix Corridor was filled with enough asteroids to tear a jet into a hundred pieces; it took skillful maneuvering to cross that safely. She was unmatched in that department. She didn’t have to prove it to him. Ia was walking off, ready to disappear, when harsh laughter filled the chasm.
“Or maybe”—his voice bit through the wind—“you’re not as good as you think you are.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, her pride flaring from the depths of her being. “Do you know who you’re talking to? I am Ia Cōcha. Blood Wolf of the goddamn Sky, Sovereign of…”
She turned around, startled to find the flight master in front of her. He’d climbed off that ledge when her back was turned.
His hand swiped forward, slamming something into the side of her throat. What was it? A knife? But there was no blood. She felt her mind slipping, and her thoughts grew muffled. Run away, run away, she told herself. But soon she couldn’t even recognize the words tumbling through her head.
Something wasn’t right.
Her eyes fluttered hazily. She slumped to the icy floor and saw what was gripped in his hand. Not a knife, but a syringe.
What a clever boy, a clever boy with the cold, blue eyes of Neptune.
“You’re smarter than he said you’d be,” she said, her voice slurring. She tried to hold on to reality, but the drugs were singing sweet lullabies into her ear, and her thoughts became a wonderful mess that soon simmered down, down, down into black.
CHAPTER 8
KNIVES
KNIVES CROUCHED over the girl, her body curled into the snow like a brushstroke. She was rambling. Something about how she wanted to go home. And about a brother who’d shoot and maim him. And how she really wanted some peanut butter.
She pushed at Knives’s cheek gently. “Dummy,” she whispered at him. Then, finally, she was out cold. Knives stood over her, waiting for any sign of consciousness. He tapped her in the center of her forehead. Nothing.
Thank Deus. He’d thought she would never shut up.
Knives pried the silver tracker from her slack fingers, returning it to a more secure chest pocket on his suit, then slipped his windpack off her and readjusted it over his shoulders. He gathered her in his arms, and with a push of a button, they were in the air. It took him a while to adjust to the additional weight, but after a few seconds, he figured out his balance. For a small girl, she was remarkably heavy.
As they rose through the chasm, the wind whipped her black hair back and forth like a tempest. Why didn’t she tie it back like all the other female cadets? But she was different from the others. Not by appearance alone, but by the fierceness of her will. This girl was…
Before he could place the word, her head rolled so her cheek nestled close to his chest. Knives glanced at her to see if she was still asleep. It was meant to be a quick peek. Once he saw her eyes were still closed, he should have looked away to focus his attention on navigating the wind. But he found himself staring. And as he continued his flight up the mountain, he kept telling himself that this was the face of Ia Cōcha, the most dangerous criminal in all the galaxies.
He finally figured out the right word to describe her.
That girl was trouble. Big trouble.
“Good work, Knives,” Bastian called, waiting on the runway with a slew of guards. The cadets had been cleared from the tarmac.
“This is way above my pay grade,” Knives said, glaring at the headmaster over Ia’s limp frame.
Bastian peered at the girl in Knives’s arms. “Is she conscious?”
Knives shook his head. “Out like a light.”
“Take her to the private med bay,” Bastian said. He waved for the two guards that had accompanied them at Ia’s drop-off to follow behind him.
Knives walked out of the flight deck and into the main corridor that led to the academy campus. He took a roundabout way to the private med bay, trying to stay away from the classrooms and the canteen so the other cadets wouldn’t see them.
The private med bay was meant for highly invasive procedures. Surgeries and amputations—something that never happened on Aphelion, at least not since the war reached armistice. Because the bay had a sealed-off, fully sterile room, it was the perfect place to keep Ia until she regained consciousness.
Once he passed the Archive library, Knives stepped through the entrance to the private med bay, the bluish UV l
ights above causing him to squint in the brightness. The two guards trailed in after him.
A med borg, female like all the other medical borgs at the academy, stood waiting with a pleasant smile at the door of the operating room.
“Open the door,” he told her.
“You Need To Change Into A Med Suit For The Sterile Environment,” her voice said lightly, each word its own steady syncopation.
“There’s no time for that,” Knives said sternly. “Just open it.”
The med borg pressed her hand against the sensor, and the door slid open. A rush of sterilizing air blew out at him, tossing his blond hair back and forth. He located the bed in the center of the room and set Ia down lightly. Knives rolled his shoulders, wincing at the ache in his muscles. Not from carrying her, but from the beating he’d taken from her back on the mountainside.
He watched her body rise and fall slightly as she breathed in and out. How could such a small girl pack such an intense punch?
His eyes went to her hands, delicate when relaxed, but then he noticed her fingers, specifically the tip of her thumb. He grabbed her hand in his, rotating her thumb from side to side. There was a patch of raised skin, like it had been grafted on. He felt the tip, and unlike real skin, it was spongy to the touch. So this was how she got out of those cuffs.
He turned back to the med borg.
“She has some foreign material on her fingertips,” Knives told her. “Extract it.”
The med borg nodded. “Anything Else?”
“No, just let her rest,” Knives said as he made his way back to the doorway.
“And what about us, sir?” Aaron, one of the guards, asked.
“Keep watch over her,” Knives said. “I really don’t want to be jumping off a cliff to chase after her again anytime soon.”
Aaron nodded stiffly, his pronounced manner very typical of a borg. He was a new prototype, an advanced model with an evolved AI and enhanced physical detailing. The epidermal textile used for his skin was more elastic than the other models, pocked with tiny pores to give the skin its realistic appearance.