by Hanna, K. T.
“What did you do to her?” Marlene turns accusatory eyes on Dom.
“Nothing. She got a message from Bastian. I have to go take care of it.” He turns to leave, but pauses and adds, “I’ll be back soon.”
Picking up his stride, he heads straight for the cargo bay. That Bastian could reach out to her sends a surge of relief through him. The tone, the word choices, everything—they’re all linked to memories that flicker by randomly as Dom heads to the loading area. It’s filled with people when he arrives, organizing wreckage pieces.
“Out. Now.” Dom says the words with a quiet, commanding force behind them and watches as people scatter. Left under-plating? He turns around and finds one of the crawlway openings used for maintenance. Dom doesn’t understand why they didn’t just destroy Alpha, but Bastian alluded to them wanting to tap into the tracking system and locate the rest of the Exiled fleet. At least that lets Dom know exactly where the tracker will be located. He wonders how his friend found out, or failing that, how Bastian managed to project his thoughts this far.
There’s a strange new undercurrent to the hum the Mobile makes as they move. Its age is starting to show. Everything is wearing out here in this heated wasteland.
Dom pushes forward, focusing his hearing for anything else out of sync. Finally, as he approaches the left steering column, he hears it. A slightly out of sync ticking that no one would notice if they weren’t looking for it. The small device sits directly on the column, placed in close proximity to the Exiled tracking center, tapping into the location code of every vehicle. Given enough time, they could trace its patterns and locate all of them at once.
Its tiny light is barely visible. He reaches out and hesitates. It’s probably gathering all sorts of information. It’s just like them to be ruthlessly methodical and seek to wipe out the Exiled in one guaranteed swoop. Surely they didn’t just set it as a tracker?
Glancing around, he switches through his visual modes to seek out any attached wires, but there’s nothing, just the tiny, blipping device sending their signal to the enemy. He maneuvers around, bracing himself on either side of the shaft, and barely avoids the steering column. Careful not to crush the tracker, he has an idea as he plucks it from its perch. The adhesive only gives him minor resistance.
Back in the cargo bay, Mason stands at the door and raises an eyebrow. But Dom shakes his head and continues to one of the benches. Opening one of the overhead compartments, he pulls out a small capsule that they use for sending items to other nearby mobiles. It’s not ideal, but it works in a pinch. He opens the ramp slightly, pops the tracker inside the little pod and clicks the wings out. Setting it down, he activates its evasive maneuver switch, which really only means it’ll zig and zag until it runs out of power, and then sets it loose.
“What was that?” Mason asks, his tone weary.
“Didn’t Sai tell you?”
He shakes his head. “They had to give her a mild sedative.”
Dom raises an eyebrow. “Bastian warned us there was a tracker on board.” He taps his head at Mason’s disbelieving stare.
Mason smiles softly. “Trust my brother to think of others even while in prison.”
“It’s why he was the perfect teacher for Sai. They’re similar in many ways.”
“True. I’ll let Mathur know.” He hesitates. “He really spoke into her mind? You could tell it was him?”
Dom nods. “It appears he’s captive, but alive. Well, even.”
“Join us when you can.” Mason glances away from Dom, a tug of sadness in his expression. He doesn’t even look up as Dom veers back toward the infirmary.
Sai is sleeping when Dom steps back into the tiny cubicle. The hollows under her eyes are so sunken they seem bruised. In the short space of time he was gone, she’s visibly wilted.
“She’s not recovering as quickly as she usually does.” Marlene’s voice holds a bitter tone. Dom peers at her. Her blonde curls aren’t as well-manicured as usual, and a small frown mars her usually professional expression.
“I’m quite sure she didn’t do anything close to what she usually does.”
“How sure?” Marlene turns to him, her eyes suddenly intense.
Dom glances back to the bed. “Positive.”
The nurse sighs and steps to the small opening in the curtains. “Aishke is recovering at a much better rate. She’ll probably be more coherent than Sai sooner.” With a nod, she leaves.
Dom moves to stand next to the bed, steadying himself on the tiny side table. It’s cluttered with all manner of things—bandages, fresh gauze, a sterilization device. Living as an Exiled isn’t anti-tech, but they don’t have the convenience of prepackaging. Here they have to grow what they eat and reuse what they can.
He focuses on the sterilizer and goes over the events leading to here. Zach’s trap, Bastian’s capture, the Damascus leaving Alpha whole… Something doesn’t click, and he can’t tell why. Maybe it’s time to talk to Mathur.
“Dom?” Slender fingers brush the side of his arm, and he looks down at the bed, startled.
Sai’s eyes blink open in the dim light of the room. Tears sit, waiting to be shed. Without a second thought, he bends down and gathers her in a hug. She clings to his neck with one arm, like she’ll never let go.
“Is she really… Is she dead?” Her words gurgle a little as she breathes them into his shoulder, as if she’s choking back the tears. He nods, not trusting himself to speak.
And then he holds her while the sobs wrack her frame, wishing he could cry with her.
The punching bag bounces, barely missing Sai’s face as she dances lightly around it on the balls of her feet. It’s not going to hit her. She never lets it. The jiggle of the support as it rebounds back and forth pushes her adrenaline forward, makes her move in synch and feel like maybe this time she’ll be fast enough.
Like she wasn’t for Iria.
Like she keeps failing to be for Bastian.
Her eyebrows fail her, and sweat pours over them, momentarily blinding her. It runs down her back, soaking through her shirt and spattering onto the ground. The skylight illuminates the dark spots on the mats, as if thirsting for the rarely occurring rainfalls. She ducks wildly, knowing the rebound should be close, but no thud makes contact with her skin.
“Trying to hit yourself in the face won’t bring her back.” Aishke’s quiet voice breaks through the silence as Sai blinks her eyes open.
The irritation rising in her throat flees as quickly as it arrived at the sight of Aishke’s expression. “I know,” is all Sai says instead of the tirade balancing precariously on her tongue. Out of everyone, Aishke was there. And Sai owes Ash for everything the girl let her take from her.
So she takes a deep breath as the bag swings back to rest and speaks softly, watching the chain sway. “I needed to deal with everything.”
“And you do this by hitting things?” Not even Aishke’s normal sting accompanies the quip. Instead it falls flat, like the sweat on the mats between them.
“I deal by…” But there’s nothing to say. Aishke is right—Sai isn’t dealing. She’s denying. “Are you ready to practice?”
Avoidance is definitely easier.
Aishke glares at her for a moment, her pale eyes such a contrast to her skin they almost glow. “Fine.” Her shoulders tense as she sits down cross-legged on the floor next to the now-still punching bag. “I don’t know why we have to do this. We can obviously use it when necessary…” She glances away, biting her lip.
Sai watches her, the rapid pace of her chest rising and falling, the way tears start to form in the corners of her eyes but are banished each time she gulps. “Ash? Are you okay?” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she knows they’re the wrong thing to say.
“No.” But Ash still won’t look at Sai. “I’m really not. I don’t know how you can go on like this, how you can be so blasé. She’s gone.”
This time Sai’s the one to glance away. Because she knows Iria is gone, knows it
with such a soul-wrenching weariness that it hurts every time she thinks of it. Knows it so well, so intimately that she can still feel the blood pouring from the wound, the flesh and veins refusing to knit back together. All this power, all this healing at her fingertips, and Sai couldn’t save her friend. It’s painful to think of, easy to feel those tears push back to the surface.
But there are other people relying on her. People like Bastian who are stuck in place, who need her help to get them out, to set them free.
So, for the thousandth time since she woke up, Sai bites back the tears and sucks them down. She ties off the emotion viciously and stashes it away. Right now, she has to make sure no one else dies at the hand of the GNW and, more importantly, that no one else dies because she wasn’t well enough prepared.
Sai joins Aishke, matching her pose before taking a deep breath. “I’m prioritizing. Grieving can’t help us right now. There’ll be time to lick our wounds when everything is over.” She leans forward and grips Aishke’s hands gently, squeezing them with all the reassurance she can manage.
The younger girl meets her eyes, fresh tears sparkling at the corners. “Damn you and your logic.” But her hands squeeze back, almost like they’re clinging, and for a few moments they just sit there, lending strength to each other.
“You up for this?” Sai asks, more gently this time.
“Just like the last three days—yes.” Some of Aishke’s usual fire is back. It’s refreshing.
Sai closes her eyes and digs down deep, casting out her mind to find Aishke. It’s so much easier now, just a second, a thought, a whim even. She knows the essence of her friend, its silken, almost deadly texture. Aishke is like a bomb—best handled by someone who knows what they’re doing. Her power is shy and jaded, wary of anything and easily set off, but it knows Sai now. After a few days of practice, it’s nothing like it was that night with the attack. Nothing like the sheer desperation of throwing anything and everything at the things that killed Iria.
For a breath, Sai’s resolve wavers and she loses the thread.
“Maybe you’re not up for it right now?” Aishke’s tone is gentle, and Sai opens her eyes to peer at her.
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” More right than she likes to admit.
Mathur’s lab is full when Sai gets there, with barely enough room for her to perch on her usual chair hidden away in the corner. On the upside, there’s enough going on that being left alone with her thoughts isn’t even an option. She runs over Bastian’s conversation in her head yet again. Something is off, but she can’t think what. While it was him, he was definitely withholding something.
Jeffries, Mathur, and Dom huddle around the dominos, frowns on their faces. Mason watches them, the skin on his face so loose Sai thinks that if she reaches out she could pull at it. Such a change in the last six months. Even the twitch at his left eyelid, his tell that he’s using his psionics, is more pronounced. She frowns, too—he shouldn’t be using at all in his current state.
“What do you think?” Mathur smiles tiredly and places a hand briefly on her shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. “They are coming along, yes?”
“Almost there?” Sai lets herself relax just for a second. Mathur’s enthusiasm has always been infectious. “I think it’s close. They feel almost right?” She scrunches up her nose and shrugs. “I’m not sure that makes any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.” He moves across to supervise whatever it is Dom and Jeffries are doing. Their heads bob over the prone domino on the examination table.
Sai worries at her lip while she watches them, flexing her feet and rising to the tips of her toes. Her legs have this strange flawlessness about them. Sometimes she forgets they’re made of the same adrium the dominos are. They often feel energized, even when she’s tired. There are times where the joining flesh aches and other times where it rubs raw and headaches are more frequent now. Jeffries seems quite certain that’s from the synaptic connections and wants her to monitor it while taking it as easy as she can.
Mason claps his hands as Aishke walks into the room, pulling Sai out of her thoughts. “We’re all here.”
Sai thinks there’s a slight rasp to his voice that wasn’t there before, and she watches him closely as Aishke huddles in the corner with her. His health is still deteriorating, even if it’s visibly slowed. Bastian’s capture must be wearing on him, too. It has to be; it’s all she can do to stop herself from forgetting everything else to go and retrieve him. For Mason? It must be agonizing.
He clears his throat, and even Dom stops tinkering with his sibling. “While we’ve lost our best line of communication with Bastian due to his…current predicament—” There’s a tightening of the lines around Mason’s eyes, and Sai can’t tell if it’s a grimace or a half-smile. “—it seems that he can, in times of dire need, reach out through psionic power.”
Jeffries perks up at that. “I know he warned Sai, but hasn’t he been dulling his power for years with Shine?”
Dom nods. “He’s been overdoing it, but his system has built up such an immunity that he has to. The other effects of the drug can leave him woozy but are having less of an impact on his psionic strength.”
“You’re a doctor now?” Jeffries smiles as he says the words, but Dom doesn’t.
Instead, the domino straightens and crosses his arms. “No, but I’ve seen how it affected him up close.”
Jeffries looks away with a sigh. “I’m just wondering how much he can help us without putting himself in more danger. I’m sick and tired of burying our friends.”
“We’re going to bury a lot more people before this is over.” Sai pushes her hair back from her shoulder. “It could be you, it could be me, it could be a whole lot of us.” She can feel Dom’s eyes rest on her, their weight somewhat of a comfort in her new found clarity. “None of this is guaranteed. War isn’t pretty.” She sits down, her energy sapped and her legs heavier than usual.
Aishke reaches over and squeezes Sai’s hand. The sudden warmth is welcome.
“She is right.” Mathur sounds as tired as he looks and doesn’t bother to stand. It’s painful to hear the sadness in his voice. “Many of us will die, maybe even all of us. But we will do everything we can to avoid this. Mason?”
“We have to assume that, with Bastian out of the picture, Zach has inserted himself closer to Deign. He’s dangerous. All he wants is more power for himself, and he’s never considered any actions he takes past that factor. If what intel Garr has been able to gather and smuggle to us is correct, he’s begun taking charge of the Damascus contingent. Our intel is less reliable because of the distance between the GNW and our other sources.”
“How badly did Bastian get caught?” Jeffries can’t keep the scowl off his face.
“I’m not sure.” Dom pauses for a moment. “I mean, he stuck to his reasoning. His walls are second to none. I doubt they’ll get the truth out of him easily.”
“His reasoning?” Jeffries raises an eyebrow.
“The Damascus are a threat to us all and need to be turned off sooner rather than later. If they take this at face value, which Deign likely will, he was acting in the interests of the GNW.”
Jeffries frowns. “What about Zach?”
Dom shakes his head. “His only problem with Zach will be Zach getting a read of his real power. I’m not sure they’ll be dosing him with enough Shine to get past his built-up immunity. Hopefully it’ll be enough.”
“His only problem?” Aishke’s voice is soft, but the tone is slightly more pitched than usual. Sai can almost see the girl shake as she continues. “Zach is the reason he got caught. Even if his reasonings for what he does are always selfish, Unc—Zach is still very much a danger to Bastian and to us.”
A shiver runs down Sai’s spine at the realization that Aishke is right, and she watches the rest of the room go through similar comprehension.
“Zach…” Dom pauses, eyes flickering briefly through red and black before they settle back on si
lver. “While unpredictable, Zach has only ever had one goal: to set himself up in the position he feels he deserves. He’s always seen himself as better than others.”
Mathur clears his throat. “As long as they continue to follow protocol and dose suspects with Shine to limit access to their powers, it might be enough. It should keep the edge off and prevent Zach from noticing anything amiss to drag him down further.”
Jeffries leans back, a thoughtful crease to his brow. “So we hope he concentrates his attention on taking what Deign has and dismisses Bastian now?”
Mathur nods. “And messing with Deign is a whole other level of stupidity.”
A nervous chuckle spreads through the room.
Mason smiles tightly. “Let’s hope both of their minor obsessions with my brother pays off. We digress, though. Basically, we need to train our forces and protect what is ours until we can launch an attack. The sooner, the better. We can’t produce any more dominos, so we have to act before they can create too many more Damascus, or we don’t stand even the minuscule chance we have now.” Mason glances at Mathur and receives a slight nod in response. “Dom is helping tweak his brethren. Hopefully, they’ll be completely ready soon.”
Mathur stands. “Soon it will be.” He nods at the room and turns back to his tasks. Jeffries leaves at the obvious dismissal.
This time it’s Sai who clears her throat as she turns to Mason and Aishke. “You’re both proficient enough to help me train others. It’s more efficient if we can expand and give more concentrated training to those who need it. Darrien might be able to join us, too. Not everyone is able to access their core or have one that matters enough to bother. Are there any more potential trainees?”
“A few dozen sourced from all Mobiles. We’ll have them in the next few days, after several transports lose any chance of a tail.” Mason is watching her closely, that stern look on his face. “You okay?”