Her time as a reporter for her local tri-dee station, and her more recent anchor experience, stood her in good stride there. She knew where to go to ferret out information, and she had a friendly face that people tended to trust implicitly.
She’d spent the last night at the bars looking for information, stun whip at her side, and had only had to use it four times. Not bad on a backwater world like this.
People were talking. The world had changed. She’d seen it herself in the bumpy shuttle ride down. Wherever the missing half of the planet had been for all these years, it was back now.
There were sightings of strange birds along the Gildensea. Small quakes shook the city at odd intervals, and the sun was red.
Those who had survived the Split had blown into town with tales about a last-minute warning and the huge storm that had come up from nothing.
Jessa had plugged into the local grid to look for any trace of Jamie, using the skills she’d learned as a reporter, ferreting out the news that others wanted to hide.
There was a public log of Jamie’s arrival, and then nothing. Wherever you went, you left a trace in the grid. It was nearly impossible not to. Not unless you were really good at it, which Jamie was not. He was great at being a psych, but a miserable failure at tech arts.
Which meant someone else had erased his tracks.
All roads led to OberCorp.
The structure was massive—as tall as the city’s fabled arcos, but set apart in a quarter of its own, surrounded by a lake like a protective moat. The building shone with plas and steel, glimmering in the sunlight.
The protesters had been kept outside the moat, shouting across the water.
She took a deep breath, running her hands through her newly shortened hair. She’d managed to pick up a pair of camspecs and had paired them to her AI, Jessica. A deft insertion of her credentials into the grid and she was a Galactic News Service reporter, there on the heels of a hot story.
What that story was, she hadn’t yet decided. It would come to her.
She put on her confident face and entered the doors, ready to find her man.
XANDER AND Jameson held each other tightly.
Alix looked away.
Jealousy stabbed deep in the pit of his stomach, seeing Xander with this other man, followed by a nauseating wave of guilt. After all, he’d been the one who’d decided to leave, and he’d broken Xander’s heart.
Xander had chosen someone else. It was really that simple. So why couldn’t his heart accept it?
“We should get moving,” he said gruffly, looking at Quince. “OberCorp will figure out what happened soon enough, and then you’ll see an invasion of both Errian and Gaelan with ten times the firepower as the last time.”
Quince nodded. “He’s right. We need to get back to Gaelan, sooner rather than later. Hopefully the storm will be causing problems for the landers too, but we can’t count on it.”
Xander sighed. “No rest for the weary, right?”
“’Fraid not.” Quince clapped him on the shoulder.
“Alix and Robyn can’t fly.” Jameson looked directly at him. “Maybe we should leave them behind, send someone back for them later?”
“Absolutely not,” Quince and Robyn said in unison.
Alix smiled. “We won’t have to. Dani stashed some extra bi-wings nearby, in case of need.”
“Bi-wings?” Xander looked at Robyn, who nodded.
“The landers used them sometimes, when patrolling Gaelan with their pulse rifles.”
Alix nodded. “She had them brought through the same tunnel we used to get here.”
“Tunnel?”
“OberCorp found a way in from Oberon to Titania that didn’t require a waygate. There’s… well, there was a tunnel in the Split that connected the worlds.”
“That explains a lot.” Xander rubbed his chin. “Where are these bi-wings?”
“Up here a little farther. There are caverns under these cliffs—”
“We know,” Jameson said sharply. “I found one of them.”
“Good.” The man clearly didn’t like him, but Alix could live with that.
“Let’s not fight amongst ourselves.” Xander glared at Jameson. “You can clean up there before we move on.”
Xander seemed to have matured a lot since Alix had left him. Alix looked at Jameson with newfound respect. Maybe he had been a good influence on Xander.
Alix sighed. He’d been gone so long. It wasn’t Xander’s fault he had fallen for Jameson. “Let’s go, then.” He was getting impatient. If he was going to make his case to Xander, he had to get him alone, and that wasn’t going to happen among that motley group out there in the wilderness. Alix turned to lead them along the cliff face toward the cave where the bi-wings had been stashed.
He hoped they were still there. If not, he might yet get stuck cooling his heels while Jameson and Xander flew off into the sunset.
The cavern entrance was only a few hundred meters away. The day was already warming, the sun coming out to start drying the ruined valley. As he walked, he breathed in the morning air. It was thick and humid, but still cool.
It was a shame this beautiful valley had been all but destroyed, but he feared it wouldn’t be the last place to see such devastation.
They approached the cavern entrance. One of the old statues had fallen, but the other still stood as a marker on the right side of the opening.
“They’re in there?” Xander asked with a frown.
“They were.”
Alix followed Xander over the pile of debris and caught a whiff of his scent and struggled to ignore the effect it had on him.
He caught both Quince and Jameson staring at him speculatively.
Damned busybodies. Frowning, he ducked into the cavern.
The caverns were as beautiful as he remembered them, with ponds lit by a strange eldritch blue glow. They’d camped out there the first night after they’d come through the tunnel, bathing in those warm ponds. A couple of the guys had gone off to do what military men will do on a long campaign, but Alix had found a semiprivate corner to retreat to, sick with the knowledge that he’d left Xander behind with no explanation.
He shook his head clear.
“They were back here.” Alix led the group to a semihidden passage that connected to a smaller cavern. He turned sideways to slip through the rift and emerged into a space a third the size of the main cavern. This space had one pool, which lit the sculpted walls, making them look like melted blue wax.
Tucked against the back wall were five bi-wing packs. “Bingo.”
The others filed in behind him.
He picked up one of the packs, looking it over. It was shaped like an oversized backpack, with a hard plas shell. It was superlight and powered by amalite. Wouldn’t be much more of that mined, he reckoned, with the Split… unsplit.
“They look like they’re in good enough shape.”
Xander picked one up. “These are military issue.”
Alix nodded. “Dani had them shipped in from Traxon. Useful on lighter gravity worlds and moons.” He handed one to Robyn.
“How does it work?” Robyn was looking at hers like it was a snake.
“I’ll show you.” He brushed past Xander, and his arm tingled in reaction. He clamped down on his emotions hard.
Jameson, whoever he was, was skythane, like Xander. They had things in common that Alix couldn’t hope to match.
Alix had to believe that Xander still loved him, though, somewhere deep down inside. He had to hope there was a way back into Xander’s heart.
“Let’s get you all cleaned up first,” Xander said as they reentered the main cabin. “At least get those wounds cleaned out.” He took Alix’s hand and guided him to one of the ponds. “Jameson, want to help Quince?”
Jameson grumbled something that might have been a yes. Or maybe a fuck-you.
Alix grinned. He let Xander pull off his boots and socks. Then he stood and slipped off his pants, wincing as they s
tuck to the wound on the back of his left leg.
He noticed Jameson staring from the other end of the pond, where he was cleaning off Quince’s legs.
“I’m not going commando, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Although his underwear could use cleaning….
“Don’t even think about it,” Xander hissed, and guided him to sit on the edge of the pond. He pulled a rag out of his carry sack and waded in barefoot to stand in front of Alix. He knelt, looking at the wound. “This is gonna hurt.”
“I can take… fuuuuuuuuuuuck!” Fire blazed in his leg as Xander cleaned out the wound with fresh water. Blood and mud ran into the pond, to be carried away on the current.
Xander seemed to be enjoying it. “Better a little pain now than an infection later.” He pushed the cloth into the wound harder than Alix thought was strictly necessary.
Payback was a bitch.
When his legs were clean, Xander dried the wound and then bound it with a clean shirt. It wasn’t too deep, thank the Split, but having it bound would help keep it protected. “Thanks.” He wanted to kiss Xander so badly it hurt.
Their legs wrapped together, the sheet laid over them as they lay on their bed. Alix wanted to live in Xander’s eyes, wanted to stay there forever, the rest of the world be damned.
Alix looked away. If Xander noticed, he gave no sign.
Instead, he asked the question that had been burning inside him since this whole soggy trek had begun. Had it really been just the day before? “What happened out there?”
“You mean the storm?” Xander glanced out at the sunshine that now poured into the cave.
“The storm. And the whole when-worlds-collide thing.” He’d never believed the skythane superstitions about Oberon and Titania, but it looked like he’d been the fool.
Jameson sat down next to Xander. “The place where Oberon used to be is a solar flare hellhole at the moment.” He put his arm around Xander’s shoulder possessively.
“If we hadn’t shifted Oberon here—” Xander gestured around at the cavern and Titania in general, “—most everyone and everything on the Oberon side would now be dead.”
Alix snorted. “Guess you made the right choice.” He had more questions, but he decided to bide his time. Maybe he could corner Quince later. Jameson was shooting daggers at him with his eyes.
After they tended to everyone’s wounds and cleaned up, Alix led them outside and then eastward along the base of the cliff, retracing his steps from the year before.
The air was starting to smell with the stench of decay, as the water drained away from the valley. It left behind a wet, desolate moonscape.
The contours of the valley, at least their end of it, were unchanged, thank the Split.
Quince came up to walk next to him as they climbed the trail cut into the bluff. “I wondered what had become of you,” she said after a few moments.
“I was called up. I wish I could have stayed.” That was mostly true.
“Maybe so. You should have at least told him.”
Alix shook his head. “I couldn’t. The company—”
“That’s horseshit, and you know it.”
Quince was right. He could have said something. Should have, in fact. “I… I thought a clean break was best. Maybe I was wrong. But I had no idea when I would be coming home. He would have come after me.”
“He did anyway. He looked for you for weeks. Did you know that?” She side-eyed him.
“No, I didn’t.” He imagined Xander in the Outland, visiting their old campsites, frantic with worry.
“You just about broke him.” Quince glanced over her shoulder at Jameson and Xander. “They’re happy, you know.”
“I don’t believe it.” He couldn’t believe it. Just being in the same place with Xander again made him weak in the knees. Xander had needed him. He’d been the knight in shining armor, riding in to rescue him from Rogan, but the truth was that he needed Xander to need him. It gave him a purpose in life.
“Some friendly advice. Let him go. It took a hell of a lot to get them together in the first place….”
He stared at her. “A lot of what?”
“Nothing. Just time.”
He frowned. There was more she wasn’t telling him. “I still love him, Quince.”
“I know.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “If you truly do, let him be happy. Think about it.” She squeezed his shoulder and then dropped back to talk to Robyn.
She was hiding something. He would figure out what it was, one way or another.
QUINCE GROWLED under her breath as Alix walked away. She didn’t trust him.
It wasn’t just that he’d been part of the OberCorp invading force in Gaelan. If Robyn had forgiven him for that, if it had truly been against his will… well, she supposed she could move past it too.
There was something else there.
Something about the way he’d looked at her when she’d mentioned how hard it had been to get Xander and Jameson together. It had been a slip of the tongue. She’d let herself be careless. They could never be allowed to find out about the pith she’d dosed them with.
She’d done it out of necessity. There simply hadn’t been time for nature to take its course. They needed to be connected. In love. That much the nimfeach had told her, but not why.
Alix was suspicious of her, though, and she’d almost tipped her hand.
Quince fell back to walk with Robyn. She reached out to touch Robyn’s cheek. “I still can’t believe you’re here,” she said softly.
Robyn touched Quince’s white wings. “Sometimes I wish they had just killed me.”
Quince absorbed that as they climbed up a steep path cut into the cliff face. The limestone was fissured here and there, little redferns growing out of the cracks. Above, the sky was clearing as the remnants of the storm fled to the east.
“I’m glad they didn’t,” she said at last, and Robyn looked at her with sad eyes. “I’m glad you came back to me.”
Robyn squeezed her hand but didn’t reply.
“I almost died too. When we fought to take back Gaelan. I was ready to go… but only because I thought it meant I would be with you again.” She would have been all alone in death.
“Maybe we both would have been better off if we had died.”
Quince stifled a retort. This was not the woman she remembered. Whatever had been done to her had wounded her more deeply than just the flesh.
The path led up the cliffside to a wide flat space that extended back a hundred meters to the foothills. The trees there had suffered less damage than their counterparts down in the valley, but it would be a long time before this region recovered from that terrible storm.
Alix was strapping on his bi-wing. It was a hybrid mechanism, with strong, flexible, extendable wings made of plas and biomatter, and an amalite core that, when unshielded, provided uplift as well as power for thrust. The wings, when extended, shimmered iridescently in the red sunlight, reminding Quince of insect wings… maybe a dragonfly’s. They were like the wings in her dream.
“We should at least try to find Kadin,” she told Xander.
He nodded. “We can fly over the valley and see if there’s any sign of him.”
“Did you say Kadin?” Robyn’s eyes blazed.
“Yes. He was here with us when the Mountain fell.” Quince frowned. “Why?”
Robyn growled. “Kadin was the one who cut off my wings.”
“What?” Now Xander was growling. Like mother, like son. “That son of a bitch.”
“All the more reason to get back to Gaelan with all possible haste.” Quince felt sick to her stomach. All that time he’d been with them, working to subvert their cause.
“When I get my hands on him….”
“Keep it together, Xander. Let’s just get back to Gaelan and find him.” Quince returned to Robyn’s side and helped her strap the wings to her arms like she’d watched Alix do with his.
When both had their bi-wings on, Alix gave a demo
nstration. “It’s like being a superhero.” He gave them a slight grin. He touched a button on the shoulder strap and lifted off the ground. “The amalite helps take the edge off the gravity here. Then you just use them like normal wings. Hitting the button again shields the amalite core and brings you down. If you get in trouble, the pull cord on your left shoulder, here”—he indicated the orange cord—“opens the parachute. Got it?”
Robyn was shaking.
“What is it?” Quince had never seen her lover like this. Robyn had always been a queen, sure of herself, defined by her power, her bearing.
“I’m not ready.” She tried to pull the straps off her left arm. “It’s too hard. I can’t—”
“You can. Robyn, you have to. I’m not leaving you behind again.” Quince cupped Robyn’s face. “They did this to you. I can’t take that away—the pain, the loss. But you are more than your wings. You always were.” She hugged Robyn, cupping the stumps where her wings used to be. “You’re still Robyn to me. The woman I fell in love with. I know this feels weird, alien. Frightening, even. But you can fly again this way. We can fly together. And I’ll be right with you.” She kissed Robyn’s forehead, like she was comforting a child.
“Is she okay?”
Quince looked up to see Xander and Jameson at their side, both looking worried. “She will be.” To Robyn, she said, “We can wait a few minutes….”
“No. I’m stronger than this.” Robyn straightened her spine, and for a moment she was the woman Quince had known before, tall, strong, regal, her wings flared behind her. “Come on, Quince. Let’s show him how the skythane fly.” She tapped the button to activate the amalite core, and then leapt off the cliff, catching the wind and soaring up above the top of the cliffs.
Quince followed, the wind feeling wonderful through the feathers of her wings.
JAMESON PUT on his game face, the one he used to use with patients when they’d told him something particularly surprising or upsetting. Never let them see you sweat.
He was sweating profusely, though, on the inside.
They’d found no sign of Kadin, but that wasn’t what was bothering him.
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