Jameson found a dark rooftop on the edge of the Slander. He looked around to be sure there was no one nearby and opened a waygate to step through.
The immigration center was abandoned. Not much need for it without anywhere to go to or come from.
It was midafternoon on this side of the world. Beyond the last bits of the city, the rolling green hills of the Estates stretched for thirty kilometers, surrounded by orchards. Great mansions sprouted from the hills out here, and of all of Oberon, this place reminded Jameson the most of Beta Tau.
He stayed below the trees as much as he could, flying from orchard to orchard in short spurts. Once, he startled a crew picking big green fruits from trees with leaves as large as his arm. He waved and flew on, hoping they wouldn’t report him.
At last he closed in on his target.
It was a large mansion made of red stone, standing three stories tall in some places. A castle indeed. It was surrounded by vineyards and had wide balconies that looked out over the rolling hills of the estate.
Jameson found a perch in a tree close enough to see the place. The tree was covered in fuzzy yellow leaves, providing ample cover from above and below. He settled in to watch and wait for nightfall.
He pulled out some dried bread and cheese he’d brought with him to tide himself over while he waited. He missed processed food and carbonated sodas, especially fizzpop that had big chunks of alco-sugar that burst in your mouth. He was about sick to death of keff and water.
After about an hour, as the sun began to slant toward the horizon, he was rewarded. Rogan himself strode out onto his balcony, tying up his red silken robe, to gaze across the vine-covered hills.
The Syndicate bosses were no better than OberCorp. They lived like this on the backs of the people in the Slander, and they did horrible things to their charges. Jameson wished he could snap the man’s neck for the way he’d treated Xander.
Not yet. They needed him. The fate of many more innocents rested on those fat shoulders.
Jameson waited until after nightfall, when the light bled out of the sky and the stars appeared above but before the moon rose. He leapt from his perch into the sky, and a short flight brought him down silently onto Rogan’s balcony.
He pressed his chest flat against the wall next to the doorway and peered inside.
A young boy, maybe ten, sat on a wide bed, shivering, wearing a space marines costume, his bare feet hanging over the edge of the bed.
A cheery fire lit the room, but the sight made Jameson’s blood run cold.
He waited for fifteen minutes to be sure there was no one else in the room. Then he pushed the button on the tracker chip for five seconds, hoping Alix knew what he was doing.
Fingers crossed. He stepped inside, signaling the boy to be quiet.
The boy’s eyes went wide.
Jameson knelt before him. “It’s okay. I’m here to help you.” The boy had bruises on his arms and neck. Jameson swore to himself he’d make Rogan pay. “Go out on the balcony and stay there until I come for you.”
“I’m… I can’t.” The boy pointed to his temple.
“Dammit. Okay, it may take me a day or two, but I’ll take care of that.” Putting a bomb inside a child’s head. “Now go.”
The boy was white as a sheet, but he nodded and ran out of the room.
Jameson took up a place behind the door and waited. It felt like an hour but might have just been fifteen minutes.
The door creaked open, and Jameson grabbed the man’s fat wrist. He had just enough time to see Rogan’s startled face before he opened a waygate and threw him through, joining him half a world away as it slammed closed behind them.
ALIX WAITED in an empty room. Well, not entirely empty. There were two white chairs and a plas table to keep him company.
But the walls were blank, and the floor was an industrial-grade beige carpet used in corporate offices across the Common Worlds. The only nod to color was the brass doorknob.
He’d been a constant source of disappointment to his mother. His “homosexual proclivities,” while certainly not unusual in Oberon City, precluded him marrying a woman and siring an heir, which had displeased his mother. It was a little crazy, as she ran a multisolar corporation and not a kingdom with bloodlines of succession, but the line between the two was fuzzy these days. Plus, it’s not like he couldn’t adopt or father a child by other means. There were many ways around the problem, of course, but Lena Preston seemed to take his sexuality as a personal affront.
She had clawed her way to the top of the company over three decades, deposing the previous chairman in a bloodless coup with all the precision of a zakka strike. As she had so often told Alix, she intended to leave it to him when the time came.
Alix had no interest in running a multisolar conglomerate, even a small one like OberCorp. Yet his halfhearted attempt at rebellion had come to nothing. He closed his eyes, remembering the day he’d told her.
“I’m not coming in tomorrow.”
She looked up at him from her desk, ruthlessly organized and severely plain. “Everyone needs a day off, now and then.” She closed her eyes, mouthing something to her PA. Then she looked back up at him. “What is it this time? Trip to the Outlands with… Xander?”
There was always that pause when she spoke Xander’s name. A not-so-subtle reminder that she would never entirely accept him as Alix’s equal.
He shook his head. “I’ve joined the rangers.”
She slammed her fist down on the desk. “Absolutely not. I need you here. You still have a lot to learn about running the company.”
Alix sighed. “I’m not cut out for this. This is your life. I want to be out there, dealing with people, with the real world, not this swirl of ones and zeroes.” If he squinted, he could sense the data streams slipping through the air around him.
“This is your life. Your future. I’ve fought all my career to give this to you.”
“Are you happy?”
That stopped her. She cocked her head at him as if she didn’t understand the question. “Happy? I’m… I am content with the work I do. I am happy to know that I am one of the few people on this half ball of rock who could do this kind of job.”
Alix sat down and took her hand. “But are you happy?”
She looked down at her hands. “I don’t think that really matters.”
“Last month, I stood under a waterfall in the Outland, the cool creek pouring over my skin under the summer sun. Xander kissed me, and I experienced such a moment of unexpected and total bliss… I realized that I was happy for the first time in years.” He took both of her hands in his. “Don’t you want that for me?”
Her eyes were misty. “I remember being happy once. There was a boy in Philo….” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “But we all have to grow up sometime. As an adult, you can’t always be happy.”
“Or ever?”
She let go of his hands. “Two years. You can pursue this little dream of yours for two years. It would be good for you to see the rest of this world, from the ground up.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “Maybe it’s time I met this Xander of yours.”
There was no pause. Something had shifted. He nodded. “Maybe so. But I don’t want him to know who you are. Or about… this.” He gestured around the executive suite.
“Ah, now who are you ashamed of?”
“You. Always you.” He kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Mother.”
“Two years.”
Alix checked with his PA. His two years would be up next week. Close enough for corporate work.
He wondered if she’d had a hand in sending him away from Xander with Dani Black. He wouldn’t put it past her. Lena Preston did what it took to get the job done, even at the expense of her own son.
The door swung open.
“Hello, Alix. I’ve been waiting for your return.” His mother was perfect, as always, her business suit just the right length below the knees to assert her power and her cool femininity.
Her red hair was tied up in a neat bun, and her face was pale as snow and as cold. “You look like you were out in the wilds a couple months too long.”
He scratched his beard and smiled. “Price of the job.”
“Come on, then. We’ll get you cleaned up. Then we can talk.”
“I’d rather talk now.”
“Don’t be silly. Nothing important’s going to happen in the next two hours, and I will not stay in the same room with you when you’re smelling like that. Come back to my suite with me.” She turned and left the room, expecting him to follow.
After a moment, he did, cursing under his breath. Thirty seconds in her presence and he was back under Lena Preston’s thumb.
As he left the room, the two enforcers stationed outside started to fall in behind him.
His mother waved them off. “I can deal with my own son alone, thank you.”
“But Ms. Preston—”
“Enough. I’ve made up my mind.” She snapped her fingers. “Coming, Alix?”
He followed her, but he was already figuring out how to go around her to do what he had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Gambits
QUINCE WAS rearranging her carry sack, filling it with the strange food bars Morgan had supplied. The technology at work there was amazing, and not only because of what it could do.
Humans had food replicators and advanced medical tech. They could duplicate many of the things that Ithani tech could do, although she suspected that shifting an entire world into another universe was still beyond the capabilities of the human race.
No, what was truly amazing was the fact that it all still worked after a hundred thousand years.
The food bars were nondescript—like sugar cubes, but larger—but each one tasted different, a whole meal in a mouthful. She’d tried one that was something close to chicken soup, and another that was like nothing she had ever tasted before. The closest she could come was beef and chocolate ice cream. Which sounded absolutely terrible in theory, but her mouth still watered for it.
“Come with us,” she said to Morgan. They had decided they needed to find Xander and Jameson. Maybe together they could find a way to stop what was coming.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave. I’ve already spent too much time away from the others. They’ll start to suspect.”
“How many nimfeach are there?”
“Just over a hundred. Every few hundred years, we are absorbed and rebirthed. We gain the memories of our predecessors.”
Quince nodded. “Inherited memory. Like some of the skythane. You must have rubbed off on us.”
“Yes.”
That simple statement caught her off guard. She knew they had experimented on children. Morgan was proof of that. What else had they done? She suspected there was a whole lot more behind it that he wasn’t saying, but she didn’t have time to explore it.
“You can send us to Errian?”
“Not from here. We have to go outside.”
She shivered. The sight of the naked nimfeach, without its beautiful rainbow aura, still haunted her mind.
He took her hand in his. “I will keep you hidden.”
She nodded. “You ready?”
Robyn had been repacking her own bag. “Ready if you are.”
Quince pulled her close and kissed her. “Whatever happens….”
Robyn nodded, wrapping her new wings around Quince. “Whatever happens.”
Quince pulled on her carry sack and turned to Morgan. “Let’s go.”
In response, the boy threw himself into her arms.
She hugged him fiercely, remembering there was still a lot of Tanner in Morgan. When she pulled away, she knelt next to him. “Hey, we’ll figure this out, okay? One way or another.”
“Okay.”
Robyn knelt next to him too. “What did you mean when you said you’d rubbed off on us?”
Morgan squirmed. Clearly talking about it made him uncomfortable. “It’s part of the plan,” he said at last.
“The plan.” Quince looked at Robyn. “The shift was the plan.” Her mind raced with the implications. Jameson and Xander had been needed, according to the prophecy, to shift the world. Those two, connected, and no other. And long before them, Elyra and Daedus. “Morgan, are Xander and Jameson… are they part Ithani?”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“By the Split!” Robyn stood and started pacing around the room. “This whole plan… it was a fucking breeding program.”
Morgan looked scared.
“We’re not angry with you. But we need you to tell us. Have the nimfeach been… preparing skythane for the shift?”
He nodded.
“For how long?”
“Since you came to Erro.”
Quince sat back on her ass on the bed, stunned. For a millennium, her people had been used by the Ithani, forged into a key for the lock that bound them. We’re as much a tool as the rocthane.
She wondered how much Ithani she had in her own blood.
She looked up at Robyn. “If Xander and Jameson are special… if the Ithani part of them is strong….”
“Maybe they can find a way to talk to the Ithani. To stop them before it’s too late.”
“We have to go.” To Morgan, Quince said, “How much time do we have?”
“Five days.”
She hugged him once more. “We’ll come back for you.”
He nodded solemnly.
“Now send us to Errian.”
JAMESON LOOKED around the cavern, his eyes slowly adjusting to the blue light that filled it. The last time he’d been there, it had been with Xander, when they’d shared a few stolen hours after the shift. The last time they’d really been alone.
Once again the memories flickered in his head, but he forced them down ruthlessly.
Rogan lay on the dusty cavern floor below him, staring at him with a mixture of anger and fear. “Who are you? What did you do to me?” He looked around wildly. “What is this place?”
“Don’t recognize me?” He leaned down so Rogan could get a better look at his face in the blue glow from the ponds.
Rogan’s pig face squinted up at him, and then he let out a snort. “It’s you! The one who was with Xander.” His features shifted to anger. “Where’s my fucking pith?”
For his answer, Jameson pulled the vial from his pocket. “Here you go.”
“That’s nothing.”
“A quarter-million crits isn’t nothing.”
The man struggled to his feet, pulling his bathrobe closed and tying it off, trying to regain a little dignity. It was a lost cause. “You promised me in on the pith trade.” He snatched the vial from Jameson’s hand.
“Turn around.”
Rogan turned, and a gasp escaped him at the sight of crate after crate of the drug. “Holy shit.” He sank down on his knees to grab the nearest crate and pried it open with his hands. “This is… all of this is pith?”
“Enough to keep you supplied for years, if not decades, I’d imagine.”
“And it’s all mine?” Rogan turned to stare at him.
Jameson shook his head. “I want something else first.”
Rogan glared at him. “We had a deal.”
Never mind that Rogan would break a deal as easily as breathing, if it suited him.
“Let’s consider your current situation.” Jameson ticked off the facts on his fingers. “You have no idea where you are. You’re all alone here with me, a man who is younger and stronger and faster than you, and who could dump you in the middle of the Gildensea in five seconds if I decided it was in my best interest.” He held out his arms. “So, what do you say we renegotiate the terms of our agreement?”
Rogan was silent for a long time. The moment stretched past what Jameson felt reasonable, and still there was no discernible reaction.
Finally, he started to shake. A laugh sprung up from his fat stomach, exploding from his mouth in a rumble.
What the hell?
“I like you, Jameson Havercamp.” He continued to laugh.
“How did you—”
“I did a little research after you left Oberon City. It always pays to know who you’re getting in bed with.”
Jameson stared at him.
“You have balls, boy. So what do you want?”
“We’ll supply you with pith for the next three years. We just need a little firepower in return.”
“What kind of firepower?”
“The kind that can take on OberCorp?”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s a big boat to rock. And how do I know we’ll even be able to sell to the Common Worlds again?” He looked around at the beautiful caverns and scowled. “This isn’t exactly home, is it?”
Jameson laughed in spite of himself. “Maybe not. But we’ll set that right too.”
Rogan looked at him with newfound respect. “You have a deal.” He extended his hand. “What do you need?”
Jameson took his hand, privately wishing he didn’t have to touch the man. “Put some pressure on OberCorp. Lay siege to their headquarters and make them nervous.” He pulled out the vials of pith he’d secured in his pocket earlier and handed them to Rogan. “A show of good faith.”
Rogan accepted them greedily, casting a regretful glance at the rest.
“I want one more thing. The boy. The one I saw in your room.”
“Taylor?” Rogan grinned. “Ah, so you have a taste for them too.”
Jameson’s stomach turned. “Have him ready for me the next time we meet. That means I want the little bomb taken out of his head too.”
Rogan’s fat hand tugged on his chin. “Deal. There are always more where he came from.”
Jameson shuddered. He pulled out the key and opened a waygate back to Rogan’s estate. He was careful to put it in the garden where the man wouldn’t have anyone waiting for him.
“How much for one of those?” Rogan eyed the key.
“You couldn’t afford it.” He resisted the urge to kick Rogan’s ass through the waygate. He shuddered again at the thought of the Syndicate having a key, though it probably wouldn’t work for landers.
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