The Augenspire (Origins of Elaria Book 1)

by V. St. Clair

  He nodded curtly. It was the best he could hope for, and besides, he did feel better now that his secret was out…with her, at least.

  “Sit down and tell me more about your conversation with Major Andro. We have a few hours before I’ll be ready for bed, and we might as well use them productively. Then you’re going to take a nap, because you look dead on your feet and you’re going to be up guarding me all night.”

  Topher nodded and took a seat on the uncomfortable couch once more. They did have a lot to discuss, and it was the best way to pass the time while he waited for the unknown. He felt bad for standing Lorna up, but there was no way he was going to warn her in advance, in case she was a part of this thing he didn’t understand. She wouldn’t miss him much anyway; from his understanding, the theater wasn’t a great place to chat with someone anyway.

  “Well, I was working out on the tri-bars…” Topher began with a sigh, wishing he had a cup of coffee.

  You can’t stop it. It comes.

  Topher grimaced at the voice in his head and didn’t voice it out loud to Jessamine. It was going to be a long night.

  23

  Jessamine Elaria

  The night was shaping up to be something in between a dream and a nightmare for Jessamine. On the bright side, she had never gotten to spend so much time alone with Topher before; they’d just spent an hour strategizing in her sitting room about what their next steps would be tomorrow morning. And she had been wishing he would open up to her and be more forthcoming with his elusive thoughts…had been praying for it for years now, actually. Tonight was a major victory for her in terms of getting him to confide in her.

  There’s just one small problem…

  This thing with him hearing voices was concerning. If it was some sort of technology-induced mental problem, was it getting worse after eight years of keeping a fairly low profile? Was it because of the recent stress he was under, trying to protect her family from assassination? It was certainly the most logical explanation, though also the most distressing.

  She personally liked the theory of him being hacked from an outside organization, probably Hera’s group. If she was being honest with herself, she favored this option because it was the only one they could take steps to alleviate, and didn’t involve him losing his job or his sanity.

  But what if Topher was actually being spoken to by someone else? Who the hell was patched right into his brain for all this time and how did they manage it? It seemed to be the least-likely option.

  Was she, Jessamine, capable of keeping something like this quiet, or was she obligated to recommend him for psychiatric evaluation to make sure he was alright? It would be the harshest betrayal of his trust, and he would never forgive her for it after she assured him of her silence, but his safety must be her primary concern, even before her own self-interest…

  No, Jessamine shook off the horrible thought. I never knew about this before, and I have always relied on his advice. If something is going on in his head, then I certainly owe my life to it and I must trust he has it under control.

  Doubt Topher? She would sooner doubt herself.

  But still, there must be some way she could help him. Maybe tomorrow, in the light of day, he would be open to her making some private inquiries within their psych division, on a purely hypothetical level. Or she could go outside the Augenspire entirely—they didn’t have a monopoly on scientists and shrinks, after all—and ask a few obscure questions. She hated the thought of him suffering under the weight of what was happening to him.

  At worst, he’ll be forced into an early retirement on medical grounds. He’ll get a yearly stipend and have his enhancers removed, and be free to go about his business as long as he doesn’t reveal any classified information to outsiders.

  Really, it wouldn’t be a bad deal for him, and she could ensure he received his full benefits, as he could rightly claim he was injured in the course of his work. Her father wouldn’t fight her on it; he respected Topher as much as anyone.

  You wouldn’t see him much anymore…

  Jessamine scowled at the unpleasant truth. Once they were no longer in business together, she doubted they would encounter each other casually, unless she was feeling risky and started roaming Silveria to meet up with him again. Knowing his damnable sense of integrity, he wouldn’t allow her to risk herself just to see him.

  So maybe I’ll hold off on making any inquiries until something changes…

  She tried to convince herself she wasn’t doing it for purely selfish reasons, but it was hard for her to be objective where Topher Augen was concerned. No matter what the future held, for tonight he was napping on the floor behind the couch in her sitting room, claiming it was more comfortable in his armor than the cushioned sofa. He also preferred to remain out of plain sight, on the off-chance someone else did enter the sitting room; he didn’t want them tripping over him as soon as they opened the door.

  Jessamine closed her door and undressed, changing into a fitted black bodysuit made of cotton that covered everything from her elbows to her knees. She decided to trust Topher’s instincts, even though he couldn’t properly support them with evidence just yet, and if something was going to happen tonight, she would rather be wearing something that didn’t restrict her movements and would be difficult for an attacker to grab onto.

  Though anyone who can get into this room to attack me is probably strong enough to kill me regardless of what I’m wearing.

  It made her feel better to be prepared, so she laid a shield stick on the pillow next to hers so she would be able to grab it in a hurry, along with a sheathed knife. The last thing she needed was to roll over and stab herself in her sleep.

  She debated whether to leave the door closed or keep it ajar, mentally weighing the pros and cons of both decisions. Leaving it open would allow her to hear anything approaching before it got to the door, but closing it would also prevent anyone from shooting into her bedroom clear through the sitting room. In the end she left it closed.

  She felt like there was something she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t remember what it was now. Even though it was still early—barely nine o’clock, the sun had completely set and she was unexpectedly tired after her long talk with Topher.

  Jessamine settled into bed and prepared to turn out the light, though the little wooden box on the lower shelf by her bed caught her eye before she could do so. After a moment of hesitation, she opened the box for the first time in years, snatched up the object inside of it, and tucked it under the sheets beside her, careful to keep it out of sight. Feeling as well-protected as she could be, she turned off the lights and went to sleep.

  At first she slept fitfully, tossing and turning every time she thought she heard a noise, but soon she was able to drift off into a deeper sleep. A very quiet beep barely penetrated her unconscious mind, and a small part of her brain struggled to bring her to consciousness to consider the noise.

  It sounded like the outer door… She thought muzzily, thinking she had probably imagined it as part of her dream.

  A soft click and a creak brought her to full alertness and she sat bolt upright in bed and nearly passed out from the blood rushing to her legs. The door to her bedroom was half-open, and in the darkness all Jessamine could see was a fully-armored Provo-Major standing there—no one could be that bulky without heavies on.

  “Topher…?” she asked quietly, pulse racing as her adrenaline kicked in. Why was he checking in on her in the middle of the night, and why wasn’t he saying anything? Then Jessamine remembered the thing she had forgotten earlier, and she suddenly realized she was about to die.

  I forgot to wake up Topher before I went to bed! I told him I’d wake him up!

  The figure stepped into her room and closed the door softly behind him. Was Topher already dead, or had the intruder missed him entirely, not expecting anyone to be there?

  “TOPHER!” she screamed, reaching for her communicator to hit the emergency code and alert the rest of the Provo
-Major and her father that something was wrong.

  The unknown Major was on her in an instant, leaping onto her bed and forcing her to activate her shield-stick instead of the communicator to avoid being crushed by the weight of his armor. The shield buzzed to life in time to deflect him off of her, so her assailant was forced to roll to the side while she scrambled to get out of bed and run. Unfortunately he had rolled onto the pillow with her knife on it, so there was no hope of recovering it out from under him.

  Jessamine reached for her communicator again, but it was slapped out of her hand and went flying somewhere across the room. The room was suddenly lit with the brilliant orange light of an ion-sword, which at least let her know which of her sworn protectors was currently trying to murder her.

  “Fox, you ass!” She yelled at him in disbelief as he smacked her invisible shield with his sword, scattering the light where it made contact like a shower of sparks from a grinding wheel. “Why are you doing this?” she asked after she was knocked backwards into her bookshelf. The shield-stick kept her from being sliced in half by the ion-sword, but it didn’t protect her from the force of impact between the shield wall and the sword itself.

  He didn’t answer her, nor did he look pleased that she was able to identify him, and he began hacking away harder at the shield wall around her, which kept knocking Jessamine back onto the ground and prevented her from getting up and running. She could feel the shield-stick growing hot and extremely heavy in her hand, and when it became overloaded, she felt it short out as the protection left her.

  Surprisingly, Major Fox didn’t slice her in half. The bright orange light of the ion-sword died out abruptly, and he put the brackets of his ion-sword back onto his belt and reached for his standard-issue knife instead. Jessamine blinked rapidly to acclimate her eyes to the darkness.

  He doesn’t want it to look like a member of the Provo-Major murdered me, she realized, rolling to the side and springing back to her feet, stumbling over a fallen book. The ion-sword is a weapon exclusive to the Majors, so there would be no hiding it.

  Fox tried to slash her with the knife as she darted by him, and while she was able to dodge the blade, the side of his gauntleted arm caught her in the face and smashed her lip. She could taste blood and her jaw hurt exquisitely, but there was no time to slow down and deal with it now.

  In a last, desperate effort to save herself she lunged past him, sailing through the air and landing on her stomach in bed, frantically grabbing for the thing beneath her sheets and rolling over with it gripped in her hand.

  She hadn’t done this in a very long time, and never to actually defend herself, but she closed her eyes and threw her entire will into becoming the thing she needed to be right now.

  “—the fuck?” Fox breathed heavily, and Jessamine opened her eyes to see him looming over her with his knife inches from her throat. He was staring down at her with wide, scared eyes. “Marissa…?” he asked softly, uncertain.

  There was a sudden movement behind him, and Fox let out a strangled grunt and then went limp. He fell to one side, instead of on top of her like his looming position would have indicated.

  “Are you alright?” Topher moved past her and flipped on the lights, face white with worry. He was holding his own standard-issue knife in his free hand, identical to the one Fox had just tried to stab her with.

  “I—I’m Gifted,” Jessamine blurted out for some reason, gesturing to the emblem of a heart still in her hand.

  Topher glanced at it briefly and said, “I noticed. Are you injured, beside your split lip?” If he was appalled by her big secret, he wasn’t showing it.

  “I don’t think so,” she answered, forcing herself to her feet and letting the emblem fall back onto her bed.

  “Hold onto that,” Topher commanded. “Just because it didn’t work this time doesn’t mean you may not need to try it again.”

  “What do you mean—it didn’t work?” she asked uncertainly, forcing herself into action and pulling on a pair of boots as Topher knelt over Fox’s corpse and swapped out their knives; apparently he didn’t want to keep the bloody one for himself. She stuffed the emblem into one of her boots for safekeeping. “I’m an illusionist. You didn’t see me turn into someone else?” Fox had called her Marissa, so it must have worked…

  “No, I just saw you,” Topher gave her a funny look, and Jessamine felt a swooping sensation in her stomach there was no time to dwell on right now.

  “Where’s my comm?” she asked instead. “I was trying to call for help, but Fox kept smacking it out of my hand.”

  “Good, because we’re not calling anyone.” Topher walked past her and approached the window, examining the glass with professional interest before smashing a gauntleted hand through it without warning.

  Jessamine cried out in surprise as the glass shattered outwards, though Topher ignored the noise and continued to knock out pieces of the window until there was a gaping hole in the side of her bedroom letting in cold air from outside.

  “You’re not going to throw Fox’s body off of the three-hundredth level of the Augenspire, are you?” she asked in horror, trying not to imagine what it would look like when it hit the ground, if so.

  “No, he’s staying here. We’re going out the window.” He stopped what he was doing and rounded on her quite abruptly. “And why in the hell didn’t you wake me up before you went to bed?”

  “I forgot!” she admitted, feeling like an idiot. “I had so many thoughts going through my head it completely slipped my mind, until I woke up to the sight of Major Fox staring at me from the door. I hoped my shouting and all of the noise from our struggle would wake you up.”

  Topher scowled, looking like he wasn’t nearly done chastising her over her hideous lapse in foresight, but all he said was, “I’m a very heavy sleeper. You’re lucky I woke up at all.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Jessamine frowned down at Fox’s body, which hadn’t moved since it fell off of her.

  “I severed his spinal column from his neck, hence why I swapped knives with him. I don’t want anyone to know I was in here or where you’ve gone until we can make the Augenspire safe again.”

  “But my father and sister—”

  “My first concern is your safety. I’ll come back once I have you settled somewhere secure.” Topher motioned for her to come closer to him. “There’s no time for you to put your armor on, so you’ll need to hold on tightly. I’m going to be cutting things close as it is, but if I’m lucky I can get to the theater and catch up with Lorna before anyone else realizes there’s a problem here and sounds the alarms.”

  Jessamine would normally love the prospect of embracing Topher, but it was extremely uncomfortable when he was wearing his heavies and she was in a thin bodysuit. She gripped him as best as she could and he hugged her gently, taking care not to crush her too badly with his armor as he flipped the switch under his beltline that turned on his magnets.

  She closed her eyes reflexively as they soared out of the window, tugged by an invisible line. The Provo-Major trained extensively in how to use the flight capabilities of their heavies, which most people assumed was some sort of true flight mechanism that somehow worked without a propulsion system. Jessamine knew the real genius of the suits. They weren’t pushing themselves through the air at all.

  They were pulling.

  The proprietary alloy the suits were made of could be polarized so it was attracted to other sources of that same alloy. Various buildings across Silveria—including the Augenspire—had large, decorative and structural pieces of the same material worked in, effectively turning them into giant magnets.

  As they flew out of the window on the top floor of the Augenspire, Topher used his free hand to adjust the controls—a small dial that was difficult to notice if you weren’t looking for it—on the suit so they were pulled sharply to the west and lower in elevation.

  “What are you anchoring off of?” Jessamine called out over the noise of air rushing past them,
shivering in the coolness of the night.

  “The clock-tower in the Academy,” Topher responded, turning the dial the other way to slow their progress by shifting some of the magnetism back towards the Augenspire so the two forces pulled against each other.

  Before they came to a complete stop, Topher found another source to pull from and they were jerked sharply towards the heart of downtown Silveria, still losing altitude as they went.

  “We’re going to be seen flying overhead if we get too low,” Jessamine pointed out, shivering again and wishing she had thought to wear thermal pajamas.

  “I’ll keep us well above the ground, but lower than sky-layer.”

  “Where are we going?” She thought it was probably prudent to ask, since she was now on the run from her own government.

  “Somewhere safe,” was all he said, and she stopped asking questions after that, instead turning her thoughts towards her father and sister and wondering whether they were okay. Had they also been targeted tonight, or was Fox only after her? And why was Fox after her in the first place? Was this really just because he didn’t approve of her push for reintegration with the Gifted? Something had clearly changed for him since he passed all of his psych tests and proved his loyalty to the Viceroy.

  Maybe they’ll leave Shellina and Father alone…she hoped with everything inside of her. And what about Darius? Had Fox gotten him on the way, or was he safe and unaware in his bed on two-ninety-nine?

  How did Fox even get into my room?

  He definitely wasn’t on her list of people whose ID-chips could grant them access to her private quarters, but she supposed whoever had wiped Topher’s access had added him at the same time. Jessamine was going to have to interrogate the entire Technology department to figure out where the traitor was.

  Speaking of traitors, how did she know Major Fox and whoever he had co-opted from Tech were working alone? Were any other Provo-Major involved in the plot against her? If so, it would be a nightmare to root them all out, since they couldn’t be chemically interrogated, and it wasn’t feasible to fire her entire elite force and replace them in one go. Aside from having to figure out what to do with all of those disgruntled Majors—who had enough intel to make her life unpleasant if they spilled their guts to the media—training up new Majors took years.