The Reformation

by Garggie Talukdar

  Apparently, no amount of built edges as a soldier could ever take away the genuine kindness of Joann Gallagher.

  …

  “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” she asked again, brows furrowed, and Jax felt mothered in a way he hadn’t in a decade.

  “Jo, I’ll be fine,” he drawled, leaning against the plane behind him. They had been forced to land mid-way where there was luckily a RAF base, allowing Jax to heal up in the time that Jo acquired a new plane.

  A new plane they apparently would not need.

  “But-”

  “You have a mission,” he reminded her. It was true; they had only spent a few days at the base, almost ready to take off towards home again when Jo was pulled for a mission regarding the eastern-most part of Tsofislav. “I should be more concerned. Plus, I’m the king. You trust the people here, and so do I; I employed them.”

  She seemed to waver at that point, sighing. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you to London, Jaxcon,” she offered, and he gave her a wry smile.

  “Trust me, I would take a comfortable military base over crashed in ruins any day. It’ll only be a few days journey by rover anyway.”

  She nodded, pulling her light hued hair into a bun that she could cover with her hat. “I’ll try and keep Dmitri off your trail for a bit. You’ll manage the palace?”

  “I always do,” he quipped, and it just struck him how light he felt. His body was still sore with pain unlike anything he’d ever felt, he was in enemy territory, and he wasn’t back home yet. But he could physically feel the absence of a heavy weight off his back.

  His kingship, he realized with a start. It’s not like it was a secret; Jax long knew that he never would have been the monarch of NNR if he had a choice; but he never had one. So Paris Avelapoulos kidnapping him and torturing him after he was held hostage in a foreign place, actually almost gave him release. It wasn’t exactly ideal how the 2 and a half weeks were spent, but now that Jax had a full 3 nights of sleep when he didn’t have to actively worry about the fate of NNR, he knew that he would miss it.

  He could just leave. It was a tempting notion; drop it all and leave this mess that he was handed behind him. Maybe then he could breathe his first breath that wasn’t somehow controlled or influenced by someone else. Maybe then he could actual experience the sensation of living. Maybe then, he could-

  no.

  As heavy of a weight it was, NNR was Jax’s to carry and no one else’s. He couldn’t do that to some poor being, and if that being was Dmitri, then he couldn’t do that to NNR.

  He could run or could fight for something—for the world that could’ve been and still could be. What was it that Celine had said on the night of Jax’s birthday? —hoping may hurt you, but it would never make you suffer.

  The words rang in his head, echoing off the walls of his brain as he hugged Jo goodbye, and he tried to memorize the way how she felt. From what he learnt, he should treat every goodbye like it was the last one, because you never knew. “I wish you the very best,” she fiercely whispered in his ear, and he was suddenly reminded painfully of May, and how she might have sounded something like Jo when she grew older. If she grew older. “And I hope we see each other in less dire circumstances next time.”

  And that’s all there was to a farewell as Jax was whisked away into the back of a rover, being carted away home, liquid hope coursing through his veins. And as the vehicle travelled over a bump, slamming Jax’s injured shoulder into the wall, he amended that statement.

  Liquid hope and pain.

  …

  Jax drifted in and out of sleep, and somewhere in the middle, he idly recollected a hazy memory of feeling his heart divided in two, and his own perilous journey as he treaded the thin metal tightrope that separated his want to be home and his need to be able to breathe freely.

  He fell asleep after that, the images of a gleaming palace with aged stone and grandeur flooding the air, unadulterated from the total destruction that touched every other part of the nation lulling him to sleep.

  His dreams were filled with home.

  Forty-Seven

  A NEWSPAPER landed with a loud smack on the table in front of her.

  “Well hello to you too, Hollingsworth,” Fey drawled sarcastically, glaring up at the blonde hurricane that just carved its path towards Fey Downcley’s swivel chair in the meeting room.

  “How the hell are we supposed to fix this?” Celine asked, eyes wide, ignoring Fey’s dry comment.

  “The way we always do, I suppose,” Fey bitterly quipped, shoving her feet off the table to pick up the newspaper. It was a good day for Fey; the sun was shining, her body wasn’t screaming out in pain, and Stel was almost about to make direct contact with Kessia since her stunt as a double-double agent began. So of course, she responded in the most irritable fashion as possible. She knew the cost of hoping for good and getting bad, so she just acted so terribly that every piece of news was like a godsend. “We can’t do much about it.”

  “You haven’t even read it yet,” Jan shot back at her, and she would’ve been startled if he made more noise. But after working together for so long, heads side by side as they huddled over tactics and strategies for the spy mission, she had gotten used to the way he crept around almost silently everywhere.

  “Riots launching up all across NNR. Rebel groups gaining power by the hour. Overall panic over the alleged disappearance of Jaxcon the King,” she listed off, staring at January as if a challenge. “Page 3, isn’t it?”

  “4 actually,” Z broke in, drumming on the table with his spindly fingers as he slumped down into his seat.

  “Really?” Fey asked, surprised for a split second, but then she saw the smirk spreading across the mechanic’s face. “Oh, screw off,” she muttered at the curly-haired man, before turning back towards Jan. “The point is that I know. I just don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do about it.”

  “You have to admit though, Downcley; I got you for a minute there,” Z started, and Fey rolled her eyes at him. She opened her mouth to shoot a witty retort back at him, but his easy smile fell, and his brows drew seriously together as he looked over to Celine. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who knows what we’re doing?”

  The blonde just sighed, heaving a heavy breath from her lungs. “Yeah, I am. But I honestly don’t. I mean, we don’t even know where the hell he is!”

  “Maybe we should start there, then,” Jan suggested finally, not kindly, but Fey had to admit that the man had a point.

  “You mean find out where Jax is?” Z asked, the only one willing to voice the thoughts running through all of their brains.

  January nodded slowly, and Celine looked like she was entertaining the thought, her hazel eyes slowly moving across the room in realization. “You know,” she started slowly, “you have a good idea. We know where he was supposed to go, so if we trace him backwards, we should be able to at least get an idea of where he is.”

  “He could be dead,” Jan plainly stated, and if Fey didn’t agree with him, she would have done much more than pointedly glare at him. Celine apparently had no such qualms, launching her favourite purple pen’s cap at him.

  “Hey,” he grumbled, dodging the offending projectile. “I’m just stating a possibility. The rebels are growing uneasy, and we’re on a shift of power right now. God knows how much the Immortales know about this, and who knows? —maybe this was all planned out. Abduct and kill the king to raise confusion and even more fear into the nation, then capture it all.”

  There was silence as they all let that fact set in. Truth be told, it was an extremely plausible situation. The only thing preventing Fey from losing all hope of Jax being alive, wasn’t for the lack of decisiveness on the Immortales (or rebels, for that matter) part, but rather the doubt that Jaxcon Gallagher would go down quietly.

  Finally, it was January who spoke again to break the silence. There was a note of consideration, a certain hesitation that indicated that he was actually thinking about t
he weight of his words and the effect it had on others. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t look. I’m just saying that we need to consider our options.”

  Celine nodded, and Fey could almost see the olive branch that they both extended to each other, trying their best to take the peace subtly as to not injure either of their prides too much. “Alright. We’ll get started on that as soon as possible, but we also need to work on getting Arleyene back to Elix. Where is Stel, by the way?” Celine asked, looking around the room as if Stel might’ve waltzed in the room without them knowing.

  Honestly, giving the amount of training they had put her through, Fey was pretty sure that could be a possibility. “She’s in TR,” Z said, propping his feet on the table in a similar fashion that Fey herself was doing only a minute or two ago. The TR was what they called the training room, which was where Stel spent most of her time as of late. She was picking up the pace of her coding and Arleyene’s mannerisms surprisingly fast, so she focused most of her attention of weapon handling, seeing as it was her biggest weakness and was Arleyene’s biggest strength.

  “What is she doing?” Celine asked, pulling her blonde locks out of her ponytail holder, hair somehow not looking disgruntled, and for a quick second, Fey wondered in slight jealously how Celine always managed to look so effortlessly perfect. And then Fey had to remind herself that they were in the middle of a situation that could start a war, and now was not the time to fawn over the silkiness of Celine Hollingsworth seemingly perfect hair.

  “Punching a bag of sand into nothingness,” Z said brightly over his computer screen, no doubt starting to work on trying to find where the king had disappeared off to.

  Fey could see Jan’s light eyebrows hike up into his hairline out of the corner of her eye, and she had to hold back a snort at his expression. Keeping her face as neutral as possible, Fey kicked her chair back away from the table so she could stand upright. “I’ll get her,” she volunteered, and both Celine and Z were too preoccupied with the map and computer they were looking at respectively, to even pay heed to her announcement. January, on the other hand, stayed in his position up against the cabinets, grey eyes trained on her, as if he was assessing her every movement.

  Among everyone in the room, Fey was actually surprised that it was January Kurata-Tormont whom she fell in line with. Surprised that out of everyone in the room—despite the fact that neither of them got along exceptionally well with each other (Fey much preferred Celine’s warm comfort or Z’s friendly laughter than Jan’s cold judgement)—it was Jan himself who always knew what Fey needed. (even though he mainly used that information against her)

  She just widened her eyes in challenge, daring him to say something and break their silence, which he responded with a faint quirk of his lips and a nod. He would make sure that the connection of Elix should be ready by the time Fey came back with Stel. And with that, Fey strutted out of the meeting room, ignoring the sharp pain that flared up in her entire left side as she walked towards the TR.

  …

  “What did the poor punching bag ever do to you?” Fey asked dryly as soon as she entered the room, her words not startling Stel in the least.

  “I’m-” Stel spat out before gritted teeth, “-getting- nervous.”

  “Hence, you punch a bag until your knuckles bleed,” Fey concluded, her voice as gritty as sand. “Healthy coping mechanism you have there, Hathaway,” Before, that comment would’ve been scathing, but now it was teasing and light.

  It had taken a surprisingly short time for both girls to warm up to each other after they got past their original differences. Fey knew that she was pushing Stel to the edge of a daunting cliff, but she had to, and after Stel recognized that, they had managed to get along extremely well. Who knew that after teaching someone all about the most crucial parts to hit someone on the body would make them feel like a younger sibling?

  “What if I screw up?” Stel asked, falling into a steady rhythm with her hits. “What if they find out because I just screw up?”

  “First of all,” Fey started, moving so she was in Stel’s line of vision. “You won’t. Secondly, you won’t. You might not think that you’re gonna do this right, but you are because we taught you, remember?”

  At that, Stel stopped her assault, panting to catch her breath. “Seriously?”

  Fey quirked a smirk. “Glad to know the most important details catch your attention.” As innocently as possible, Fey moved towards the side of the room where she sat down on the bench beside Stel’s cardigan, hoping to attract as little attention as possible. Judging by Stel’s narrowed eyes, the girl noticed, but chose not to say anything. “We need to go and contact Elix soon, though.”

  “I know,” Stel muttered, peeling the gloves off her right hand so she could take a swig of water. “It’s just so stressful. And I know that I would be more useful punching my frustration off than whatever it is that Z does to calm himself down.”

  “Relaxing is good. I’m surprised you didn’t go for a run,” Fey commented absent-mindedly, paying a little more attention to her breathing than she would care to admit.

  “Wouldn’t spend enough of my energy,” Stel shot back with a feral smile, teasing Fey at her ability to run. While Fey Downcley was most certainly in shape (not so much since she found it increasingly harder to move, but that aside), Stel Hathaway could run like nobody’s business. Of course, that was credited to years on the streets, running from one spare job to the next, chasing down rolling venz down the streets and running away from storekeepers wielding brooms as weapons.

  “How’s Fallon?” Stel asked.

  Fey felt a twinge of guilt swell up in her gut at the sound of Stel’s younger sister’s name. They had torn away the one person who would protect her, away from her and left her with nothing more than a crate of enough medicine to last the foreseeable future, food, and venz. And while they had called in favours to make sure that the girl was taken care of, it still didn’t make up for the fact that she was dying alone because of them.

  “Well-” Fey started, eyes closed in regret, and Stel immediately cut in.

  “No, don’t tell me, actually. I really don’t want to know,” she whispered harshly, and it reminded Fey that while they might get along, there were some things they couldn’t agree on. Like Fallon Hathaway. “Is she getting her meds?”

  “Yes. She’s doing well, Stel.”

  “And I still don’t really want to know,” Stel informed her, her face unreadable. It took a few seconds, no doubt spent trying to even out her breaths, when Stel looked up at Fey a smile that actually somewhat met her eyes. “Let me take a shower, and I’ll be in the meeting room in 15 minutes.”

  Fey nodded, remaining seated as Stel gathered her things quickly, and the girl was heading out the door when Fey shouted after her, “Make that 10!”

  She only got a laugh that sounds like defiance in return.

  …

  “What’s wrong?” Fey immediately asked as she stepped into the meeting room, picking up the telling signs of Celine’s wide eyes, Z’s incessant fidgeting, and January’s stone-stillness. “Did you somehow screw up the connection before we could even get Stel on?”

  “Actually-” Z started, though he stopped himself by looking down at the table, biting his lip in concentration as his fingers drummed even faster on the wood.

  Fey took the silence as an indicator that she was right, and she could feel her annoyance flare up. Her left foot felt like falling off, her airways were seemingly closing in on itself, and judging by everyone’s disbelieving faces, they probably did something to compromise the mission they had worked their asses off to complete in the last month. Of course.

  “Jesus Christ; I was gone for five minutes. How did you manage to do so much in five minu-” the words died in her throat as she noticed for the first time that the head chair wasn’t empty, causing her to do a double-take. “No. Way.”

  “A lot can happen in five minutes, Downcley. We were waiting for you. Take a sea
t; we have a lot to discuss.”

  And there sat Jaxcon Gallagher, bruised and bloodied and battered, but alive, sitting in his chair with a wide, godforsaken grin on his face.

  A lot could happen in five minutes.

  Forty-Eight

  STEL should’ve known that something was wrong the second that the lights went out.

  It started when she had made sure that she showered for 20 minutes, just to spite Fey. She also might have liked the feel of hot water on her back a little too much, but that was a completely unrelated fact.

  She had just changed into a new set of clothes, throwing on her old ratty jacket for good luck, feeling significantly less stressed about properly contacting Elix, when the lights had begun to flicker into darkness.

  She wasn’t expecting for two dark figures to press her into a wall, knife dangerously close to her carotid artery. And she didn’t care what Fey Downcley thought; relaxing for a second was clearly lethal.

  “Where is she?” the person in front of her hissed, and before panic could completely settle in, Stel went into auto-pilot, reminding herself of all the lessons she went through if something like this should ever occur. Of course, those lessons were purely theoretical and were to be applied if she were Arleyene, and something told her that pretending to be the Immortale spy wouldn’t help her in her current situation.

  The person holding the knife to her throat was clearly stronger than her, if the grip that they were holding her hands was any indication. The one who had spoken already was a female, and her accent indicated that she was from the Amizonian Region. Though Stel suspected that it wasn’t a genuine lilt of the tongue judging by the wavering quality of intonation, and Stel also realized that 4 weeks ago, she would have never suspected ever being again to complete such a feat (or of ever having to complete such a feat).

  But Stel still had a knife to her throat, so she willed herself to fall back onto all the lessons of the past month.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Stel asked, eyes warily tracing down towards the metal gleaming dangerously close to her throat.