Chapter Twenty-Two
Ki tried to close her eyes against the pain. It was unbearable. It pulsed and seared through her whole body.
“Just stop, please, just stop,” she whimpered.
No one paid the slightest attention to her pleas.
“This is incredible,” Doctor Sherk said again.
She’d began to learn the names of the various doctors and nurses that attended her. They had never introduced themselves, but she’d picked them up as they’d chatted amongst themselves.
Ki even knew some of the soldiers that guarded her too.
It did not matter though; they never listened to her.
“Is the Major on his way?” Sherk yanked back the blue curtain excitedly, hooking it away, revealing the rest of the room in full.
“Yes, sir,” one of the soldiers by the door snapped a salute.
“Excellent. He’ll be thrilled that we’ve finally cracked it.” Sherk stared, wide-eyed at Ki. Though that wasn’t quite accurate – he looked at her arm.
For the past two days the doctors had poked and jabbed at the scars the Zeneethians had left. Like children digging in a sandpit, they’d scoured the flesh with various devices, taking samples, even hooking her up to machines.
She’d tried to block them out, just as she’d once tried to block out the Zeneethians. It was too hard though. At least the Zeneethians had never tried to hurt her – the Ashkans didn’t seem to care.
“Do we have more magnets?” Sherk danced back on his feet, nervous eyes flicking over the room. He looked like a host getting ready to entertain an important guest. In a way, he was. Ki had come to understand how reverent and loyal every person in this facility was to Major Bradshaw. Or perhaps it was not him that assured their keen diligence – maybe it was the prospect of finding out her secrets and using them against her people. She heard them speaking of how they would use the Zeneethian gun to finally wipe out every Tarkan. It was no act and it was no lie; every man and woman on this island wanted to finally defeat her people, if not kill them outright.
“Plenty, we’ve brought them up from the lab,” someone answered as they hefted a box and placed it on the clean white enamel table before her bed.
“Not too many, one or two will suffice. We do not want to injure her unnecessarily. We have a long road ahead of us finding out what this effect is, and we can’t afford to make any mistakes.” Sherk clasped his hands behind his back and nodded at the magnets.
“Sir, the Major is here,” the soldier by the door straightened up and snapped to the side.
In walked the one man Ki feared more than any other. Right now she would kill to be back in the hands of Max. At least he’d never considered her with such a look of cold, barely-suppressed hatred. Whatever burned behind the Major’s gaze and fueled his actions, it was horrible and unspeakably bitter. Perhaps he’d lost someone dear to him in the wars, maybe he’d lost his entire family. Whatever the reason, his attitude went far beyond loathing.
She turned from him, panting as the pain ripping through her arm began to ebb.
“What have you got for me?” the Major walked in and took up position several meters from her bed.
Behind him, someone else walked in, their footfall measured and slow.
She felt something and turned.
Jackson. He was standing just inside the door, one hand gripped into a fist, the other tapping erratically at his thigh. His lips were bunched together, his chin dimpled and stiff.
Emotion swept off him. She had no trouble in reading it.
Concern. Soul-shredding fear at what was going on and what would happen next.
He made eye contact with her briefly.
If she could have slowed down that moment, she would have lived the rest of her days in it. For weeks she’d been treated like nothing more than an animal, in that moment he gave her something more.
Any mistrust she’d ever had for him burned up. In the face of everything that had happened to her since they’d parted ways, she understood how lucky she’d been to come across him. Belligerent, yes, distrustful, of course, but at least he’d tried to treat her like a human.
“I don’t have long. This better be good,” the Major fixed Sherk with a tired, unforgiving look.
“Of course. It’ll take seconds to demonstrate,” Sherk grabbed one of the magnets and moved over to her. “As I have already told you, there is nothing unusual about this Tarkan. All the tests we’ve done have come back with expected results. We were ready to give up until we started to pry further into those strange scars over her arms.”
Pry they had – literally. With scalpels and calipers, they’d run every conceivable test, no matter how invasive.
“Doctor, please, I don’t need an introduction. I just need some results. Show me what you have.” The Major cleared his throat gruffly.
Sherk grabbed one of the magnets, took a sharp, readying breath, and let it go.
The magnet did not fall to the ground and clang against the hard stone. Though it was the size of a large coin, and though Sherk was standing a meter from her side, the magnet hovered for a split second. Then it shot towards her arm.
As it did, the pain returned. Burning and bursting through her veins, it felt like they’d injected her with lava. Her mind rang with it.
The magnet did not slam into her. It came to a sudden stop several centimeters from her, suspended in mid-air.
With an unusual, high-pitched hum, it began to vibrate. Slow at first, it became quicker and quicker.
Ki screamed, trying to pull back, but her arms were locked in place by tight leather straps. The more she fought against them, the more she banged and bruised herself. “S-s-stop it. Make it stop. Make it stop.”
No one moved. Everyone stared at the magnet as it shifted so violently it started to glow bright red with heat.
Then it disintegrated. Bright-white dust falling to the floor and singeing the brown stone.
No one said a word.
Ki fitted, twisting her head back and forth as she tried to overcome the pain.
“What... did we just witness?” the Major stepped forward, his usual composure gone, his eyes rimmed with white.
“That was nothing more than a standard magnet. We found this effect by chance. One of our devices was behaving unusually—” Sherk began.
“Doctor, what the hell just happened?” the Major snapped, voice booming through the room.
“We don’t know. We surmise it has something to do with those scars. To be honest, we simply lack the technical understanding to even begin to comprehend this process. We believe it has something to do with the atomic level—”
“You don’t know? Then find out. Triple the guards in this room. I’ll bring you whatever scientists you need, whatever resources. Just find out what’s going on.” The Major’s arms dropped from behind him, coming to rest by his sides, the fingers opening and closing loosely. He wore an expression of slack-jawed amazement.
The agonizing pain began to ebb, and Ki marshalled the energy to turn her head.
Jackson was not blinking. He had not moved. Yet a single tear was tracking down his slack, white cheeks. Clearing it away quickly and coughing, he took a shaky step towards the Major. “Sir, please remember we must be careful. If you let any word of what’s going on here out, the Zeneethians will find out.”
The Major ignored him. He simply stared at the singed marks on the stone floor. “Whatever this is,” he pointed to the ground with a shaking hand, “we can use it.”
Ki closed her eyes. She turned off. She couldn’t listen to this. The Zeneethians had been one thing, the Ashkans were worse. They wanted to use her as a weapon against her own people. She had never been involved in the wars that had divided her planet in two for centuries, yet now it seemed she would decide them.
If the Zeneethians did not intervene. Jackson was right. As soon as word of what had happened to her got out, they would come for her. This time they would send a whole squadron, perhaps an entire flo
ating city would descend from the sky.
She was trapped between a rock and a hard place, and her only hope was a man she’d barely grown to trust.
Wincing one eye open, she sought out Jackson.
He no longer looked at her. He stared at the ground, eyes hooded from view.
His loyalty was strong – she knew that. He’d lost so much to the Tarkans, including his fiancée. He had every reason to ignore her. She simply hoped he would not.
Drawing on her years of meditation, she tried to quiet her mind and still the pain shifting up her arm and back. It could do nothing to dampen her despair though. Only a miracle could dispel that.
Ki Book One Page 22