Page 31

I find two guards lying in the hallway and hope Elix has broken free. When I charge out to the ship, I am greeted by two more confused guards on the ramp. I fire at them. It takes three shots to break their shields and a fourth to take them down.

None of the controls inside respond to me, even when I put on a set of the guards’ gloves. But I can access the cabinets and steal a shield plus a spare, strap one to my chest, and shove the other in my pocket. Then I clip on a harness with extra ammo and a handgun as backup. But I stop when I notice something on the co-pilot’s seat. It’s a Terran security badge with a face and a name: Kursh.

Looks like him. I tuck it in a pocket and sneak to the edge of the ramp. A few guards search the hallways on one side of the hangar, so I slink out the other side of the ramp and take a different route.

Lifting my wristband, I message Elix.

Where are you? I broke out.

A rave somewhere below. Follow the music. Your father is here.

I stop as the reality sinks in. Of course, he’s not dead. Probably faked that as a cover. Kept his gold and weapons close.

I follow the thumping racket through corridors, deep in the heart of the red planet. A guard stands watch at the doorway.

As I lift my rifle to fire, I notice my fingers seem blurry. What the heck?

I check my arms and hands, but I’ve become just Abr gear with an invisible being inside.

When the guard turns to scan the other side of the room, I creep through and into the crowd. I message Elix.

I’m here. Where are you?

Big glass.

I find the gigantic martini glass pool out on the floor and snake through the colorful partygoers in costumes of all kinds from light-up attire to skimpy metal and leather bondage straps.

A hand grabs me and spins me around. “Zariah.”

Elix hugs me briefly, then encourages me away. “Your father is up in that glass room. He has cameras everywhere.”

“So we can’t escape. I think this is Planet Eigrah. Surface is not inhabitable. We can’t walk out there. There’s nowhere to go. My brother’s ship doesn’t respond to me,” I tell him, noticing my skin has colorized again. This is weird. Must be because of Elix. A serum side effect? He said he’d never aerated it before.

“You tried to leave?”

“I was trying to find you and see if we could fly that ship out of here. My brother uses gloves to indicate who can touch what. Like form-fit keycards. But it’s not much more secure.”

“There’s a cargo dock,” Elix says as we move through the crowd. “Saw it on the screens in your father’s office. There are more ships.”

He fumbles with a collar around his neck. I stop and wave him closer, check over my shoulder, and then find the trick latch release and break it free. I toss it aside.

“Cazir is likely headed there. I’m sure he wants to take as much as he can get. I’m certain he has no idea my father’s alive. You are sure it’s him, right?”

Elix braces my chin, looks me over, and nods. “No doubt.”

“Did he take any serum from you?”

“No.”

“Good.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “You feeling better?”

“I tried to kill him.”

I keep my eyes on the people around us, watching for approaching guards. “Shield was too strong, wasn’t it?”

“I take it you’ve tried?”

“Yeah. No bullet has ever worked.”

Elix motions me to the edge of the crowd and takes my hand. “Invisibility, huh?”

“I guess. I’ve had some of your algae and a lot of serum. Aura zapped me. Maybe all of it mutated me?”

“Could be. Glowing yet?”

I shake my head as we slip away from the rave into the dark hallways. We exit a spiral staircase cut into the stone and find a long passage with multiple openings into a large hangar.

At the far end, many men move crates of weapons, jewelry, chunks of precious metals, and high-tech parts for suits of the highest military grade armor. My brother paces impatiently between the steps leading up to the vault and the massive transport.

Elix and I weave through the shadows of the rocky walls toward a smaller ship in the distance. “I can rewire or rechip it to get us out of here. Just need to get on board.”

As we near the small fighter at the end, shouts and gunfire erupt at the other end of the hangar. I remember the shields I picked up and clip one of them to him.

Men in different tactical uniforms than my brother’s crews fire upon the guards that load the treasures.

“Come on,” Elix encourages me toward the back of the ship where the security panel is. “Probably needs your touch.”

As I set my hand on the glass, shots rip through our position. Elix grabs me around the waist and pulls me behind the ship with a grunt.

The ship opens to my handprint. “I guess my DNA is just bad enough to work.”

As we move to board the ship, a trail of warping gunfire scorches our path. Elix caves under the power of the blasts. His body launches away from me as I lean away to shield myself from the fire.

“Zariah!”

I swivel from where I crouch on the ground to glare over my shoulder at the familiar voice. Seeing his wretched face confirms my doubts. “Faked it again, didn’t you?”

He shrugs inside his long black leather coat. Wrinkles have deepened among the scars since I saw him last, and the red tracework of augmentations seem to have replaced more of his body, from his eyes to his fingers.

“This is why.” He motions his rifle back toward the clash of his forces with my brother’s. “Anyone who wants my spoils will try for it at some point. The difference is the cowards try it when they think I’m gone. They are often the self-proclaimed loyal servants when I’m alive. This is how I weed them out. But I admit, I never expected to see you come and try to take it.”

“I’m not. That asshole you used to praise over me captured us and forced me to open the doors. I don’t want anything from you.” I find the courage to get to my feet, though I was rarely afforded such honor in his presence.

I’m not living under your rule again.

“So you ran from me,” he says, sounding almost surprised. “You weren’t taken?”

I’m caught off guard by his question. “Of course, I ran! You were going to sell me to Daglin as a bride in exchange for a ship like I’m some sort of product to be traded!”

“You’re female. You have one purpose: serve males.”

I scoff. “You’re disgusting and narrow-minded.”

“Oh, come now.” He rolls his eyes like I’m being petulant. “Your life was not that horrible. I’ve seen women treated far worse.”

“You’re right. I should be grateful for your beatings and the scraps of food you gave me when you didn’t have me risking my head in some jungle of puzzles in search of these treasures you guard with your life, let alone tossed around like a plaything for your guards.” A bullet skips off of the ship from the distant battle and makes me duck. “It seems I had another purpose. And you know what? I still find what I’m looking for.”

He shifts between his boots, making his cloak sway, exposing the hoverpads in his heels. My father’s upgraded a lot since I left. “So you did come to take back what you found. You’re lying to me like everyone else!”

I shake my head. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, and you know what saddens me most?”

My father grimaces like he’s anticipating something distasteful.

“That you wasted your intellect on stealing instead of building and that you’ve surrounded yourself with so many greedy people that you can’t see the genuine ones. But I guess that’s why Mom left you and died alone.”

One of his scarred cheeks twitches.

“She loved you when she was younger. That was until you came and took us away.” I think back to finding her again after I’d escaped his ship. She’d moved to a different camp but didn’t have the funds or the skills to get a ride off of the planet. “You destroyed something more precious than all of your gold, credits, and gemstones.”

He growls as he charges toward me. I lift my rifle and fire at him, but his shield is impenetrable. My father knocks the rifle from my hands, invading my shield like it doesn’t exist.

Then he grabs me by the vest and shoves me against the side of the ship. “You shut up! Do not talk to me in such a way, you insolent little shit! I never wanted you!”

“I think you did.”

My father looks over his shoulder and sees Elix standing behind him, then drops me. “What do you know, serum goblin?”

Elix stands calm and ready, iceblade handle tight in his palm. “Love opens a world of tenderness we can’t afford in the business of war. And it scares us to be so vulnerable, which is why we try to destroy it, block it out of our minds. Yet it is the only thing that gives our otherwise meaningless lives purpose. That clash of dreams—power versus love—can drive anyone insane. But I guess when you’re used to living in denial, Branthor . It makes you not see what’s standing right in front of you. Don’t recognize me do you?”

I steady myself as I listen to Elix and realize he’s speaking from his core.

“I’d know your smug face, anywhere.”

“Really?” Elix rhetorically asks. “If you knew who I was, you would not have hesitated to kill me. But you murdered thousands of my people. So of course you wouldn’t be able to sort my green face from the others, not even after I’d put a blade through your side or stabbed you in the back after you ran your blade through my neck. At least you have bad aim. But you know who doesn’t?”

My father growls. His body tenses.

“Your beautiful, powerful, gifted daughter who has given my life purpose.” Elix tosses a device over my father’s head toward me.

I catch it and look down at the ice blade, realizing my father had done far more than steal goods. He stole lives, tortured many, and helped put Elix’s species on the endangered list. A rage uncommon to me boils over.

“You do not get to speak!” My father fires at Elix, who caves. His shield sputters out. And he staggers, gasping for breath.

“Stop!” I shout at him.

“Why?” My father sneers, triumph shining in his eyes. “All beings must pay the price for their sins. His kind hoards healing medicine that could save us!”

He’s going to kill Elix. I know it in my heart as much as I see the final blast leave his gun and slam into Elix’s chest.

“No!” Mortification turns to fury that thrusts fire into my body. I open the sword and stab it toward my father’s middle.

Forgive me.

I’m not asking it of him but of the universe. I am not a killer; I have no desire to take any life.

As my father turns to me, lifting his gun, vengeance in his eyes, the blade pierces his shield, cuts through his armor, and buries in his chest.

His gasp of surprise paired with wide eyes makes my lips tremble. The room is suddenly silent. I cannot hear the drone of the distant gunfire or the engines of the cargo ships. I see only the blood leaking from his chest and Elix lying on the ground behind him.

“I’m sorry,” I squeak out. “I didn’t want to. But you’re a piece of shit!” I scream, my body shaking. “You’re also my father. And I know you’re like this because of your father.”

He wheezes, confusion contorting his face. “Why him over me?”

“Because he’s my mate. He’s saved my life. Protected me. Defended me. We survived because we stuck together. He has been everything to me that you should have been! Elix is everything you’re not.” My eyes fill with tears.

I wish I could kill him and not care. But there is something that breaks in my soul as his heartbeat slows. “And you are a poison I cannot endure any longer.”

“You’ve always been soft.” He coughs and takes a knee. “Like your mother.”

“At least I have morals and honor.”

“Those don’t get us anything in this life.”

“They are everything to someone with nothing.”

A puddle of blood forms beneath him on the tarmac, and I withdraw the sword.

“You don’t understand,” he wheezes.

“Keep telling yourself that,” I mutter as I walk around him to check on Elix.

Elix coughs and sits up. He has a charred hole in his leather jacket, but he manages to get to his hands and knees. Blood drips from his chest. “We need to get on board.”

I help him up as a ship’s thrusters rumble through the deep cargo hangar into the dock. People from both my father’s and brother’s teams fire at it. The shields disburse the shots like rain in a puddle as Elix leans on me and shakes his head like he can’t get his bearing.

The mysterious ship hovers in the shadows and doesn’t respond to my brother’s shouts. I can’t quite see its shape in the darkness.

“Should’ve picked a stronger mate,” my father chokes out. “I see you got my skill.”

“What?”

“Invisibility.” Color drains from his face. “That’s why I was good when I was your age. Mutation.”

My father rolls onto his back and stills. His eyes stare blankly up at the rock.

I don’t believe it; it’s why I can’t look away from him. All those years, the people’s lives he ruined, stopped by one blade, the one in my hand.

I choke, trying to swallow my hatred of him and now of myself for taking life from anyone. He was still my father. And now I’m a killer. Suddenly, revenge doesn’t feel as satisfying.

I still can’t fix the past. And my brother has already taken his place to continue the misery our family unleashes on the universe.

Elix gently takes the blade from my trembling hand as he encourages me inside the ship. “You’re not him.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he never felt the way I know you do now. Not once. Not while he destroyed worlds to take what was most precious from us.”

“I thought you didn’t care about stuff.”

Elix shakes his head. “I don’t. I care about you. Now let’s find a way out of this place.”