Page 39 of Red Demon (Oria #1)

Field Station

T his was not the body I remembered. Here I was, five days after a punctured lung, breathing fine. And although my legs throbbed under my splint, I knew a broken leg should take at least a couple months to mend. Yet that dawn, I woke with my muscles itching for their daily exercise.

The doorknob rumbled, and I could hear Faruhar murmuring to herself. I’d noticed her talking to herself from time to time, but I still couldn’t say that was the strangest thing about her. She walked in with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder, then shrugged out of a damp cloak.

“Did you sleep at all?” I asked.

She’d insisted on sleeping on the floor by the fire and giving me the bed. I’d hated her enough not to argue, but I also hated that she’d offered, since that made it more difficult to hate her.

“Just up early,” she said, hanging up her cloak.

She caught my stare and a flicker of something crossed her face— annoyance? Discomfort? Confusion. Ah.

“You’re Faruhar and I’m Jesse. Neither of us are killing each other today,” I said. “Did you find your journal?”

She sighed. “I looked through it when I woke up. You just smell different.”

“That bad, huh?” A smile ticked up on the corner of my mouth before I could stop it. I’d washed myself with a wet rag, but hadn’t risked a full shower in my state.

“Sweat and wood smoke—nothing bad.” She threw her bag on the table and studied me again. “But you also smell restless.”

“I didn’t know restless was a smell.”

“It is. Why do you smell that way?”

I closed my eyes tight. Even though I was stuck here, I had thought some things through last night.

If I wanted to know who she worked with, and who was responsible for these deaths, I could not treat every conversation like an interrogation.

If I opened up a little about safe things, made small talk without giving her anything she could use against me, maybe I’d get closer.

“Just … anxious to bury Galen; my friends,” I said, his name catching a little in my throat. “If soldiers sweep in, they may burn them like they did for Chaeten in the Bend. Asri would find that disrespectful.”

She leaned across the table, pulling out a gutted rabbit and some mushrooms. “The soldiers haven’t moved in yet.”

I held my breath. The barrack was so close that this couldn’t be right. “How do you know that?”

“My sister looked around. Too many ruren-sa.”

I gripped the edge of the bed. “So your sister is out there foraging with you in the forest?”

“Yeah.” She pulled down some herbs from the shelf. “Waiting for me to be done with you. I told her I wanted to keep a man from dying. She said more people died because I stayed. And more keep dying every day until I join her.”

“So, she’s threatening you?” I needed more information, someone to kill.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “She already doesn’t like you, don’t make it worse.”

“Why doesn’t she like me?”

“Might have been that time you tried to kill me.” She pushed her hair out of her face.

Faruhar hummed as she washed the herbs in the sink, then laid them out to dry. We’d reached a dead end in the conversation—unless I thought of something.

“I have a brother. Someone I’m pretty sure you haven’t killed,” I said, adding the word ‘yet’ in my head. I wouldn’t give her his name, but… “I miss him.”

She cocked her head at me. “You said you had no kin to help you.”

“He can’t help me,” I said. “He’s a soldier. I don’t even know where he is stationed right now.”

“If he’s fighting for the empire, you can look that up.” She pulled out twine from a cabinet.

“I thought about that. If I walk to another town’s temple and tell them everything I’ve seen, they’ll either quarantine or arrest me until they sort this all out. I’m Chaeten; Asri are dead.” I sighed.

She went to her larger leather bag and started digging. “There’s a military field station a couple of kilometers from here. They’ll have a terminal. Bria can help us get in.”

My heart skipped a beat. I’d get to meet the sister, and find Ash. It seemed too good to be true.

“Wouldn’t we need … Z’har credentials?”

She stopped rummaging and met my gaze, amusement simmering in her cat green eyes. “Yeah.” She produced a key card from the bag, several key-cards to choose from, in fact.

“How did you get all those?”

“The dead don’t need them.”

I clenched my jaw. “I guess I know better than to ask how they died,” I said, out loud, like an idiot.

“Good,” she said, her voice clipped. “Get yourself ready while I hang these herbs.”

I stared at her. “Get ready, how?”

“Take off the splint and leave the knee wrapped. Your legs are well enough to stand on.” She raised an eyebrow when I stared open-mouthed. “You didn’t know?”

I knew, but I’d been trying to hide my fast healing as best I could, pretending the bones ached more than they did, hoping to have more time to untangle her secrets. “I didn’t know.”

There were, indeed, many stairs to get out to the surface, and no railing.

But Faruhar found me a sturdy enough stick to suffice as a cane, and we took one irregular step at a time together on the ancient stonework.

I studied those stairs, the mossy engraving on the dark walls once there was sufficient light to grow it—anything but her arm on mine as we walked.

We ventured out into the drizzle, and I broke away. But the forest path was slick underfoot, and my leg throbbed with each step. Faruhar stayed close, offering a steady arm whenever I stumbled, and I felt her gaze on me even when the terrain was easy.

There was no sign of her sister, but I decided I’d let her be the one to bring that up.

About an hour later, we reached the field station, a small concrete box of a building half-hidden by overgrown brush. Lichen clung to the walls, and the solar generator on the roof sat at a precarious angle.

“Are you sure it’s still functional?” I asked.

“No.” She pulled out the first keycard from her bag and held it against a black square by the door. “If it’s not, we’ll try another. They’re other little booths in the woods for emergencies, further away.”

The first metallic card did nothing. Tossing it on the ground, she tried the second. A little LED flashed green beside the door.

With a push, the door creaked open, revealing a dark interior until we stepped inside.

The air inside tasted stale and moldy. A single light with a yellowed glow lit us overhead in a small room about the size of the bathhouse back home.

A dusty terminal sat over a counter, with two sturdy metal chairs in front.

The screen flickered on with monochrome white text above the image of an oak tree with two intertwining branches: Queen Azara’s Introgression Tree.

Fuck, I could get arrested for this, couldn’t I?

Then displays lit up around the room—maps, news headlines.

“I’ll be just outside.” Her voice echoed in the cramped space. “You’re safe in here.”

I nodded. The door closed behind her before I moved a finger. I didn’t need her looking over my shoulder, learning where to go to kill my last brother.

The buttons felt familiar in my hands, even though it had been a while. I’d loved the terminal I sometimes got to use in my school at Crofton. Perhaps being told I couldn’t take them home made them seem more magical.

I saw a headline: “Asri rebels overtake tech in Syren, Meyit. Citizens demand tighter restrictions.” Underneath, a photo of a crying child behind the burnt remains of a truck.

Directly beside it, an article about the last episode of a serial called “Crossed Wires,” described as “an unlikely love story between a Chaeten Z’har scholar and a scrappy member of an Asri-street gang.

” In the last episode, the Asri main character Arana had been beaten by her father when she failed to follow through on an attack on the Chaeten boy’s temple.

I could click a button to watch, but I kept looking for the program to find Ash.

I found it: Central Citizenship. At the temple, priests could use it to show where everyone in the empire lived, among other things.

First, I typed in my last name, “Eirini.” clicked the box for “living” and narrowed down other filters.

A wave of relief washed over me when I saw Asher’s name listed alongside mine, and photos taken by the priests during the last Rain Festival.

Most of Ash’s profile was locked away. A security prompt materialized on the screen, demanding a passcode when I tried to click further.

“Great,” I muttered, glancing back at the empty doorway.

I picked my walking stick off the floor, hoping she wasn’t far away.

“You need help?” her husky voice startled me. Faruhar stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

“Voids, you move fast,” I said. “And so quiet it’s creepy.”

“That almost wasn’t an insult,” she said, one eyebrow raised. “What do you need?”

I sighed, gesturing to the screen. “I think this is a dead end.”

She leaned over my shoulder, eyes roving. “Right,” she muttered, “Bria can ask around. Stay here.”

She strode out the doorway, and out into the rustling forest, closing the metal door behind her to leave me in the dim yellow room. I was not above listening at the door. Rising to my unsteady feet, I limped with quiet steps, placing my ear against cold steel.

The hollow ringing of the metal door, and the steady click of the solar generator—nothing else. I wondered if it was time to get back to my seat. Maybe this thing was so insulated I wouldn’t even hear her steps.

And voids, that creepy quiet mode of hers, I might not hear her with no door at all.

“You’re not being reasonable,” Faruhar said, angry, voice muffled through the door.

No response, at least none I could make out. Faruhar’s voice dropped lower, almost inaudible.

“I’d do it for you, without question,” Faruhar hissed again.

My heart thumped in my chest. When no angry voice responded, doubt sprouted in my mind. Was she … talking to herself? Or was her sister just quiet?

I was grateful Faruhar took angry steps back rather than creepy quiet ones. I tried to look bored, slouching on the wall when the metal door hissed open.

Faruhar slipped back in, her face unreadable. She strode with purpose toward the terminal.

“Are you able to get in?” I asked.

“Don’t talk, or this will fall right out of my brain.” She placed a hand on the keyboard, and I held my breath as her fingers tapped out a series of random characters.

The screen flickered, then the red security prompt vanished, replaced by a welcoming blue login. How in the dark void…

“There you go,” Faruhar said, her voice gruff. “Take your time. I have some things I need to do out there. Knock when you want to come out.” Before I could ask what that meant, she turned and headed back toward the door.

I delved into Asher’s profile, which was a lot more detailed than I expected.

There was a link to show his medical records and past injuries, mods, who his parents were …

his whole code sequence. I checked ‘known addresses’ and only saw our house in Nunbiren.

Under Service History, I found he was slated to arrive at some forest outpost in central Noé.

I zoomed in on a map, trying to memorize every detail of the terrain in the middle of the forest, along with the coordinates.

Clicking away, I saw notes from commanders, a psychological assessment, and a log of his personal message.

A cold sweat pricked my skin. The sheer volume of information was staggering, all meticulously documented by the empire.

That made me curious. I clicked on my name and braced myself.

The screen displayed a list of details, most of which aligned with what I knew: my age, birthplace in Crofton, my biological parents’ names.

I clicked on their pictures, and relished a look at their faces after so many years, realizing that if I shaved off my current stubble, I’d look so much like my dad.

Then I saw my father’s occupation as “medical lab technician” with the employer as “Crofton Mine.” He’d been a mechanic who worked on the rigs.

He’d shown me his work station one day. Yet as I clicked through to his employment reviews, there was nothing about mechanical engineering.

He worked in a lab. There were order histories of chemicals and work correspondence I didn’t understand.

It felt like a betrayal. I loved my dad, a man with a quiet strength who worked hard and taught me to do the same. Why did he lie about his job?

I glanced at the door, a million questions swirling in my head. But for now, I had no one I trusted enough to talk this out with. And I had one more search to try.

No hits on Red Demon in that database, and the only two Faruhars recorded looked nothing like her: Asri who died centuries ago.

A knock at the door: not like a tap-tap-tap, just one. I rose on my cane to go investigate, squinting as my eyes readjusted to the burst of late afternoon light. Taking a deep breath of crisp, pine-scented air, I pushed off into the forest, wincing at the throb in my leg.

“Faruhar?” I called out, my voice resounding through the trees. Birds chirped, insects buzzed. A woodpecker drummed in the distance.

She couldn’t have gotten far. I closed the door behind me with a click, and started limping down the leaf-strewn path, hoping to track her.

I rounded a bend in the path, and I heard movement in the brush beside me.

“Not creepy quiet this time, but you could still call back,” I said.

The figure emerged, then another. In a clearing dappled with sunlight and shadow, stood a pack of wild dogs.