10. Edged Vigilance
10
Edged Vigilance
Ki’REMI
T his woman was driving him up the fokkin’ wall.
It irked him how she walked beside him, posture easy, breathing steady.
As if she hadn’t just unleashed hellfire from her hands and torn through an enemy squadron like she was some superlunary necromancer.
Like she hadn’t obliterated an entire ship with a force he’d never encountered before.
Her attitude was more annoying than her freakish capabilities and blatant disregard for the fundamental laws of science and medicine.
She was not disrespectful, nada . She was infuriating with her polite calm, her evasiveness, and freakin’ self-assurance.
Despite himself, she intrigued him.
Ki’Remi mulled over recent events as they trekked toward the Allorian village.
Bear and Riva took the lead, firearms drawn, scanning the dense jungle for any remaining hostiles.
Klash followed behind them, pushing Zera’s hover bed forward.
Juno covered their flank, her gaze flicking between the path ahead and the shifting foliage.
Ki’Remi and Issa took the rear, moving in practiced silence, weapons cocked, examining for threats.
The rainforest around them was a tangle of deep indigo trees, their towering forms thick with luminescent moss that pulsed in slow, rhythmic waves.
Massive vines curled down like ancient serpents, writhing slowly as the humidity thickened.
The forests of Alloria whispered about them, a thousand shades of green breathing in time with the wind.
The canopy above filtered streaks of afternoon sun across mossy trunks and aged ferns.
The leaf-strewn path was illuminated golden as Ki’Remi strode behind Issa, his boots grinding into the soft earth.
Eyes on her, still mulling at how she’d incinerated an enemy vessel.
With nothing but the furious blaze of her hands and the strange, celestial fire that now simmered beneath her skin.
Somewhere in the distance, a significant creature shifted, branches cracking under its unseen weight.
It jolted him, and he caught up to Issa.
Twas fokkin’ time he got his answers.
Drawing up alongside her, he gave her such a scorching look that she swiveled her head, mister, to meet his stare.
He raised his chin. ‘You expect me to accept what you did back there without question?’
She tilted her head, that infuriating half-smile curving her lips. ‘I have no expectations of you, Sable.’
He halted.
Spun.
‘You’re going to explain whateverthefokk you just pulled,’ he snapped, gritted and thunder-laced.
His chest heaved from the adrenaline, and his hands clenched his laser rifle.
Issa slanted her head, curls dancing as she looked up at him with maddening calm. ‘Explain what?’
His jaw ticked. ‘Don’t play coy. That wasn’t tech. That was you . You blew a highly weaponized gunship out of the sky, Elaris. With your bare hands.’
She shrugged, sidestepping a root. ‘So?’
‘So?’ His voice cracked like a whip. ‘You think you get to shrug off something like that? I’m a Rider, dammit. I’ve seen everything from thermo nucleic bombings to planetary ruptures. Whatever you did was not something witnessed before in Pegasi. Am I right?’
Her silence was louder than a retort.
As was her disregard as she shrugged and walked on, boots whispering against leaves, eyes fixed ahead.
He followed, seething. ‘You work for me, for Admiral Rhye. You’re a doctor and a caregiver, for fokk’s sake, yet you don’t seem to give a fokk about the implications of your actions. I’m even questioning if I know what the hell you are .’
She stopped and took her time to face him.
The static between them thickened with electric energy laced with starlight and wrath.
‘You know who I am,’ she said, voice soft but firm. ‘I’m a surgeon on your team.’
‘That’s not the question I’m asking,’ he growled. ‘What are you?’
She arched a brow. ‘Is that what matters now?’
Ki’Remi stepped forward, close enough to see the flickers of light under her skin, like distant supernovas trapped beneath the surface. ‘You owe me honesty, Issa. Don’t talk to me like I’m just some grunt you’re humoring.’
That struck a nerve.
Her eyes flared. For a breathless second, her irises lit with white-hot fire, reflecting the raw, burning energy still simmering inside her.
‘You want to interrogate me like I’m some specimen?’ she said, voice cold. ‘Go fokk yourself.’
Ki’Remi stood still, blood pounding, throat tight.
‘I want to know what you’re hiding; you appear to wield a force that can raze gunships.’ His grip on his rifle tightened. ‘The same chaotic power I suspect you used to tamper with my patients without authorization. It’s out of control, and I won’t let you use it without understanding what the fokk it is and who you are.’
She laughed under her breath, soft and knowing. ‘Won’t allow me? What are you going to do? Restrain me? You and I know how that’ll turn out. As for my force, you’re still framing it through your lens of science and medicine. You think what I do is some rogue alternative therapy technique that you can dissect, analyze, categorize.’
She turned her gaze toward him, the amber light of the jungle casting golden hues across her features. ‘It’s not.’
He scoffed. ‘Oh, so you’re going to tell me it’s divine intervention?’
‘Not intervention,’ she corrected, her tone maddeningly patient. ‘Transference.’
Ki’Remi sucked his teeth, signaling his disdain. Transference. Energy healing. More witch talk.
She still went on, her voice quieter, measured but insistent. ‘Healing practices, real curative therapy, is about transferring energy from the healer to the recipient. It’s about promoting self-regeneration, allowing the body to restore itself by realigning any disrupted cells. It’s about balance. Vitality isn’t mystical, Sable. You, of all people, should know that. You work with bio-electric currents, synaptic pathways, and neural stimulation. It’s not so different.’
His jaw clenched. ‘The difference is that my techniques are based on empirical data. Hard science. Established methods.’
She let out a breath, shaking her head. ‘Even the most skeptical of people can be healed, Ki’Remi. You also don’t have a monopoly on healing and its techniques. There are ways more archaic than you that have proven more effective, now forgotten, yet you disdain them without understanding and true comprehension.’
She gestured toward the dense foliage above them. ‘People always talk about being drained or bursting with energy. Why? Because it’s a reality. Whether you acknowledge it or not, the body is a conduit for a celestial force more ancient than you can imagine, and that’s the fokkin ’ truth.’
The jungle loomed around them, a living entity of sound and breath.
Trees stretched skyward, their twisted trunks thick with bioluminescent moss. The canopy filtered the moonlight into silver ribbons, casting spectral shadows along the narrow path they walked.
Damp, rich, loamy earth mingled with the scent of Allorian spice bark, a native tree that exuded a natural incense-like fragrance.
Shaking his head in disbelief at her preposterous statement, Ki’Remi prowled on, his movements instinctual, practiced, a predator’s grace.
Issa kept up beside him, her pace effortless despite the uneven terrain, as if she belonged to the wild.
So far, he considered her untamed, a force of nature wrapped in human form.
However, today’s events threw her into the realm of alien improbability, and he struggled to understand it all.
Her gaze sliced at him, cutting through the dense air like a blade.
‘You don’t believe in any of it, do you?’ she finally asked in a murmur.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant.
Ki’Remi exhaled, tilting his head toward her. ‘I trust in facts, in science. In tangible matter that I can touch, measure, prove.’
He flicked his fingers at the jungle ahead. ‘What I’m not convinced of is mumbo-jumbo voodoo magic.’
Issa made a soft sound between amusement and exasperation in the back of her throat. ‘Magic,’ she said, rolling the word over her tongue like she was testing its weight. ‘You think what I do is sorcery?’
He didn’t answer immediately.
She lifted a brow. ‘I don’t believe that Ki’Remi Sable, the famed surgeon, the walking embodiment of science and logic, is that obtuse. That you doubt in anything beyond what you can see, past what your precious instruments can measure.’
His jaw ticked. The conversation was pressing into places he didn’t like.
‘What’s wrong with needing proof?’ he countered, voice edged with steel.
‘Nothing,’ she admitted. ‘Unless you use it as an excuse to ignore what’s right in front of you.’
His scowl deepened. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Issa stepped before him, blocking his path, her luminous eyes searching his face with unsettling accuracy. ‘It means you’re fighting something inside you, an actuality you don’t even want to acknowledge.’
He folded his arms across his chest, his metanoid tattoos shifting with residual energy, a testament to his unease. ‘I deal in reality, Issa. Not faith. Not superstition. I fix what’s broken with my hands and mind, not chants and rituals.’
She studied him, tilting her head.
Her voice dropped, her husky tone penetrating. ‘Because emotion and sentiment have let you down in the past? When caring turned into the utmost betrayal, intended or unintended?’
His throat tightened as a storm of memories slammed into him with brutal force.
The firestorms of Earth, the Great Apocalypse that shattered nations, and the desperate screams of people caught in the crossfire of collapsing governments and warring factions.
He had been a mere child, too juvenile when his family was swallowed by the inferno that consumed their home.
Too naive to understand that his world was crumbling before his eyes.
The following wars stripped away all guilelessness, honing him into a weapon and forging him into a cold, precise fighter.
He became a young soldier battling for survival, a warrior who bled out his innocence in conflicts that ultimately meant nothing.
Then came the crats and their torture.
He recalled the icy metal of their restraints biting into his wrists, the scent of gore and blood teeming in the air.
The agony of experimentation, the purgatory of abuse, of being beaten, lashed, and experimented on alongside his fellow Riders, their suffering no less than his.
Emotion had done nothing for him then.
Sentiment had been a liability.
So, he abandoned it.
He built his world on logic, on what was measurable and defined.
After the Riders escaped the Technocracy, he turned to medicine and science to fix what could be restored. By healing others, he justified the wreckage inside himself.
Ki’Remi clenched his teeth, forcing his person back into the present.
Issa was still gazing up at him.
Not with pity but with understanding. With knowing.
His entire soul lurched.
‘All you’re doing,’ she murmured, ‘is denying the other half of yourself.’
He let out a harsh breath, glancing away, his gaze fixed on the distant flicker of bioluminescent fireflies hovering near the undergrowth.
She made it sound so simple.
As if embracing the past, accepting his former pain, was just a matter of flipping a switch.
‘It’s not that easy,’ he muttered.
‘ Nada ,’ she agreed, stepping closer, the warmth of her body brushing against his. ‘It never is.’
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The jungle whispered around them, the hum of unseen creatures filling the silence.
Then, Issa sighed, shaking her head. ‘You ever get tired, Sable?’
He frowned, caught off guard. ‘Weary of what?’
‘Of carrying the burden of rejecting and running from your true, whole self?’
Ki’Remi stilled.
He swallowed, something in his chest twisting.
He had never run. He had endured. He had survived, but perhaps there wasn’t a difference anymore.
The worst part?
He didn’t have an answer for her.
She reached out, brushing her fingers along his jaw, the connection feather-light. ‘One day, you’ll have to stop running and believe in miracles.’
Ki’Remi hit his threshold of what he was able to tolerate.
‘Enough,’ he growled, cutting her off, jerking his chin from her silken touch.
She arched a brow, waiting.
His tone was cold, final. ‘ Wacha . Stop. Keep your phenomena to yourself.’
Then he shut her out, clamped his lips tight, and pushed the conversation from his mind.
He stormed away from her, the underbrush shivering in his charge.
He sensed her follow in his wake while he focused on the jungle, the path ahead, the mission.
Or at least, that’s what he tried to do.
However, his mind refused to obey.
What she said, what she did, hell, it was all rousing shit within him.
He felt the stirrings reach into his psyche, searing past the walls of his shut-off soul.
The tendrils of her words wound through his memories, not just those from his younger existence.
From a litany of lives lived well before him.
From the wellspring of bygone recollections and buried whispers.
The murmurs of his ancestors, stirring in his cognition all this time, saturated his thoughts and walked through his dreams.
He was suddenly overwhelmed by the legends of the Ameru, the Watchmen, and the Witchmen, the ancient guardians of his forebearers, wielders of energy outside the realm of logic.
In particular, a trio of them who took great delight in haunting his nights.
He’d long rejected them and their folklore, dismissing them as primitive superstitions.
Yet, here Issa was, living proof that maybe, just maybe, those myths weren’t fables at all.
Damn her.
For so long, he forced those memories into the farthest recesses of his mind.
But ever since the crats experimented on him and toyed with his mind, his metanoids began unlocking long-dormant knowledge.
His people’s wisdom. Ancient tribal remedies. Lost techniques.
Now, seeing what Issa had done, the whispers came back. The ones he spent years trying to ignore.
Ki’Remi Sable, you cannot outrun your legacy.
He jolted and whipped his head as if someone spoke to him.
There was nothing to see but the swaying tree branches and river waters they walked along.
His shoulders tensed, his grip tightening around his weapon as he strode forward.
Fokkin’ fantastic.
As if sensing his inner turmoil, Issa didn’t push him further.
For the first time, she permitted the silence to stretch.
She let him brood and unravel his damn wild thoughts.
He appreciated it because one more word from her and he’d implode.