Afterburn (Alien Bride Race #8)

Solara 1

Tasia, my younger sister, demands diamond-encrusted halos embedded around her irises, the ones that have become trendy among rich Leosantians, Xarthrin, and Isonians.

I told her no because I know she won’t pay me.

She thinks the augment clinic that Dad started—and my mother turned into an aesthetics business for elites—is some place she can get free upgrades.

I chose this field to help people, not cater to rich bitches like them.

But telling her no? That was my mistake.

Her voice is a shrill, eardrum-shattering mindfuck. Tasia could make anyone consider taking one-too-many pills just to make the screeching racket stop. I’d rather listen to sharp metal raking over more metal than her horrid voice.

“Sorry about that.” I ignite the blue shield around my current patient and my workstation when he tries to look at the door where my younger sister throws a tantrum. I need him to focus on me and not get distracted. “Don’t mind her. Just focus on that diamond in the center of my glasses.”

Her fit of rage is muffled by my shimmering, protective dome, but I can still hear her. She shouts that she’ll see me at home, and there will be consequences. But I don’t live there. I only visit because I have to report to the boss.

My customer focuses on the diamond, and his irises dilate. He likes sparkly things. Most of my clients in the last few years do. I doubt, if they knew how much I loved fire and the smell of a matchstick over luxury perfumes and new hovercruiser scents, they’d ever trust me to work on them again.

I do not like the sparkle of gemstones. I like the sparkle of embers igniting.

An image of my long-lost dream floods my vision. It’s only a second before I blink away his calescent body, stalking through the burning, rocky landscape, shooting off fireballs from his hands at the Nebulous Soldiers trying to kill us.

“Are you okay?” my client asks.

I blink the vision away. “Yes. Just listening to her and deciding if I should call security. But it sounds like she’s tiring. So I’m not going to worry about it.”

With my mechanical stabilizer arm, I inlay the last masking disc, which will give him the ability to change the hue and brightness of his irises at his whim.

It slips in with no trouble, and I quickly seal his lens with a pliable UV filtration cap to protect the disc and ensure it adjusts as he refocuses on objects.

I used to give sight to blind individuals, repair damaged flesh, and provide prosthetic augmentations that made the injured feel whole again.

My mother has corrupted my father’s dream.

And I will never forgive her for it. I only play along so I can squirrel away money I use to help the struggling regions of Earth and to invest in a future life somewhere far away from her.

After a quick fogging of lubricant to let his eyes heal without seeing the augments as foreign objects to push out, I hold up a mirror and tap the eye controller just above his cheekbone, embedded under his skin so no one will see it.

He smiles as he watches his eyes change from steel to gold. “Perfect. Just as promised.”

“I am glad to hear that, sir.” I roll my cart aside, toss the tools I used on him in the autoclave basket, pack up my kit, and remove my gloves.

“Please remember to wear goggles if you go swimming, skydiving, or any time your eyes are exposed to fluid or high wind environments for the next two weeks.”

“Just give me a booster to make this heal faster.”

“We don’t do those.”

“Then I’ll go somewhere else.” He moves to get out of his chair.

I lower the shield and notice my sister’s voice is gone. “If you do, I must warn you.”

He pauses.

“You will scar around the perimeter of the disc. It will look like a milky ring. Slow healing is how we prevent the build-up of zonules.”

When he takes a breath to speak, I already know where he’s going. I lift a finger. “No, anti-scar nano treatments don’t work because they don’t know when to stop. Never ever put those in your eyes unless you want to go blind.”

He grabs his wristband and reads the screen, then taps his temple. His eye color bleeds through to red. He smirks, then walks out.

Whatever. Whether he takes my advice or doesn’t, I don’t fucking care. I hate my job. But I need the money.

At least I still hold onto my father’s values of honest and quality service. But it feels like I’m clinging to my last shred of his memory and an innocent side of life that doesn’t exist anymore. At least not here.

None of the faces in our office share my disconnect from this protected world. They haven’t seen what I have, or survived by a thread on the hope of the individual fighting beside them.

Deep emptiness spreads through my chest as I sit in silence. I don’t know what I’m still doing here: in this lie, this life, this…universe.

The static from Cavika’s stall wears on me. Every time I hear that crackling of dead signals leading nowhere, I swear I hear a whisper, like the fizzles smashing together into a message.

Help us.

I think back to the Delsfein who portaled into another dimension, their bodies vaporizing into nothingness. They said they would be safe.

But I have my doubts.

Help us.

“Damn it, Cavika. Why do you keep that thing on?” I ask.

“White noise helps me focus!” she shouts back through the glass separating our stalls. “I don’t know why it bothers you when you’re over there!”

Help us.

I squeeze my eyes shut. It’s just my mind searching for patterns and clues in something far behind me.

A text from my mother lights up my wristband. We’re meeting tonight, five sharp.

The party, right. I close up my augment bay, slip out the back so I don’t get a million questions from the secretary, and climb into my hovercar. The ride to the mansion on the hill somehow feels finite, like I’m finally ready to be done. I want to quit. I have other plans for myself.

I’m ready.

I look out at the suburbs filled with glitzy homes featuring pools and glass walls. Guilt storms in that I wasn’t able to protect the business my father built from my mother’s corruption. I’m sorry. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.

Resting my head on the seatback, I soak in the scent of fresh, clean leather and the way the sun warms my cheek.

The people I pass in their fancy residences and dining at the ritzy restaurants have no idea how lucky they are to have such luxuries.

And as much as I enjoyed trying the chocolate volcano at the bakery on the corner in an effort to understand my clients’ sense of entitlement, I know I don’t want to live in their cat-and-mouse game of who can look like they have the most money.

I can handle far worse than this life and come out in one piece.

Their expectations of prime treatment make me care less about their frivolity and arrogant bullshit.

I land my hovercar in the paved driveway of our family home, now my mother’s mansion. But instead of perfection, I have memories of her shouting at the gardeners for missing a leaf on her topiaries.

After a deep sigh and a heavy set of swears, I grab my bag. The tablet inside rings with a call I’m certain I don’t want to answer. But I dig it out anyway.

The moment I walk in the door, an iridescent purse that projects a glittery exterior flies at my head from across the kitchen. I duck and casually walk to the sofa. Twenty thousand dollars...and Tasia just lobs it at my head because she’s mad.

Tasia, like Lashina, my older sister, doesn’t care about the money spent on such a ridiculous purse, money that could send life-saving medicine to families suffering on our own planet.

The 95,000 credits for the diamond rings she wants in her eyes could buy a small emergency transport for an isolated village in desperate need of connection to the Federation.

It’s difficult to believe I am related to my family at all when we’re just so...different. But this is the difference between being raised by my father—a soldier and a medic, a pioneer of augments and prosthetics for allied aliens—and my mother, a gold-digging, self-serving, manipulative woman.

I plop down on the sofa and put my feet up on the ottoman to answer the call on my tablet. I settle the screen in my lap as Tasia continues her rant in the kitchen.

“I can’t believe you would turn down that kind of procedure,” Cavika says. She’s still at her desk at our Utopia Augments office.

“Hello to you, too.”

“Solara…what the hell?” Cavika guides her curled hair into a ponytail and moves something on her desk.

I shrug, listen to my sister’s shouts for what stage of anger she’s at. I’m not worried yet. “She’s not going to pay us for it. She’ll expect it to be a favor. And who’s going to foot the bill?”

Cavika rolls her eyes. “Puh-leeze, Solara. You have the money. Just do it for her. You love her, don’t you?”

No. I don’t. She’s just family by blood, not by heart or soul or trauma or purpose. And I’m literally only keeping the peace to save face in the industry.

I make good money installing a variety of aesthetic tech enhancements.

But my biggest is the repair business, where I fix major structures and make the spoiled, drug-addicted daddy’s girls look like they never lost their teeth or had puffy eyes from benzodiazepines and sympathomimetic forms of recreation.

“I’m not doing it for free. I’m not doing it,” I tell Cavika. “She’ll just want me to foot the bill for the next thing. It never ends. And I am not her servant or her bank account.”

Hearing the clicks of rings against glass, I tilt my head just enough that I can monitor my sister in my periphery. Tasia throws a luxury candle at my head that I’m certain cost more than most make in a day. I lean back and let it smash against the wall beside me.

“Ooh, she’s pissed. I better let you go. Remember you have to take over for Thasse, who’s on vacation starting tomorrow.”