Chapter 1 #2
In the next moment, Auralyn looked away, leaving Kira to wonder if she’d just imagined it. She studied the woman with white-blonde hair, her gaze wandering over features that held a strong resemblance to Elise and Elena, noting the missing right arm.
Auralyn hadn’t let the injury slow her down. She was just as fierce. Just as deadly.
A crushing silence descended as they each grieved in their own way.
Kira endured as long as she could before she couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ll give you privacy to finish saying your goodbyes.”
Retreat was cowardly, but her heart hadn’t quite gotten the memo that this wasn’t a forever goodbye. Everything felt far too final. As if this was a funeral in truth.
All that was missing was the requiem for the dead that she’d sung more times than she could count and the bottle of alcohol that they’d use to toast the departed.
She needed out of here. Distance and time to get her head on straight.
On her way out, Kira nodded at the pair of oshota standing guard in the sleepers’ chamber, finding reassurance in the knowledge that Elise and the others would have company during their long rest. Roake remembered them and stood in eternal protection.
Until the sleepers were finally ready to rejoin the world.
No matter how long it took.
Her first breath upon exiting felt like a relief. The weight on her shoulders eased slightly. She felt lighter. Steadier already.
This must be what closure felt like.
Noticing the dark haired Tuann facing away from her, Kira frowned. “Finn, you alright?”
At her question, her oshota glanced back at her. “I thought I heard something.”
Finn made room as Kira joined him on the Nexus’s edge.
The chamber that served as Roake’s seat of power was massive, reaching several stories high.
Sheets of water fell from above in several places, creating waterfalls that veiled large sections of the room, turning it into something of a labyrinth.
More confusing were those waterfalls that fell upward, defying gravity to climb back toward the ceiling as if drawn to something up there.
Throughout, a complex geometric pattern was carved on the floor via channels filled with trickling water.
At the center of it all sat a pedestal. To reach it, anyone wishing control of the House’s defenses and offenses would have to first walk through the thin sheet of liquid surrounding it.
A more difficult prospect than it seemed.
Even from this distance, Kira could feel the immense power radiating off the Nexus’s water.
The molars in the back of her mouth fairly tingled from the buzz it was giving off.
She didn’t have to experience it for herself to know that one droplet from the waterfall’s spray would cause an immense surge of ki that could damage an untrained Tuann’s mind and body.
Harlow told her it would be like stepping into a lava field. Blistering hot and painful. Her mind would want to break, but she wouldn’t be able to let it.
It was the final trial Roake’s heir had to overcome before assuming the mantle of Overlord.
Defensively, the place was a nightmare. Filled with so many blind spots that someone could launch an ambush from.
Kira supposed that was the point. Anyone trying to infiltrate this place was playing fast and loose with their lives. If Roake’s Nexus didn’t kill them, its oshota would.
“I don’t hear anything,” Kira said.
She was surprised Finn had.
The stone walls turned the Nexus into a giant echo chamber. The falling water a dull roar that was made worse by the relentless buzz the Mea’Ave was giving off.
It was disorienting.
The fleeting reflections she kept glimpsing out of the corner of her eye didn’t help. The water telling her truth and lies. Promising the universe’s secrets. Everything that would break an undisciplined mind.
“Want to check it out?” Kira offered, seeing Finn’s preoccupation.
“If you don’t mind.”
“It’s better than dwelling.”
She’d take anything over the cloying sense of grief and guilt that had marked the last few months.
“It gets better with time,” Finn promised.
Kira gave him a jerky shrug, not really wanting to talk about it. “Let’s get this over with.”
Right as she said that, Raider stepped out of the chamber behind them as if summoned. “What are we doing?”
“Finn heard something. We’re going to check it out.”
Raider’s gaze swung toward the oshota. “A strange something or a suspicious something?”
“Aren’t those pretty much the same thing?” Finn asked.
Raider wagged a finger at him. “You’d think so, but they’re not. The first almost always results in something harmless. The second holds the promise of danger.”
“He’s hoping for danger,” Kira mock whispered as she stepped over the first water channel.
Raider’s snort held humor. “Like you aren’t.”
“True,” Kira admitted.
She wouldn’t mind something to take her mind off things. Nothing too serious. Just a little excitement to distract her from the ever present weight of sorrow and regret that she felt in her chest.
Discomfort showed on Raider’s face as he got too close to one of the waterfalls. “Damn, that stings.”
“You could always stay behind,” Kira tossed at him, peering through the curtains of water before giving up with a shake of her head after a few minutes.
It was useless. All she could see were vague shapes and shadows.
From the frustrated look on Finn’s face as he examined their surroundings, he wasn’t faring much better.
“Hey, now, there’s no need for insults,” Raider griped as they worked their way counterclockwise through the chamber.
Finn suppressed a smile as they rounded a waterfall and headed in the general direction of the pedestal and the small pool of water around it.
“I heard a rumor that Talon has keeva and that human whiskey you said you adored standing by for our arrival when we’re done here,” Finn informed him, naming the other oshota that Kira had just recently accepted into her service.
She still wasn’t quite sure how that happened. One oshota—two, if you counted Raider—and her uncle did—was more than enough for her.
Blackmail, however, proved to be a powerful motivator.
“Good. Because I could use a drink. I feel like I just attended a funeral,” Raider said, his forehead furrowing as he leaned forward to get a better look into a portion of the chamber that had been out of their line of sight from their original position.
“Count me out. I promised to visit Jin after this,” Kira said.
He’d wanted to be here but circumstances and the over protective nature of those around him had made that impossible.
Raider looked over at her. “Speaking of—how is the Tin Can adjusting to his new body?”
“You’re going to need to think of a new insult,” Kira informed him.
Jin was flesh and blood now.
When the J1N drone that had acted as his container for so long was irreparably damaged in battle, she’d been forced to transfer his consciousness to a new vessel. One that held an unexpected resemblance to his original body.
Kira still wasn’t sure how that was possible. She and Jin had gone to pretty extensive lengths to destroy all genetic samples that had been taken from them during their time in captivity as children.
There should have been no possibility of a clone.
The alternative, however, was even less likely. That the Tsavitee’s masters had somehow recovered the original and kept it in stasis for decades. Unageing and unchanging.
It was a mystery that plagued Kira and kept her up some nights.
If little cloned Jins were running around, chances were there might be Kira-clones out there too.
Now that was a disturbing thought.
“He’ll always be Tin Can to me,” Raider drawled.
“Do me a favor—wait until I’m in the room when you tell him that.”
Kira would love to witness the resulting explosion.
They fell quiet, each lost in their own thoughts as they moved closer to the center of the room and the pedestal waiting there.
“I think I know what Finn heard,” Raider called in a low, grim tone.
She looked over to find him crouched next to the body of an oshota.
The Tuann had been attacked by some type of weapon Kira didn’t recognize.
The skin of his face was scorched. Parts of it charred and black.
The synth armor had been melted to his body on his torso and his chest was half caved in like he’d taken some type of blast.
Raider rose as he and Kira scanned their surroundings.
“There!” Raider said, spotting the perpetrator first.
He pointed at a murky figure on the other side of the curtain of water. All Kira caught was an impression of size. Large. Bulky. Maybe wearing synth armor.
Finn raced past her just as the person threw something into the water. Kira heard the plonk and saw the ripples in the water.
The person took off as Finn plowed through the waterfall in pursuit.
“Shit,” Kira cursed, wanting to follow but knowing her first priority was to remove whatever it was that had been thrown into the Nexus’s water. She didn’t know what it would do, but she doubted it was good. “Wren! Auralyn!” Kira screamed.
Raider was ahead of her, already plunging his hand into the narrow channel to fish out the foreign object in there.
“Almost there,” Raider crooned, his face a mask of concentration despite the pain he had to be experiencing. “Gotcha!”
Frowning, Raider lifted his hand out of the channel, the skin bright red and blistered, as he held up a transparent orb the size of an eyeball.
Kira swatted him upside the head. “Are you an idiot? Why would you stick your hand in that?”
Mea’Ave save her from humans with death wishes.
Raider acted like he barely noticed her love tap as he handed the orb to Kira. “What do you think this is?”
She cradled the orb in her hand. What she’d taken as transparent actually had swirls of green deep inside, their intensity growing for a second before fading.
Seeing Raider start to lean over the channel again, Kira jerked him back. “Stop that.”
“There are more.”