Chapter 48
TASK
NEXARIUM
“Here,” he says, holding out a tray with a bowl of mashed potatoes and a glass of water on it. She’d told him once, when they were lying in the sundome, that mashed potatoes were her comfort food, and he’d asked the chef to prepare them.
She sits cross-legged on the stone table, refusing to look to at him. Her hair is dirty, stringy strands falling into her face. “I don’t want it.”
“Please, Kit,” Task begs. “You have to eat.” She has refused food for days, and she’s withering from both Alexander Caden’s ongoing Siphoning and from malnutrition.
“I’m not hungry.”
“If you don’t eat, he’ll force you,” Task says, walking further into her cell and setting the tray down on the stone table next to her.
“He can try,” Kit says. “But I’d rather die than help him. Help you.”
Task is winded, her words slicing through him like a well-place surged saber strike.
He lingers awkwardly beside her, the anguish in his chest so heavy, it’s almost unbearable.
He understands her fury. He betrayed her, in the same way Draven betrayed him many years ago.
Anger surges through him at that, but he packs it away, focuses on the overall objective — a stable planet, a protected Consortium.
“You have to stay alive, love,” he murmurs, using the pet name without realizing it. She flinches. “If not for me, or for Draven, then for you. For your family.”
She barks out a laugh, finally looking at him. Her usually bright green eyes are dull, deep shadows circling them. “My family? And when, pray tell, will I be seeing them again?”
Task says nothing. The Lumarian citizens should be disembarking in a week, and Knox will be with them.
So will Nevis, and Oswald, and everyone else that will be looking for Kit.
He can’t say for certain when her father will arrive, if he’ll come at all.
They will have to keep her hidden, play dumb, as if they don’t know where she could be or what happened to her.
“That’s what I thought,” Kit says. She sighs, defeated, picking up the spoon from the tray and examining it. She doesn’t make to eat, though, and Task has resolved himself to standing here until she does.
Her gaze cuts to him, still hovering near her, unable to pull himself away. “Something else?”
“I’m not leaving until you eat.”
Kit drops the spoon on to the tray and it clatters, loudly.
Task tries not to jump at the noise. He’s angry at her for doing this, for making it harder than it needs to be.
For not trying to understand the position he’s in, why he did what he did.
Every time he tries to explain, she cuts him off, and he fears that even if he could, his explanation would fall short for her.
Because at the end of the day, he chose Draven over her, didn’t he?
“Then you’ll be here all night.”
“I knew you missed me, love,” Task quips, but his tone is off, less playful than he intended.
Kit looks deeply unamused as she picks up the spoon and dips it into the potatoes.
He’s backed her into a corner. She doesn’t want him here, so she’ll eat, even if it means that she lives to see another day of Siphoning.
She brings the spoon to her lips, staring at him while she does it, licking it clean. He forces himself to ignore it.
“Happy?”
Miserable, he thinks. But instead, he crosses his arms over his chest, nods once, and retreats without looking back at her, not sure his heart can take it.
He sits in front of the fireplace in his room, ethereal blue flames dancing up the chimney. He lets his head rest against the chair as he sips a glass of whiskey. The bottle is next to him on the small metal table, already a third of the way empty.
There’s a knock on the door and he startles, sloshing the liquid over the side of the glass and swearing as it drips down onto his uniform trousers. He goes to the door, sliding it open to reveal Voss, who has a look in his eye that Task doesn’t like.
“Evening,” Task says, beckoning him inside and retreating back to the whiskey bottle. If Voss is going to deliver bad news, he can at least offer him a drink. He pours a second glass, hands it to him and sits back down in the leather armchair.
Voss stays standing, looking at Task as if he doesn’t quite recognize him.
“What?” Task demands, draining his glass and slamming it onto the table.
“I —” Voss starts, then abruptly stops himself. “This wasn’t what I’d hoped for when I —” He lets out a frustrated breath, finally taking a drink of the whiskey. He looks as if he’s in pain, as if the words are physically slicing into his tongue as he tries to get them out.
“Voss,” Task says. “Just spit it out.”
Voss sits down on the edge of the chair across from Task, rubbing his hand along his beard. “Project C. The file you found on the Polaris.”
Task swallows, his heart immediately picking up speed. Voss found something. And judging by his face, it’s something bad. “I remember, yes. 4027. The assassination.” The words feel too large for his mouth. “Just tell me.”
Voss squeezes his hands together. “Before I tell you, just…you know that I always have your back, right? Whatever you want to do with this information, I will support you. No matter what.”
“Goddammit, Voss, quit with the bullshit,” Task very nearly snarls. He doesn’t need the platitudes right now, just needs to know whatever it is Voss has discovered.
“Right, sorry. But I mean it,” Voss says, and he looks at Task, earnestly. “It was your parents.”
Task isn’t sure he heard Voss correctly. The entire world feels as though it has stopped spinning. “My…my parents?”
“Draven ordered the assassination of your parents.”
Task’s stomach lurches, falls entirely out of him. He can’t have heard Voss correctly. There’s no way. Task’s father was Draven’s brother, his blood. He couldn’t have possibly ordered such a thing. “No,” Task mumbles. “No. No. That can’t be.”
“Major Burton was with the Shadow Wing then,” Voss says. “Remembers that half the wing didn’t come back afterwards. It was reported as an ambush, but…I think Draven killed almost everyone who executed the mission, so there weren’t any surviving witnesses.”
“But that’s one person,” Task protests. His brain can’t comprehend this. Sure, he’s had his doubts about Draven, especially as he’s come to learn that he hasn’t always been truthful with him, but this? This is a lie of epic proportions. A tale that has been spun his entire life.
Voss shakes his head, looks up to the ceiling. “I was able to locate the unredacted file.”
“Where?” Task demands.
“Doesn’t matter,” Voss says. “I’ll show it to you, if you don’t believe me. But Task, they…Draven ordered it. Draven had them killed.”
The words hit Task like bullets, each one lodging in a different part of his body.
He physically recoils, a sudden memory unfolding in his mind.
His father, standing in front of him and his mother, a surge-saber raised.
His mother, falling to the floor in front of him, the blood seeping from the wound in her neck.
Task, looking between them, then up at the man who loomed in their entryway.
Being carried away, the bodies of his parents lying on the stone floor of their living room.
Draven had told him it was rebels who’d killed his parents, and that the man who’d carried him away and brought him to safety — to Draven — was a Guardian. And yet…
“Task.” The sound of Voss calling his name cuts through his thoughts.
He can’t look at him, sits still as a statue, overcome with everything he’s somehow managed to block out, to bury for the last twenty-two years of his life.
He feels as if he’s about to crack open, as if every ugly, damaged, angry, murderous, piece of him is going to leak out onto the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Voss is saying. “I’m so, so sorry. ”
Task buries his head in his hands, pushes his fingers through his hair. Wants to tug it all out. Wants to scream. He picks up the glass, throwing it across the room with a shout. It hits the wall, shatters into a million tiny shards.
“Show me.” He’s standing now, walking to Voss.
Voss’ hands are shaky as he pulls it up on his Prism, taps through so that Task can read it himself. It’s all there, in the unredacted version of the file. The one without the code names and cover stories. “What the hell!” Task yells, wishing he had something else to throw.
“Take a breath,” Voss tries, getting to his feet to circle Task, who is now pacing the room like a caged animal, his breath coming in short spurts, a fire burning in his chest. Everything he’s done, everything he’s been made to do, has been for Draven.
He’d never felt he had a choice, but everything could have been different. He could have been different.
“He fucking lied to me!” Task snarls.
“I know,” Voss is trying to placate him, his hands up as he paces with Task.
“Why the hell would he lie about that? For my entire goddamn life?!” His fury rolls off him in waves, the pain in his chest verging on agony. When he’s this angry, he can’t keep it in check, can’t stop it from boiling over.
“I — I’m sure there’s something,” Voss tries, though he doesn’t sound convinced. “A reason for it all.”
And then, a thought barrels through Task, so hard it stops him in his tracks.
Knocks all of his breath out of him. Kit.
He’d kidnapped her for Draven, to sustain him.
To reunite the Eight Great. But if he hadn’t been lied to, hadn’t been made to do Draven’s bidding, he never would have had to make the choice.
He never would have had to betray her, to let go of the woman he loves.
He drops to his knees, an agonizing howl ripping from his throat, like every tendril of pain he’s ever locked away is suddenly being released, exploding from inside of him, and then there’s nothing but blackness.