Ki Book One (28 page)

“
Plenty, we’ve brought them up from the
lab,” someone answered as they hefted a box and placed it on the
clean white enamel table before her bed.

“
Not too many, one or two will suffice. We
do not want to injure her unnecessarily. We have a long road ahead
of us finding out what this effect is, and we can’t afford to make
any mistakes.” Sherk clasped his hands behind his back and nodded
at the magnets.

“
Sir, the Major is here,” the soldier by
the door straightened up and snapped to the side.

In walked the one man Ki feared more than
any other. Right now she would kill to be back in the hands of Max.
At least he’d never considered her with such a look of cold,
barely-suppressed hatred. Whatever burned behind the Major’s gaze
and fueled his actions, it was horrible and unspeakably bitter.
Perhaps he’d lost someone dear to him in the wars, maybe he’d lost
his entire family. Whatever the reason, his attitude went far
beyond loathing.

She turned from him, panting as the pain
ripping through her arm began to ebb.

“
What have you got for me?” the Major
walked in and took up position several meters from her
bed.

Behind him, someone else walked in, their
footfall measured and slow.

She felt something and turned.

Jackson. He was standing just inside the
door, one hand gripped into a fist, the other tapping erratically
at his thigh. His lips were bunched together, his chin dimpled and
stiff.

Emotion swept off him. She had no trouble in
reading it.

Concern. Soul-shredding fear at what was
going on and what would happen next.

He made eye contact with her briefly.

If she could have slowed down that moment,
she would have lived the rest of her days in it. For weeks she’d
been treated like nothing more than an animal, in that moment he
gave her something more.

Any mistrust she’d ever had for him burned
up. In the face of everything that had happened to her since they’d
parted ways, she understood how lucky she’d been to come across
him. Belligerent, yes, distrustful, of course, but at least he’d
tried to treat her like a human.

“
I don’t have long. This better be good,”
the Major fixed Sherk with a tired, unforgiving look.

“
Of course. It’ll take seconds to
demonstrate,” Sherk grabbed one of the magnets and moved over to
her. “As I have already told you, there is nothing unusual about
this Tarkan. All the tests we’ve done have come back with expected
results. We were ready to give up until we started to pry further
into those strange scars over her arms.”

Pry they had
– literally. With scalpels and calipers, they’d
run every conceivable test, no matter how invasive.

“
Doctor, please, I don’t need an
introduction. I just need some results. Show me what you have.” The
Major cleared his throat gruffly.

Sherk grabbed one of the magnets, took a
sharp, readying breath, and let it go.

The magnet did not fall to the ground and
clang against the hard stone. Though it was the size of a large
coin, and though Sherk was standing a meter from her side, the
magnet hovered for a split second. Then it shot towards her
arm.

As it did, the pain returned. Burning and
bursting through her veins, it felt like they’d injected her with
lava. Her mind rang with it.

The magnet did not slam into her. It came to
a sudden stop several centimeters from her, suspended in
mid-air.

With an unusual, high-pitched hum, it began
to vibrate. Slow at first, it became quicker and quicker.

Ki screamed, trying to pull back, but her
arms were locked in place by tight leather straps. The more she
fought against them, the more she banged and bruised herself.
“S-s-stop it. Make it stop.
Make it stop
.”

No one moved. Everyone stared at the magnet
as it shifted so violently it started to glow bright red with
heat.

Then it disintegrated. Bright-white dust
falling to the floor and singeing the brown stone.

No one said a word.

Ki fitted, twisting her head back and forth
as she tried to overcome the pain.

“
What... did we just witness?” the Major
stepped forward, his usual composure gone, his eyes rimmed with
white.

“
That was nothing more than a standard
magnet. We found this effect by chance. One of our devices was
behaving unusually—” Sherk began.

“
Doctor
, what the hell just happened?” the Major snapped,
voice booming through the room.

“
We don’t know. We surmise it has something
to do with those scars. To be honest, we simply lack the technical
understanding to even begin to comprehend this process. We believe
it has something to do with the atomic level—”

“
You don’t know?
Then find out
. Triple the guards in this room. I’ll
bring you whatever scientists you need, whatever resources. Just
find out what’s going on.” The Major’s arms dropped from behind
him, coming to rest by his sides, the fingers opening and closing
loosely. He wore an expression of slack-jawed amazement.

The agonizing pain began to ebb, and Ki
marshalled the energy to turn her head.

Jackson was not blinking. He had not
moved. Yet a single tear was tracking down his slack, white cheeks.
Clearing it away quickly and coughing, he took a shaky step towards
the Major. “Sir, please remember we must be careful. If you let any
word of what’s going on here out, the Zeneethians will find
out.”

The Major ignored him. He simply stared at
the singed marks on the stone floor
. “Whatever this is,” he pointed to the ground
with a shaking hand, “we can use it.”

Ki closed her eyes. She turned off. She
couldn’t listen to this. The
Zeneethians had been one thing, the Ashkans were worse.
They wanted to use her as a weapon against her own people. She had
never been involved in the wars that had divided her planet in two
for centuries, yet now it seemed she would decide them.

If the Zeneethians did not intervene.
Jackson was right. As soon as word of what had happened to her got
out, they would come for her. This time they would send a whole
squadron, perhaps an entire floating city would descend from the
sky.

She was trapped between a rock and a hard
place, and her only hope was a man she’d barely grown to trust.

Wincing one eye open, she sought out
Jackson.

He no longer looked at her. He stared at the
ground, eyes hooded from view.

His loyalty was strong – she knew that.
He’d lost so much to the Tarkans, including his fiancée. He had
every reason to ignore her. She simply hoped he would
not.

Drawing on her years of meditation, she
tried to quiet her mind and still the pain shifting up her arm and
back. It could do nothing to dampen her despair though. Only a
miracle could dispel that.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

He’d come to his decision. Standing there
and staring at her as she’d thrashed in obvious pain, Jackson had
made up his mind.

This was wrong. Even if Ki could help them
vanquish the Tarkan threat forever, this was not how it should be
done.

It was as if everyone around him had been
turned into sheep. No one was thinking, no one was questioning,
they were just following their orders with no heed to where they
would lead them and all of Ashka.

Well Jackson had thought it through. Over
the past several weeks of his virtual incarceration on Avictus,
he’d done nothing but think.

It was time for action.

He was in his room. He’d been moved from
that tiny cell with that single rickety chair. Now he had a bed and
view of the lighthouse outside.

He stared at it slicing through the dark
night as he loosened his top shirt button. Grabbing at his sleeves,
he rolled them up his arms securely.

He didn’t like what he was about to do,
but he had little choice. If he remained here and did nothing, he’d
be complicit in the destruction he knew was coming.

Max’s anger at Ki’s death had not been
faked. The Zeneethians would be an inconceivable enemy.

Taking a step back, he finally turned from
the view, his footfall hollow and light.

He inhaled slowly and deliberately, then
opened the door. It grated open, the noise sending tingles of
anticipation down his spine.

He was no longer guarded, but as he walked
casually down the corridor a passing soldier paused to ask where he
was headed. He lied and said to the kitchen for a snack.

When Jackson was past the man, he turned
and waited, listening keenly to the soldier’s footsteps echoing
through the corridor.

He had to time this perfectly.

He reached the stairs. With a sick stomach
he looked down them, appreciating how high they were.

Waiting for the soldier to make his sweep
down the hall and return, Jackson took a step down.

He deliberately misplaced it, his heel
slipping against the worn and smooth stone. His leg jerked out from
underneath him and he fell, body slamming into the stairs as he
rolled down them.

He tried to keep his descent controlled,
kept his arms tucked in, and his head stretched out so his skull
wouldn’t bash against the steps. When he reached the bottom, he let
out a deliberate and loud cry.

The soldier came running. “Sir, are you
alright?”

“
Damn it,” Jackson spat bitterly, “I think
I’ve broken something.”

Twisting around in faked agony, he waited
for the soldier to rush to his side. The kid was young, and with
one look at Jackson wiped his brow and swore
. “I’ll get you to sick bay. Hold on, I’ll
find help.”

Jackson lay exactly where he was as he
waited. Though he was certainly bruised and would have a hobble for
a while, he’d been careful not to break anything.

They didn’t need to know that though. All
they needed to do was take him to sickbay. He’d do the rest from
there.

Soon the soldier returned with another
man, and between the two of them they helped Jackson across the
other side of the building and all the way up to
sickbay.

When he arrived in the door, a nurse
rushed to his aid, obvious empathy rumpling her brow. Though
Jackson had once been treated as a traitor, his story was no longer
questioned.

“
Here, take him to a bed. How did this
happen?” the nurse ushered the soldiers towards an empty
cot.

“
Fell down the stairs,” Jackson coughed
heartily, wincing as he did.

“
I saw it. It’s a miracle you didn’t crack
your head open,” the young soldier laughed in relief.

“
I guess I’m just tired. I’ve been working
on that weapon non-stop. We need to find out its secrets as soon as
we can,” Jackson kept an affable, believable tone as he
lied.

The nurse’s smile warmed. “All of Ashka
will remember your story, Jackson Walker. What you’ve done for your
country will not be forgotten.”

No, it wouldn’t, and the thought of it
sickened him. He had to move on though.

“
Thank you,” he smiled, making it as
charming as he could. “But... not to be rude, can you move me over
to a different bed?”

The nurse looked
confused
.
“Sorry?”

He nodded past her at the closed blue
curtains. Ki was behind them. He was barely three meters away.
Though two guards stood either side of them, that was all the
security there was.

“
I can’t say I like being this close to
her. I had to put up with the spy for two days under Paladin
Mountain – I think that was long enough,” Jackson gave a harsh
chuckle.

Both the soldiers joined in.

“
Of course, I’ll just prepare another bed
and get the doctor,” the nurse moved off.

“
How the hell did you put up with the
smell, sir?” the young soldier asked behind him. “Tarkans stink,
especially this one.”

Jackson shrugged his
shoulders
. “I
didn’t.”

They laughed. It was not remotely funny, but
they still chortled at it.

He’d once done the same. As a soldier he
and his comrades had taken every opportunity to belittle and put
down the Tarkans. Every joke insulting them was worth a round of
laughs, no matter how lame.

Now it made him nauseas.

Running his lips over his teeth, he glanced
at the two men guarding Ki. They’d joined in the joke, now they
were standing with kinked smiles, glancing around casually as they
loosened their grips on their rifles.

Jackson turned fro
m them, nonchalantly surveying the rest of
the room. Including the two soldiers who had brought him in, there
were five guards in total. They were all armed. One even had a
grenade tucked in his belt.

Jackson had been counting on that. The Major
had deployed a soldier from the Falcon Regiment to sickbay, in fact
he’d ordered that one member of the Regiment be present at all
times. They were elite troops, some of the best in the whole Ashkan
army.

The Falcon soldier was standing by the
doorway. He hadn’t laughed at Jackson’s joke. He hadn’t shifted his
gaze off Ki’s curtains.

Jackson stood, limping as he did. “Don’t
mind me, boys, I can’t stand the smell,” he nodded at Ki’s curtains
and proceeded to hobble forward.