THIRTEEN
REZA
A BOY…
My heart’s stumbling around the inside of my chest. I stand on the other side of the door to the ready room, my head bowed, the tips of my fingers numb. I can’t seem to gather myself together. This is important. Erika managed to impress on me how crucial this meeting is. If I don’t manage to make some sort of headway here with Jass, the Construct will arrive in time for the next double eclipse, and they’ll eradicate this outpost. There will be so much death and destruction. Jass will become unstoppable force of evil in the galaxy. And as for me? Erika didn’t say what would happen to me if the Construct showed up at Pirius, but I can imagine. Jass will rise to power and madness. He won’t let them kill me. He’ll harness the energy inside me, and use it to control me. I’ll be his slave, doomed to carry out his bidding, trapped inside my own body, unable to prevent the death that will befall so many worlds. I will kill over and over again, and I’ll be unable to look away.
I hate him.
I fear him.
I must somehow change him.
Col, my friend for the last seven cycles, places a hand on my back, rubbing in small circles. “I don’t know how this is going to play out, Reza. I don’t know if there’s a way to reason with him, let alone a way to win him over. He refused to tell me what he wanted with you. I don’t think he has any plans to enslave you, though.”
Technically, his words should reassure me, but I’m damned if they don’t have the opposite affect entirely. “I can come in with you, if you like?” he offers. “Jass is a caustic bastard, but I’ve kind of gotten used to him over the past few days. There’s a trick to dealing with him. Don’t show him your fear. He’s like a blood horse. If he knows you’re intimidated by him, he’ll discount you right out of hand. If you have nerves of steel and you show him that instead, there’ll be a better chance of him listening to what you have to say to him.”
Listening. Listening to me, not killing me. That sounds like a much better option. Am I capable of achieving what Col is telling me to do, though? Can I set aside this ingrained fear and aversion? Can I hide how terrified I am that the day I’ve dreaded and panicked over for so long has finally arrived, just as I always knew, deep down, that it would? I don’t think I’m that good at pretending.
“Honestly. I really don’t mind coming in with you, if you like.” Col’s kind smile says he means it.
“I’ll be okay. I think. I hope. But if you hear screaming…”
“I’ll be sure to break the door down, weapons blazing.”
“Thank you, Col.” I take a deep breath, hand pressed lightly on the ready room’s access panel. A little more pressure and the door will slide soundlessly open, and I will be faced with one of my worst nightmares. Before I go, I turn and ask Col one last question. “You showed him you weren’t afraid of him. You were alone with him for four days. He could have killed you at any point with nothing more than a thought, and you didn’t falter. How did you do it? How were you able to overcome your fear?”
Col lets out a loud, bold laugh, his head rocking back, the muscles in his throat working. His blue eyes, completely contrasting with the dark, almost black eyes of the seers and their people, shining brightly.
“I didn’t, Reza. I didn’t at all. But somehow I managed to pull the wool over his eyes. The truth is I was shitting myself the entire time.”
******
A boy…
No, a man sits in a chair. He’s alone. His mop of dark hair waves wildly all over the place, thick and untamable. His eyes are dark, too. Dark brown, like molten chocolate, flecked with gold and caramel. Warm. Alive. Very intense. Beneath his eyes: a long, arrow-straight nose, and full lips that are pressed together. His cheekbones are high. Higher than they normally would be on a boy, but they somehow suit him. His face is all angles—severe, and yet soft at the same time. I expected to be shot through with the urgent need to run when I first laid eyes on him, and yet I’m struck by how normal he looks. He is, for all intents and purposes, just a man. I’ve seen him before, back on the Invictus, but in brief snatches. No more than a few seconds here and a few seconds there. When I look at him now, I know his face intimately, way better than I ought to. It’s as if I’ve spent hours with him. Days, even. Only, I haven’t.
He straightens in his chair when he sees me, his shoulders pulling back, his chin lifting, a tightness taking hold of him, and I feel it, too. A sort of cord being pulled taut inside me, vibrating like the plucked string of a musical instrument.
“You’re late,” he says stiffly. “They said you’d come and see me two hours ago.”
I retort without thinking. “Sorry. It’s very busy around here. I couldn’t just drop what I was doing and come running.”
Jass’ mouth twitches imperceptibly, but I catch the movement. “You wanted to,” he says slowly. “I could feel it.”
The worrying thing is, I did want to. I’ve been so caught up and confused by what I’ve been feeling over the past couple of days. So many raging emotions all vying to be front and center of attention. It’s been hard to differentiate between them all. I can’t deny it, though. I felt it the moment that apprentice ran into the hall and told us Col had arrived with Jass. I wanted to go to him immediately, like I was rushing to meet an old friend. I wanted to barrel over here, blindly, without a single thought to what might take place, and I have absolutely no idea why. I take a step into the room, my palms sweating at the prospect of actually moving close enough to him to sit down in the chair opposite his. He’s unrestrained. There is no phase-proof glass between us. The only thing protecting me is his word that he won’t harm me, and how far can that be trusted? God, this was so stupid.
“You’re exactly as I remember,” Jass says quietly. “Your hair. Your eyes. Your freckles. That birthmark on your shoulder.” He points to the small mark that indeed sits upon my right shoulder, and I suddenly feel naked. The vest I was training in covers me sufficiently to preserve my modesty, but I’d certainly feel better right now if I were wearing a proper shirt.
“You look nothing like I remember,” I fire back.
His head cocks to one side. Interested. Intrigued. “How so?”
“I seem to recall being terrified of you on that ship. You look fairly harmless to me now, though.”
It’s foolish to tell him he looks harmless. His shoulders are broad, his chest packed with muscle. His hands, resting in front of him on the table’s surface, palm down, are strong and capable. His dark eyes are sharp and focused, studying and assessing. An air of defiance, challenge and confidence issues from him in overwhelming waves that threaten to overcome me. No, he isn’t harmless in the least. He’s still the most dangerous man in the galaxy; I know that just from the way my heart is racing right now. Jass smiles slowly, tapping his index finger against the table. It’s as if he knows something I don’t. “A lot has changed between us since the Invictus.”
“Nothing’s changed,” I volley back. “You’re still the Construct’s plaything. You still hurt people and cause them to suffer. You’re a faceless monster. A night terror. A dark ghost,” I whisper.
Jass’ eyes glitter with some unknown emotion. He shrugs with his right shoulder only. “As you say.”
An intense pressure’s building inside my head. I can’t seem to think straight. It’s as if my skull is pinned in a vice and someone is slowly turning the handle, tightening its grip. I have to speed this process up. I have to get the hell out of here. “I’m sure the Construct’s lost more than one soldier in their time. They can’t want me back badly enough to train their most prized weapon on me.” She huffs, showing her frustration. “Are you trying to claim my energy? Is that it? You’ve gone to all this trouble to find me because you want to drain me until I’m dead?”
Leaning back in his chair, Jass angles his chin, raising it so the overhead light casts dark shadows across the column of his throat. “The Construct leaders think you’re dead. They assumed you were killed in the conflict that broke out after the attack on the Invictus. You wounded Stryker pretty badly. Regardless, you’re inconsequential to them. If they suspected you were alive, they might send out a bounty hunter to collect you. Bring you back to The Nexus to make an example of you. They certainly don’t like their people escaping and making fools of them by any means. But for one, meaningless girl?” He shakes his head. “They forgot all about you, Reza.” My name sounds like a compromise on his tongue. A foreign and uncomfortable thing. An admission of some sort. The way he says it makes me squirm. “But where the Construct could so easily forget about you, I, on the other hand, could not. Yes, I’m interested in your energy,” he confesses. “I don’t want to drain it from you, though. I’m far more interested in what could be accomplished if we were to combine our energies together, voluntarily.”
A chill runs down my spine, as if an icy hand has just grabbed me by the back of my neck. I don’t believe him. I resisted him back on the Invictus. No one else has ever been able to do that. Or at least no records have been kept of anyone doing so. Jass’ power is undisputed. If he knew someone out there could withstand him, could potentially cause issues for him in the future, of course he would want to destroy that person. Why would he willingly allow me to keep my power, if he thought for a second he could take it?
As if he knows what I’m thinking, Jass begins to laugh. Never in my life have I ever imagined what Jass Beylar would look or sound like when he laughed. It seemed like such an improbable event that the thought never even crossed my mind. “For someone so willing to throw their life away, you seem very afraid of being killed,” he says. “What is it? What suicide pact have you made?” His eyes narrow, and I feel that intense needling pressure in my head again. “Nightcreeper,” he says. “Hmm. I don’t know it. They imbedded the capsule in your back tooth. Makes sense. You can bite down on it if you’re in any danger, way before anyone could dream of stopping you. You see, your mind has high walls, Reza,” he tells me airily. “But I can still get inside, stubborn though you are.”
Damn it. I allowed myself to be distracted. I renew the shield I’ve erected to protect myself, just as Erika taught me, gathering all of my strength and applying it to the task, determined to keep him out. He must not be allowed to gain that kind of power over me. I can’t allow it. If I do, surely it will be easier for him to sneak inside my head the next time he feels like invading my privacy.
Jass’ laughter turns weary. “Your power’s too raw. Untamed and untrained. With enough time, I’ll always break through, Reza. I already know the question they sent you in here to ask me. They want me to join them. Help them beat back the Construct. They want me to save the day.”
It’s infuriating that he’s already discovered this information. I was going to try and feel him out, to see if he has absolutely any conscience whatsoever before gently prodding him about his loyalties to the Construct. “Don’t worry,” I snap. “I already know you’re not a save-the-day kind of guy.”
“I was once.” He lunges, grabbing hold of me by the wrist. He spins my arm over, and there, purple and ugly under the stark white glare from the emergency light overhead, is the scar I made when I tried to kill myself back on the Invictus. Specifically, the time when Jass intervened and prevented me from taking my own life. “I remember these too, y’know. So unsettling. I was in the middle of a briefing with the elders and my stomach turned over in the strangest way. I felt…unbalanced. I knew something was wrong. I knew exactly where to go to find you. I knew that if I didn’t come to you immediately, I would feel that same imbalanced sensation forever. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Did you feel me coming to find you? Did you feel the moment everything shifted?”
I wrench my arm free, holding onto my wrist under the table, clutching at it like he just snapped the bone. My pulse is out of control, fumbling all over the place, barely pumping my blood around my body. My head is spinning, my chest impossibly tight. “I didn’t feel a thing,” I whisper. “I was dying. I was barely conscious. I’d lost so much blood, I wasn’t even coherent.”
Tutting under his breath, Jass stares at me like he can see right through me. His hair falls in thick, almost black waves down to his shoulders. His eyes are fierce as he scans my face, and another frigid, terrifying judder slams through my body. “Liar.” His voice is hushed and quiet, but to my ears it sounds like a death knoll. “You’re hiding from yourself as much as you’re hiding from me. One of these days, you’re going to have to face the truth. You know it as well as I do. Your life will depend on it.”
My throat feels like it’s closing up. I get to my feet, my legs shaking, barely able to hold me up as I turn and hurry from the room. The door slams closed behind me, and for a moment it’s all I can do to stand there, leaning against the wall, trying not to pass out. Because he’s right. I felt it. No matter how badly I wanted to deny it, that day when Jass came to save my life on board the Invictus, I did feel the moment everything changed.
And…I liked it.