Stellar fusion, p.13
Stellar Fusion, page 13
part #1 of Infinite Spark Series
“What was that all about?” Azure asked.
She fumbled through what to say, staring at the sliver of a shadowed path Bennett had retreated down. “I don’t think his serum is working.”
“Neither is yours.” Gently drawing back a few wavy strands, he exposed the light casting out over her cheeks.
She pulled away, uncomfortable with the contact. Too many people knew who she was, what she was, and wanted to touch her. “How do you know I’m on serum?”
He hummed. “The flashing on the band around your arm saying: Serum Dose Overdue?”
“You can read English?”
“I know a lot about your kind and your planet.” He hesitated. “Is he your mate?”
She rotated the screen of her wristband to confirm Azure’s words were true. “Mate? No.”
He sighed. “Good.” Oh, you idiot, that’s a fool thing to say. “I mean not good because you aren’t matched.” His insides cringed. “He seems overprotective. You seem like the type who can take care of yourself.”
And you seem far too interested. “Members of the Universal Protectors are not allowed to mate, marry, or have any sorts of relationship connections. It leads to irrational thoughts and decisions, which create inappropriate actions.” She glanced down the path. “That’s why we developed the serum. Obviously, we have some dosage concerns to work out.”
“You can never be matched with someone?” He frowned. “Most of us aren’t either. We can if we choose, though.”
“Not us.” She paused, considering his words: matched with someone? “Are you?”
Knowing nothing about his species’ relationship traditions, she didn’t want to be stepping on any toes or starting anything she couldn’t finish.
He smiled on the inside. “No. Been waiting.”
“For what?” She blinked, disconcerted about the haze blurring her vision. Plucking her blade from its sheath, she used its glossy, tempered, surface to discover the culprit.
“The right one.”
Staring for a moment at the brilliant blue-green in her irises, she debated Saema’s words. This man is Xahu’ré. I am part Xahu’ré. I had two visions while awake. That never happens. I didn’t sense him on the mountain. What if… Is he…?
She thought about the blue-eyed boy from her memory-visions.
No, he couldn’t be, could he?
A larger-than-average hand lifted and, with a single finger, directed her chin up until her eyes locked on his. She could see her light reflecting in their crystal clear surfaces. She wanted to pull away. It was wrong, according to Command. It compromised shepherds. But something kept her still this time. He was a constant, a fixed point. She felt stable, though everything about him made her flounder in a storming sea of rising emotions.
He was wrapped up in her, in admiration. She must remember something. Her defensive nature made him uneasy. Maybe if she could see it…
The faint, echoing alert worked its way in between them, breaking the hypnosis his presence had put her in. Her pupils constricted, switching focus randomly, searching for the explanation. She cursed, holstering her blade, remembering her overdue serum.
Grabbing the control panel on her arm, she assessed the chart on the screen, her levels two-fold threshold and rising. Lining up to tap the flashing option to inject, her index finger hovered over the button.
“Wait, please!” Azure exclaimed, not knowing how her serum might affect her ability to experience the telepathic connection to the ether. “Before you do, I want to show you something…please.”
Atana looked up to the longing in his gaze but knew she must follow the orders of her superiors.
Seeing she would not hear him out, he swiftly separated her hands from one another, cradling her head in his palms. His nose delicately graced the side of hers. “Can you trust me, just for a few moments? Please, just trust me. I don’t want to hurt you.” I want to help you remember.
She noticed the tremble in his fingers and rapid beat of his heart. Something about him took the strength from her body and the breath from her lungs. Her own heart was rapped out.
Cells awakened in her, ones dormant for over a decade. The twisting, writhing energy at her core was realigning, each electron recognizing his familiar presence. Azure’s connection to her was too strong for any synthesized serum to manage, even after Rio’s auto-inject programming kicked in.
She stared into the sapphire-blue fire burning through the capillaries in his irises. It circulated like eddies, sucking her deep, under the swirling water. Her forehead felt the gentle touch of his.
A whirlwind of memories flooded her mind. She reached out, finding only his capable arms to grab on to. Wrapping her fingers up and over his tensed forearms, she fought through the storm in her mind, toward the voice calling to her.
Azure stood in the gray mist, his right hand opened before her. Grasping tightly onto him, her vision cleared.
A girl appeared, jingling keys in hand, leaping over the slumped Warruk guards. A cell was open—hers. Her fingers frantically twisted key after key until one clicked. When he stood up outside of his cell, Atana realized it was the two of them as teenagers.
With a gray blur, the rescue team from Earth appeared at the end of a hall, grabbing everyone they could find.
One of the shepherds called out, “Luna!”
Both of them had met a girl by that name and led the way. She was in a room farther down the hall, lying on an operating slab, barely breathing. The man tried to scoop her up until blood oozed out her back. She screamed.
Another male in black appeared in the doorway. “Sensei, our ship. It’s gone, in pieces. We have to take one of their pods.”
When Sensei looked down, the girl had passed. A tear stood at the edge of his eyelid. Atana and Azure watched as he kissed her forehead and carried her out the door, pulling her in tight.
“Papa’s so sorry, baby,” he whispered with another kiss to her smudged face, her golden baby-dreads swinging with his steps. “I love you.”
Reaching the airlock, the group found three Suanoa blocking their escape. The second shepherd drew weapons and fired on them, to no avail. The Suanoa countered, launching their own attack of telekinetic warfare. His body slammed against the wall, a smoking distraction.
Sensei yelled at the two to run for the airlock, but they were stuck.
Azure guided her body behind his. Wisps of red-orange flames dissipated in the air. Three blasts and he fell into her arms. The two of them tumbled to the floor. She weakly cupped the face in her hands, shrieking.
He looked up to her for comfort, reaching with one quaking hand. But his consciousness faded before his fingers could connect with the lowest atom of her chin.
Atana gasped, squeezing tightly onto Azure’s arms, breaking free of the memory to see the familiar look of powerlessness and fear scrolled across his eyes. Her irises opened wide, ablaze, remembering him and the despair on his face as he lay expiring in her lap.
Her memories flooded in through open doors. She studied him in awe: his boxy jaw line, the slightly crooked nose with its rounded tip, the layers of cerulean rings in his irises set beneath a prominent brow, and the centered, dark V-shaped stripe at the top of his forehead with its thin point barely peeking out from beneath his dark grey, disheveled hair.
She sputtered. The shepherds, Sensei, he tore me from you. I tried to stay!
It’s okay. Kylo found me and took me to Saema. Though my scars are… He paused, clearing his throat. It took many cycles to get out of bed. But I healed. He straightened, running a tender thumb over her cheek.
They pointed their weapons at me. Why would you do this? Atana’s quivering hands lifted, delicately touching his chest. Can, can I see them? The scars? She slid a finger under one of the crudely-cut twig buttons on his shirt.
An all-consuming flare of visceral lust sent the blood roaring through his body. You don’t want to see them. They’re not…
He nervously rubbed the quickly heating thermo-stripe hugging the back of his neck.
Atana wasn’t sure how to proceed. She had completely forgotten about UP, about her mission. All she could see was him, his eyes, his skin, and feel the guilt like liquid cement in her veins.
Chapter 30
AS IF SHE WOULD SHATTER, he delicately traced the line that stole her from him. You can change your mind.
I want to see. I need to, to know what you went through.
Azure swallowed hard with a nod. He admired her gleaming mahogany veil, silken and smooth, her loose strands a far cry from the dirty dreads he knew before. He struggled to keep himself calm, her fingers barely tugging on the buttons of his shirt, coordinating their adept yet cautious movements down his front.
Her eyes lifted up to his, and gingerly, she encouraged the fabric back and over his shoulders, letting it fall from his arms to the ground at their feet. A glimpse of a large, glossy patch captured her attention.
No one has seen these since Saema took me in. Are you still sure? With a nod from her, he took a deep breath and crossed his arms. Grasping the shredded bottom edge of his stretched-out tank top, he peeled it up and over his head, dropping it beside the other.
He couldn’t look at her. He was waiting for her to scream and run or be disgusted and sick like so many of the ones who had cared for him.
Her pupils dilated so drastically she could feel them move. The once scraggly, dirty, scrawny Xahu’ré boy she knew from before was now a built powerhouse, solid and packed with muscle. The endocrine analyzer in her wristband noticed too.
Three large, silvery blotches with crooked lines, like lightning, radiated out across the surface of his skin, marring his right shoulder, the upper left area of his abdomen, and part of his lower right abdomen, merging with the top crest of his hip. The tissue was damaged beyond anything she had ever seen. She covered her shaking lips with a hand, her nose burning as tears crept their way down her cheeks.
“Do they… Do any of them hurt?” she whispered, her throat too sore to produce sound.
He shook his head, but his silence made her think otherwise. His skin was covered in streaks, pocks, and jagged hash-marks, not just over the muscles and joints like hers. Several of his thermo-stripes were almost indistinguishable, having been rearranged by so many different devices and tools.
Any other person would have been disgusted. But there was empathy reflecting in her eyes. With endured pain came strength, tenacity, and defiance. And for the moment, she felt understood, him not so alone, and they were mitered in the bonds of fate, sewn by the hands of the universe.
Atana moved in close, her fingers gingerly reaching for him. The nerves beneath were too damaged to sense her touch over the scars that were proof of his unwavering love for her.
Flashbacks flooded her mind.
Looking down to his limp body in her lap, hatred ripped through her for those who dare take her one true friend.
The fingers of her left hand found the rounded divot beneath his clavicle, from their first encounter with one another.
It was purely by accident she had learned how to heal another when she’d leaned over him later with tears in her eyes. Her forehead had drooped enough to connect to his, unknowing of the consequences of such intimate contact.
Without those actions, spurred by her anguished soul, he would’ve bled out there in the testing facility, leaving her to endure the torture alone.
Azure’s heartbeat chased hers. She knew from the pulsations registering through her fingertips. His skin infused the air with a hot, pungent spice. Pheromones. Red flags. She tried to resist their spell but found herself absorbing into them.
His spine tingled, as she traced the outline of the markings crawling up and over his left collarbone. The Marakou gave me symbolic armor for protecting sector 219. We were in their area to track down a group that was raiding bunkhouses and raping the females. I pulled a girl, the daughter of the Healer, out of their grasp before she could be harmed. He stopped himself, not wanting to ruin the moment. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble.
Atana vacantly scanned the distant fields behind him. It was overwhelming. He had become so strong and so good, despite what he had been through, despite her having left him behind.
It’s okay. I know this is a lot to process.
Letting out a raspy grunt, she slid her arms under his and around his bare back, pressing her cheek against the broad planes of his muscles. His arms lifted, completely caught off guard. Nuzzling into him, she pined for more of his scent, for reassurance of the comfort breathing in her arms. Her lungs shook with the release of everything held inside.
Closing his eyes, he basked in the warmth of her against his skin and wrapped himself around her. His nose nestled into the feathery waves of hair on top of her head. A tear rolled down his cheek, finding its way to her leather jacket.
Memories flashed in again.
With the glaive in hand, her eyes burning white hot with fury, she stared down those who dare take him from her. Her back curved, and in a blur of blinding steel, she cut them down, savoring the moment each succumbed to a spattered pile across the floor. And all too quickly, she found her throat hoarse, screaming for Azure, her fingers straining toward his fading silhouette.
Droplets sparkled down her face, illuminated by the re-emerged light from her eyes. Her breaths choppy and violent, she bound him to her. Thank you for reminding me. I have been lost for so long.
Azure let out a short laugh of relief. Thank you for remembering me.
. . .
Bennett couldn’t quite make out the shadowy figure heading toward the hut from the tree line. He jerked forward, away from the doorframe where he stood guard. Pointing Cutter’s shotgun out across the darkened fields, his right eye trained down the faint, green sights. The glow of two round eyes appeared, the figure closing in. Breaking out into the starlight, he saw her and let the gun rest across his front.
“I apologize for my outburst. Thank you for giving me some space, Jameson. I’m sorry I was so hard on you.” She touched his shoulder with the lightness of a butterfly, the soft timbre of her words unexpected.
He fumbled, felt his mouth hanging open, and slammed it shut, giving her only a lethargic nod.
“You are right to be concerned because this place is different, something our rules were not prefaced to handle. But we should not judge others before we get to know them. Up here, we are the aliens to them.”
The fire in her irises shut down his retaliation. Questions flooded in like a burst dam. Who was the stranger she was with? What made her eyes appear to glow like his? He’s telepathic? And what caused her sudden change in attitude? Not that he minded. It just wasn’t normally like her. Then again, he had only known her for a few days.
She heard everything and smiled from the shadows as she lay on her bunk and closed her eyes.
Ultimately, he was left with one thought replaying in his mind. She called me ‘Jameson.’
Insight
Chapter 31
SHE ROLLED HER HEAD from the confusion. “I don’t understand,” Atana stated. “You want me to do what?”
I am entrusting you with the task of saving Teek and Paramor. Please, you need to practice. Saema said, motioning to her forehead.
Atana lowered her head into her hands. She tried to relax her body, hoping it would help her focus. It had been a long time since she had been able to concentrate enough to meditate. Memory-visions came to her easily now after the events of the previous evening, though she was having exceptional difficulty in quieting the conscious thoughts in her mind.
Only telepaths can see images, when we communicate openly. This is Healer Paramor.
A silhouette appeared in Atana’s mind.
She lay on an exam table, pain screaming through her body. She squinted up at the bright lights obstructing her already blurry vision. Platinum hair flowed down his back, matching his silvery skin. His gray and white irises seemed honest, worth the trust he requested. A tiny, white feather stuck out of a corner seam of the burlap behind him. Her mind faded into the familiar, murky dimension between.
Atana lifted her head to confront Saema about this vision, wondering why the perspective made it seem like a memory of hers.
You must save him. He is our only hope for a future on a new planet. Saema’s eyes opened. He is the reason you and Azure are what you are. Atana’s heart broke into a sprint. And yes, I know about you two. Azure tells me everything. She smiled. I hope you know how important you are to him.
Atana instinctively covered her face, embarrassed, though she had never felt such a way before.
Do not fight it. There are many ways in which emotions are more important than not. He would not have made it here without something to hope for. When he heard of the prophecy, that you were to return, he held on to that thought of you. It was the only reason he could piece himself together.
And if I fail, what then? I didn’t ask to be part of someone else’s plan.
Saema’s eyes fell to the floor, the sheen of her skin dulling. You are going to leave these workers to their deaths?
No, I just don’t think it’s smart or fair to put so much weight and hope on one life. Atana drew a deep breath and forced the frustration out in whorls that stirred up the loose straw on the floor.
There is something you need to see. Saema sent Atana another vision, a memory of her own this time.
Azure screamed in blood-curdling agony, tears pouring from his eyes. Her helpers held him down while she cleaned his wounds. His thin, teenage frame writhed on the cot. His arms reached out, grabbing handfuls of cloth from Saema’s robes and her helper’s shirt. He cried out, begging for the torture to cease. It was her name he’d sobbed, before he slipped under, “Sahara…”
His body quaked and fell limp, unconscious on the worn sheets. Saema applied a thick, mint-colored paste to keep the wounds free of infections. She touched his forehead gently with hers, softly reciting a prayer for him in her native language.
Atana choked. Tears streamed down her face, through the fingers protecting her eyes from being seen by the world.
