Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (41 page)

She scrabbled against the hole in her mind where her powers should be, clawing with mental fingernails at the edges.

Dolan backed off, giving Vayne a respite.

Even after the painstick had been withdrawn Vayne continued to tremble. His leg twitched and he couldn’t catch his breath. His chest shuddered twice before he turned his head to the side and vomited.

“Vayne.” Hot, angry, choking tears came.

“I’m all right,” he said, coughing out the last of it. He relaxed back and closed his eyes as if about to slip into sleep… or death.

“Vayne. Vayne?” Was he breathing? His neural scan looked the same, surely something would have changed if he were dying. “Vayne!”

His lids pulled back heavily.

Dolan reached toward Vayne again and her brother flinched back like a helpless child. Kayla roared at the sight. She closed her eyes and dove inside her head, pushed against every barrier that she felt, tore at every edge and seam and crack in her consciousness.
Please, please, please
, she begged herself,
do this for Vayne. Do it
. She couldn’t find anything unknown.
Be the
ro’haar
you failed to be the last five years.
She dug in the dark for nothing.

Vayne’s scream forced her eyes open. She stared at her neural scan, willing her brain to make some kind of connection to the image. He thrashed in his chair, his screams turning to a strangled gurgling. He let out a horrific groan and his neural scan burst into rainbow color. Threads of every conceivable shade erupted from his cartaid arch and shot through the image.

Vayne shattered their chairs’ restraints.

Kayla lunged from the chair, launching herself at Dolan. She collided with him full-force, driving him to the ground. His eyes were huge as she wrested the painstick from his slack grip. Before he could recover from the shock she jammed the painstick through his throat, staking him to the ground by his windpipe. Blood spurted and covered them both.

“Don’t die on me yet,” she growled. She toggled the switch on the painstick to active, then crawled off of his writhing body. “There you go.”

She looked up to find Vayne staring at Dolan with haunted eyes. He still lay in the chair, his gaze fixed. “It’s not enough.”

Kayla wiped the hot blood from her face and neck with her gown, leaving Dolan to bleed out in agony.

“It’s not enough,” Vayne said again, with more force this time. “It’s not.” He pushed himself to standing and she rose as well, ready to catch him if he needed it.

“He deserves…” Vayne’s words changed into just a sound, and that sound grew into a roar. He thrust his hands out and Dolan streaked across the floor to slam into the far wall of the laboratory. Vayne pulled him back, lifting Dolan’s body telekinetically to waist height, and slammed him into the wall again, destroying a cabinet of instrumentation and vials. Dolan was littered with cuts from the glass. Vayne pulled him back and smashed him against the wall again, this time cracking two of the digital displays and most of the bones in Dolan’s body.

It wasn’t enough.

Vayne let the body drop with a wet thud and raised his arms. He turned in a slow circle, arms outstretched, and everything in the path of his hands—glass, complinks, furniture, digital displays—shattered.

She ducked as his spinning arm would have cut across her. He spun until everything in the room was destroyed, with the exception of the two of them. Fragments covered her, stuck in the blood she couldn’t wipe off, coated her hair, lanced her face. Similar cuts appeared on Vayne as flying debris hit them like shrapnel. Finally it settled in a whirl of psychotically flashing broken lights, smoke, ozone and chemicals.

He lowered his arms, then his head. He took a deep breath. Another. She wanted to go to him but was afraid to move, afraid of what he’d do.

They waited in silence, she in a crouch, trying not to even twitch, he like the statue of a lost soul. A broken soul. When he finally lifted his head she saw the brother she knew there, and she saw someone else.

“We have to go,” she said softly. He nodded but didn’t move. “We’ll find my gear and comm Malkor. He’ll come for us.” She dared to straighten, watching him the whole way, but he gave no reaction. She took a step toward him, heel scuffing on debris, then another. She approached until she could touch him, and when she reached out a hand for him he met her with his own.

He squeezed her fingers gently. “You’re real this time. Right?”

M
alkor sat opposite Kayla and Vayne in the back of an IDC hover car.

One of the other octet leaders Commander Parrel trusted drove the hover car. An octet had come with him to retrieve Kayla and Vayne, and other agents had been left to secure Dolan’s facility. He didn’t know how Parrel had activated the agents so quickly and he didn’t give a damn. All he cared about was the woman across from him and her silent twin beside her.

Kayla hadn’t said anything since he’d found her and Vayne standing in the antechamber of Dolan’s building, surrounded by dead guards. She seemed whole in body—the blood wasn’t hers—but something had happened to her. If the octet hadn’t reported finding Dolan’s corpse, Malkor would have put flaying the skin from the
kin’shaa
’s body at the top of his to-do list.

All he could do now was stare at Kayla and promise himself he’d never let her out of his sight again.

Ever.

Vayne stared at the city slipping by, now painted in the brilliant colors of morning. He was paler than a pilot after a decade in deep space and looked unhealthy in a way Malkor couldn’t describe.

They were driving back to the safehouse where the other Wyrds and half of his team waited. Kayla would need to see Corinth before she could take a deep breath, and she’d need to see Vayne in safe-keeping before she’d let herself rest. From the way she lay limp against the seat cushions, he knew she needed a lot more than that.

“We’re here, Agent,” the driver said.

Malkor popped the latch and climbed out, Kayla nearly pushing him out of the way to get to the door, Vayne trailing along slowly. Anxious faces awaited their arrival. Corinth rushed for Kayla, knocking Malkor aside. He wrapped his arms around her waist and she held him, strong for him when he needed it, no matter what she’d been through herself.

There it was, the sigh, the exhaled breath she’d been holding ever since Corinth had been taken. Her shoulders slumped with the release. She nodded, listening to something only she could hear, and hugged Corinth tighter.

“I am too,” she said. She looked up then, her eyes meeting Malkor’s over Corinth’s head. Her face revealed her gratitude and understanding passed between them. Malkor couldn’t have done anything greater for her than to have rescued Corinth.

Corinth released Kayla and latched onto Vayne with an equally fierce hug. Vayne froze, his face showing shock. He remained stiff for a second but Corinth didn’t relent. Vayne’s arms came around the boy slowly as if afraid to touch him, as if he wasn’t real. He wrapped his arms around Corinth, hugging gently at first, then squeezed him tighter, clinging to him. Vayne, impassive until now, broke down, tears cascading from the corners of his eyes as he hung on to Corinth.

Kayla wrapped her arms around them both and they stood in the doorway like a relief carved of homecoming and painful joy.

She had her family now.

Her elder sister, Natali, lay sleeping in a room upstairs and there would no doubt be another reunion when she woke. The same with her uncle Ghirhad. Kayla was reunited with her people, whole in a way he could never make her by himself.

Malkor left them standing there and approached Hekkar. “Any word?”

Hekkar nodded. “Rigger and Noar broke the encryption on Dolan’s files. They’re still sorting through it, but there’s a lot of material tying Dolan’s activities to those of several IDC commanders and generals, and even the chief-general.”

It was true, then. “The IDC’s been working with Dolan? How in space did that happen?”

Hekkar looked equally displeased. “Apparently they’ve… we’ve, been funding the bulk of his research since Ordoch.”

“In exchange for…?”

“Psi powers. Rigger found several contracts for funds and materials, all expressly stating that Dolan’s end of the bargain was the development of a method to give us imperials psi powers.”

The repercussions of such a deal set in. “They knew about the Ordochian prisoners, then. That he was performing experiments on them.”

“Looks like it.” Hekkar frowned. “I haven’t always been proud of the decisions the IDC’s made, but I’ve always thought we had a good direction. If this is where the IDC is heading, though…”

“There are others like us, and like Parrel. I’m not about to let anyone, including the chief-general, corrupt the IDC any worse than it has already suffered.” He looked at Kayla, wiping tears from her face and actually smiling. “If there’s a split coming, you and I are on the right side.”

* * *

Kayla woke in a strange place, groggy and hungover.

She lay on her back in a bed, searching her memory for details as afternoon sunlight streamed in from a window nearby.

It slowly came back. The rescue attempt last night, the capture by Dolan, getting drugged, and then escaping this morning. No wonder she’d passed out for some hours, based on the angle of the sun. She should look in on her twin and Corinth, but she couldn’t make herself stir.

A knock sounded.

She pushed herself to sitting. “Come in.” She’d recovered the tank-top she’d worn under her tac-suit, and was dressed awkwardly in that and the bottom half of her suit with the arms tied around her waist to hold it up. Real classy.

Vayne eased the door open. “You awake?”

“Barely. I have a killer headache.”

He entered the room and shut the door behind him. “Me too.” He took the only chair and Kayla sat cross-legged on the bed. He didn’t say anything more, just watched her. She wished she could reach out and touch minds. Not even speak, just share the closeness of each other’s essence and pass feelings between them faster than words. She’d let him into her head if she thought he could stand it, but something told her he was too raw for that kind of link.

“Tia brought me up to speed on the situation,” he said finally. “At least, the half of it she knows.”

The situation. Such an inadequate word for the tangle of conflicting loyalties that had become her life.

“She told me what their plans had been, and then about finding you here, working with Princess Isonde and the IDC on your own plans.”

She felt a question coming. The way he shifted in his seat, the pensive look, the slight frown on his violet lips… his signs were as familiar to her as always.

“What she couldn’t tell me was how you got here, and where you’ve been the last five years.” He looked up at her from under midnight blue lashes and she heard the rest of the question he hadn’t asked.
Why didn’t you come for me sooner?

Maybe it was her guilt talking. Or maybe it was the rightful pain of an
il’haar
abandoned by the
ro’haar
who was supposed to protect him with her life.

Either way, the unspoken question hung between them, distancing them. He needed her answer. Needed to believe she hadn’t willingly left him to his fate, even as much as he seemed to fear it was true. What answer could ever be enough to explain why he’d suffered for so long?

“I thought you were dead.” She told him everything she remembered about the attack on Ordoch. He listened silently, never interrupting when she paused. She told him about escaping with Corinth, and what their life had been like in hiding. The more she talked, the more she had to say. Words spilled out, one after the other, describing life as a fugitive on the slum side of Altair Tri.

When she finally ran out of words, he said, “I’m glad you were able to save Corinth.” Her regret filled in the rest of the sentence:
even if you couldn’t save me.
“Are you his
ro’haar
, then?” he asked in a soft voice. “Have I lost you completely?”

“It’s not like that. He needed me.” She shook her head. “No. We needed each other. I would have died that day if I hadn’t had to save him.” The truth of the words hit her. “He saved me as much as I saved him. He’s kept me going these last five years, kept me fighting to get us home.”

“And now?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? When she’d agreed to Isonde’s scheme, she never thought it would lead to finding Vayne. Was she still locked into being someone she wasn’t, now that things were so different from what she and Malkor had envisioned?

Yes.

“Now… now I send Corinth home with the Ilmenans. And you.”

“You’re not coming with us.” It wasn’t a question but she answered anyway.

“No.”

They fell silent then, he seeming to take time to absorb the words. She had nothing else to say. She couldn’t change her mind, not when so much was at stake. Not even for Vayne.

“Don’t stay,” he whispered. “I know what you’re doing. Tia told me about your ploy to be the empress, to gain a seat on their ruling council.”

“Our people need—”

“Frutt our people,” he snapped, his voice lancing across the room. “I don’t care. I’ve been subjected to mental, physical and emotional experiments for the last five years. I’ve seen my family members die slowly, one by one, and lived with the knowledge that I would eventually succumb to the same madness, the same exhaustion and hopelessness that killed them.” He stood as if he couldn’t contain his intensity. “I don’t care about the political situation on a planet so far removed from the life I’ve been forced to live. You’re alive, Kayla.” He spoke as if she couldn’t begin to imagine what that meant. “And Corinth’s alive. And by some miracle, I’m still alive. I don’t care about strangers. I want my twin,” he said vehemently. “Ordoch can burn.”

She stood as well, not immune to his energy. “This is our best chance, not only to help Ordoch, but also to put someone in power who could save millions of people from the TNV.”

He ignored her words. “Come with me.”

“Vayne—” How could she make him understand? She tried to think of another argument for her actions, but in the end, it didn’t matter if he understood or not, she would still stay. “I can’t.”