“I’ll attend to it.” Far was already standing. “I’ll go to the main communications desk and run a comprehensive search.”
“Do that,” Sylvan said, nodding. “And while you’re at it—”
He was interrupted by a buzzing from the large viewscreen on the wall.
“Answer it quick!” Sophia exclaimed. “It’ll wake up the twins!”
“Allow call,” Sylvan said. At once an image of Six popped up on the screen.
“Oh good,” Sophie murmured. “Somebody bespeak Mei-Li and tell her that her man is fine. She was so worried she had to lay down with a headache.”
“On it.” Becca was already reaching for the thin silver wire of a Think-me in order to communicate with their friend.
Sylvan also seemed pleased. “Six, good. I asked the communications officers to patch you directly through when you called. What have you found?”
“Destruction and death.” Six sounded sober. “The lab is where Two modified all of his sniffers—canine-like creatures who were able to scent emotions. He always kept it in immaculate condition but now, well…see for yourself, Commander.”
He panned the hand-held camera across the lab showing broken glass and twisted metal along with some suspicious looking brownish-red stains.
“Is that blood?” Sylvan asked, frowning at the screen.
“It appears to be. But there is more—look.”
Six walked to a different part of the lab, his boots crunching on the scattered glass fragments. He came to a stop in front of two huge cylinders which had been broken open, though one was still half filled with greenish goo.
But it was what the cylinders contained that caught Thrace’s eye—two twisted forms, both of them clearly dead, were lying locked together, half-in, half-out of the shattered containers.
“Is that…Two?” Thrace asked.
Six nodded. “He looks much changed but yes, I believe it is him. The teeth are unmistakable.”
Two had died with a look of agony on his face—his thin lips were peeled back in a snarl that revealed his steel teeth. Beside him, with long fingers wrapped around Two’s skinny throat, lay another figure Thrace recognized.
“Lord X!” Trin exclaimed.
“Is this the scion Two made of himself?” Six asked, looking down.
“If it’s not it’s close enough to be his twin,” Trin murmured. “Look—is that a blaster hole in his chest?”
“I believe so,” Six answered her. “And look—” He lifted Two’s stiff hand with the toe of one boot. It was still gripping a blaster.
“I wonder what happened to them?” Charlie said.
“It appears that Two was trying to make some kind of transference—maybe he wanted to put his consciousness directly into his scion’s body,” Six said. “Apparently, the scion did not approve of this.”
“He didn’t want Two taking over his body so he strangled him,” Charlie said. “And then Two shot him—they must have died together.”
Becca shivered. “It’s not pretty but at least now we know Two and his scion are out of the picture.” She turned to Thrace. “That must be a load off your mind!”
“Of course.” Thrace tried to smile but for some reason, he couldn’t feel the elation he knew he ought to. There was something too easy…to convenient about the scene Six had found in the abandoned laboratory…
“Well, that’s part of the problem solved, anyway,” Trin remarked, squeezing his hand. “Now we just have to find this Brooks girl somewhere on Earth and get to her before the Verrak assassin does.”
“I’ll send a special prayer to the Goddess that you’ll find her in time,” Nadiah murmured. “But something tells me that this girl, whoever she is, has a long journey ahead of her…and she might not like what she finds along the way.”
Epilogue
Somewhere in the darkness, hidden from view, the muffled sound of heavy boots crunching on broken glass grew more and more distant. The deep voice of the alien intruder was fading as he moved away, finishing his business here.
The sounds were muffled by the nutrient bath that filled the tube so the one inside it could not make out the words the intruder spoke but that didn’t matter—his memory would store it all for later and bring it back when necessary.
There was much to bring back when the time was right…memories of another—the maker who had created the one in the tube in the first place. Memories and directives…tasks to fulfill…missions to complete…a race of people to destroy.
For a moment a pair of burning black eyes with reddish glints opened in the darkness and looked through the cool green nutrient soup. Black hair floated around his face and every muscle in his big body tensed in anticipation. But the time was not right…the cycle was not complete. Soon his time would come but it was not here yet.
The one within the tube closed his eyes and slept for a little while longer, dreaming of the day when he would wake to kill and kill again until the maker’s orders were fulfilled…or he died trying.
The End
Read on for an exclusive look at Kindred 15, Targeted, coming in Spring of 2015 as well as a taste of Solar’s story Mastering the Mistress in the Mastered II box set here for only 99 cents.
Chapter One
It was happening again.
Emily Brooks gasped as a flash of heat swept over her body. It started in her lower pelvis and rolled outward, like flames licking her skin from the inside out, stealing her breath and making every inch of her tingle with unwanted heat.
Oh God, ohGodohGod…No, please—not this—not this again!
Her hands clenched into fists at her sides and her toes curled in her sensible low heeled shoes. The shapeless cotton dress she wore was suddenly too hot—sticking to her full-figured body with the dew of sweat that bloomed across her flushed skin. The hair at the nape of her neck suddenly prickling and her eyes burned. Not like she’d gotten soap in them, though—they burned as if there was some strange heat source behind them.
But though all these weird physical problems were uncomfortable and strange, they weren’t what Emily feared the most. She feared the other coming out. The one she sometimes glimpsed in the mirror. The one inside of her who was getting closer to the surface every day…
“Miss Brooks? Miss Brooks, Avery pushed me!”
“Did not. Anyway, she pushed me first.”
“Did not!”
“Did so!”
“Class!” Taking a deep breath, Emily forced herself to forget about what was happening inside her and concentrate on the kindergarten class under her care at George Washington Elementary.
Her stress must have come through in her voice, because all fifteen of her kids got suddenly quiet and looked at her with large eyes.
Oh God, what do they see? Do they see what I see when I look in the mirror?
Emily took a deep breath…then another. Calm, she had to be calm. It was only 9:30 and she had to make it until 2 when the bell rang for dismissal.
“Miss Brooks,” ventured Avery Andrews. “Do you feel okay? Maybe you oughta go to the nurse.”
“I’m fine, Avery. Thank you for your concern though—that’s sweet.”
Emily did her best to smile at the little boy who was the class clown but so endearing you couldn’t help but love him.
“You don’t look fine,” Kelsey Pincter remarked.
“Yeah, your eyes look funny.” Miracle Jackson said. “All sparky and hot. Like you gots a candle in your head, right behind your eyes—like a jack-o-lantern.”
Like a jack-o-lantern… Emily took another deep breath.
“I’m just fine,” she said again more firmly. “Or I will be if everyone will settle down before we go into the library. Other students are studying in here so we need to be…what?”
“Quiet!” they all chorused loudly and each of them put a finger to his or her lips. “Shhhh!”
Emily tried to smile. Normally her class was the light of her life—she loved kids and since she was never
going to have any of her own, being a kindergarten teacher was wonderful. But just now she felt shaky and hot and out of breath—like she’d just run an hour on the treadmill at the gym. Not that she could usually do more than a brisk walk for that long but still—that was the feeling she had.
“All right then, let’s go in quietly,” she murmured, putting her finger to her lips. “Elbows and tip-toes. Line leader, open the door and hold it for the rest of the class.”
Avery was the line leader and he gave her a big freckle-faced grin as he followed instructions, tucking his elbows in and walking with exaggerated caution on the tips of his toes. Emily tried to return the smile as she shepherded her class, which were all doing the same thing, into the large, beautifully decorated media center.
It was a warm, welcoming area which had been painted by a local artist with various storybook characters on the walls. Alice and the Mad Hatter took tea in one corner while the caterpillar looked on from his mushroom. On a far wall, Lucy was opening the door to the magical wardrobe that led to Narnia and on a another wall, a haggard looking Frodo Baggins was holding the One Ring aloft and staring up at the ominous Mount Doom, looming in the distance.
This last mural was perhaps a touch dark for an elementary school library but as a confirmed Tolkien freak, Emily had always loved it. Today, however, she barely noticed it as she herded her class to the big rainbow carpet in the Alice in Wonderland corner. There, to her intense relief, she saw Mrs. Andrews, one of the parent volunteers, was sitting in the big rocking chair and waiting to read a story. Dragons Love Tacos! proclaimed the book in her hand and Emily’s class was already crowding around her. They loved story time.
Mrs. Peltz, the librarian with iron gray hair and stern features, was standing behind the check out desk explaining to a fifth grader why he couldn’t check out the graphic novel he wanted since he still had two more out.
“Mrs. Peltz,” Emily murmured when the disappointed student left. “Since you have a volunteer here, do you mind if I run to the faculty restroom for a minute?”
Mrs. Peltz pursed her lips to a thin, pink line.
“Miss Brooks, you know you’re not supposed to leave students unattended in the library!”
“I know.” Emily was beginning to get desperate. She could feel another heat wave coming on. “I know but it’s just—it’s that time of the month. And I left my, uh, supplies in the classroom.”
“Well…” The librarian looked at her disapprovingly.
“Please,” Emily begged in an undertone.
“All right. But no more than ten minutes, mind.” Mrs. Peltz nodded her sharp chin at the door. “Go on.”
“Thank you!”
Incredibly relieved, Emily left the media center by the back door at a fast walk.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she got out into the chilly wind of the breezeway that connected the media center to the rest of the school. Tampa didn’t get much cold weather but it was mid January, just after the Christmas break and the thermometer had actually dipped into the low sixties—positively frigid for Florida.
The breeze swirling through the breezeway cooled and revived her, drying the sweat that had broken out across her forehead but Emily could still feel the heat building inside her. By the time she reached the faculty bathroom, located in the rear of the admin building, she was nearly shaking again. Control…she had to get control!
She fumbled for the knob and let herself in, intensely relieved to see she was all alone. Stumbling to the sink, she turned on the cold tap and splashed her face with freezing water. Gasping in shock at the water’s bite, she reached blindly for a stack of the coarse, brown paper towels and blotted her cheeks and eyes. She tried not to smear what little make-up she had on but her face still looked naked when she studied herself in the mirror.
“Calm,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the tiled room. “Keep it together, Ems. Keep calm.”
Ems was her nickname—an affectionate moniker given by her big sister, Anna.
No, adopted sister, Emily reminded herself. Adopted—not really blood related at all.
The news of her adoption was still new to her—something her parents had decided to tell her over the Christmas break. “Because we’re getting older, dear,” her mother—no, adopted mother, Emily reminded herself—had said. “And you need to know in case you have some kind of health problems down the line.”
“We wanted to wait until you were married and settled down so you’d have a family of your own and it wouldn’t be such a shock,” her father had added. “But, well…”
“We decided that now was as good a time as any,” her mother had finished delicately. But Emily had understood the unspoken message. We wanted to wait until you were married but you’re past thirty and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.
“I’m only thirty-one,” Emily muttered to the mirror. “It could still happen.”
But she knew it wouldn’t. She was never going to get married and have kids of her own. It wasn’t that she was getting too old—that was silly—she knew women in their forties having their first baby. And in fact, she looked much like she had ten years ago in her early twenties. Unfortunately, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
With a sigh, Emily stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her shoulder-length dishwater blonde hair couldn’t be more nondescript if she’d dyed it with a color called Anonymous. And her eyes were a wishy-washy blue-gray-hazel that managed to be all colors and no color at once. Her face was just all right—she had broad, almost Slavic cheekbones, and a wide, too-generous mouth with a small nose. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t model-pretty either and it wasn’t like she had anything else to recommend her. Aside from her limp hair and no-color eyes, she was too short—barely five foot four—and much too round. The loose cotton dress that hid her figure did her no favors but she wasn’t about to go out and buy anything that hugged her curves. She’d tried that once in college and the result had been disastrous.
As a matter of fact, the last time she’d had this trouble with the weird internal heat waves had been back in college, too. Right before—but Emily pushed that thought away hurriedly. It was a memory she preferred to leave buried.
“Should have known I was adopted,” she told her image in the mirror. “Anna and Mom and Dad are all tall and thin and perfect…and I’m the exact opposite.”
Her sister Anna was thirty-three, a size six and a successful attorney. She was married to a heart surgeon who was both handsome and kind and they had just produced a perfectly beautiful set of twins with big blue eyes that Emily adored. She loved her sister too, despite the fact that it seemed like Anna had gone down the “success checklist” of life and checked off every single box in her relentless march to perfection.
“You’ll find a guy, Ems,” her sister had told her, when Emily confessed that the way her parents had revealed her adoption had hurt almost as much as the adoption itself. “You just have to get out there and get over what happened in college. People do go on, you know. There are support groups for—”
“Stop it!” Emily pressed her fingertips to her temples, rubbing fiercely. Damn it—why did everything come back to that? She hadn’t thought of it in ages but lately, since she’d found out that her family wasn’t really her family, it had been coming back. The memories…the flashes of heat…the dreams…
Oh God, the dreams.
Emily closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The dreams were horrible. One in particular…
I wake in the night. I am thirsty. I go to the bathroom and run some water from the sink into my favorite blue mug. As I raise it to my lips, I look in the mirror and see that I am naked. Naked and pale in the moonlight streaming through the window. My belly ripples—ripples like a white pond with some unseen predator just below the surface of the water. And then the pains start—the sharp, blinding agony right behind my naval.
I start to scream and that’s when I see the claws…long, black claws, poking
out of me on either side of my belly button. They tear outward and blood gushes in a wave—I am being torn apart. Annihilated. The other is taking over… ripping me open from the inside out…
Emily shuddered and tried to push the nightmarish image away.
“Don’t be stupid.” Her voice echoed again in the tiled room, making her jump but she went on, lecturing herself in the mirror anyway. “Don’t be stupid there’s not really any other. It’s all in your head just like it was in college when—”
But the words died in her throat.
The eyes staring back at her from the bathroom mirror were no longer nothing-colored. Instead they were a pure, clear gold. Not amber or light brown—brilliant, burnished gold. And her hair—it was changing color too. From dishwater blonde it went to bible black. The change was sudden and complete—as though someone had dumped a bucket of midnight over her head. A stranger stared back at her from the mirror. A stranger…an alien…the other.
Emily gave a soft, breathless scream and backed away from her radically altered reflection. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and dug her fingernails into her palms.
No…nonono…I’m not seeing this. It’s an illusion—a hallucination brought on by stress. I’m fine. I’ll be fine…finefinefinefinefine!
With a low moan, she forced herself to open her eyes.
They were no-color again. And her hair was the same limp, dishwater blonde it had always been, no matter how many products she used to give it body.
“I’m Emily,” she whispered to herself. “Emily Brooks and I’m fine. There is no other. There is no other.”
If only she could make herself believe it.
She backed away, never taking her eyes off the mirror, fearful lest she see herself change again. But the image stayed the same as she fumbled behind her for the doorknob and let herself out.
Emily took a deep, sobbing breath and leaned against the bathroom door, letting the chilly wind dry her tears. Everything was all right. She was fine.