Ki Book One

Chapter Twenty-One

  A full week passed before Jackson gained the Major’s trust enough to be let out of his room. He was not permitted to walk freely through the facility, but it was a start.

  With every passing hour the Major became more excited about the Zeneethian gun. Jackson had overheard him raving about it, lauding it as the weapon that would finally quash the Tarkans and bring Ashka the victory it had always deserved.

  The mood in the facility was one of subdued shock. The initial surprise of the particle gun and its incredible capabilities was wearing off, but people still walked the halls with pallid, distracted expressions. Even the soldiers were not immune to it.

  They all knew something huge was happening. Technology centuries beyond their own had all but fallen from the sky.

  Jackson pitied them, but his compassion only went so far. The Major was not a man who should enjoy the empathy of others. He did not deserve it.

  In the past several days something had been confirmed for Jackson. A horrible, wounding fact. The people of this facility, and Major Victor Bradshaw especially, were hell bent on using this situation for one end: the destruction of Tarka. It was as if the threat of the Zeneethians was once again a myth. Every conversation he overheard was about how this would help them win the next war with ease.

  Were they all blind? Were they stupid? Did they think that the Zeneethians would sit back and let them manufacture stolen weaponry en masse? Had the Major forgotten Max’s threats?

  Though Jackson riled against it, he still understood what was happening here. The Zeneethians were an untested, previously unknown, and unquantified threat. The Tarkans were not. In the mind of every Ashkan, they were the greatest monsters to have ever existed. They were the real enemy, because they were the only enemies his people had ever known.

  Presumably the Major believed that once they annihilated the Tarkans, they could then prepare for whatever threat Zeneethia would bring. In his mind it was smartest to complete the easiest task first.

  This was all about revenge.

  Jackson fought to keep his feelings and misgivings to himself. As he regained the Major’s trust, he did nothing to jeopardize his situation. Though he desperately wanted to see Ki, he did only what he was told until finally one morning the Major ordered him to help with reverse engineering the Zeneethian gun.

  It felt alien to shrug into a standard white lab coat and join the other scientists. They were working in a huge stone hall that had been converted into a lab. It had wide steps leading down to it from a higher, mezzanine level and a bank of windows filled one wall. They offered a constant view of the tossing ocean beyond. Avictus Island, it seemed, was assaulted by the weather every day. Constant high winds battled the walls around the compound, and hardly an hour went by without a bank of clouds racing overhead.

  Trying to keep to himself, Jackson set to work. He was handed a task to image the chamber of the gun, though he doubted he’d get far. They could copy every single section, down to the circuits and the screws, but they’d never be able to create another of those guns. They simply did not have the power source.

  The levitation device. That latticed dust that made it run. The same substance Ki could use to float.

  Without it, any gun they made would be useless.

  He did not share this with any of his colleagues. He simply bided his time, observing the lab around him.

  Jackson understood he had to make a decision. An impossibly hard one. Soon he would have to choose between blind loyalty and informed betrayal. He could either go along with the Major and his men, or he could do the right thing.

  Leaving the gun and Ki here would only lead to war, either with the Tarkans or with the Zeneethians as they came to claim their property. Despite the Major’s best attempts to hide away on this island, eventually news of what he was doing here would spread. The second it did, the very moment the Zeneethians heard that Ki was still alive, they would descend.

  There was only one thing to do. It made Jackson sick to his stomach to consider it, but the more he tried to push it away, the more it hounded him.

  He had to break her out of here.

  It was that or death.

  Before his shift in the lab was over, he received orders to meet the Major. As Jackson walked up the dusty, worn steps to the mezzanine level, he was sure to glance behind him one last time. He logged in his memory the exact layout of the place. The number of guards, the position of the exits, the height of the windows, and of course the location of the gun.

  Then he followed the Major like a good, loyal soldier should.