The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (36 page)

Not Everything Lost is Gone Forever

Saturday, December 29th

TRAVIS

F
ifteen frakking blocks. The Kakodemoss
facility was less than fifteen city blocks from The Embassy. To know they were so close this whole time made my stomach churn. That, and the fact that so much evil had come from a nondescript seven-story gray building.

I looked at the clock in the right bottom corner of my monitor. We had been at this for about twenty-four hours and we still weren’t any closer to coming up with a plan that wasn’t going to get most of us killed in the process. Storm the facility. Dead. Cut the power to disable the doors and cameras and probably alert the Kakodemoss. Dead. There had to be a way to get our people in there that wouldn’t get them slaughtered. I just had absolutely no frakking clue what it was, and we were running out of time.

I ran my hands down my face, groaning in exhaustion.
Gods, it’s already eleven o’clock.
Then I froze as I looked at the date just below the clock on my screen.

12/29

I sat up quickly. “Akiko, is it really the twenty-ninth?”

“Last time I checked,” Akiko answered with disinterest, apparently too exhausted for sarcasm.

I just burst out laughing. I had it—a way to do this without us being massacred. Akiko just looked up at me like she was afraid I might have finally cracked. “Travis, are you
okay
?”

“It’s perfect,” I said, still unable to get my hysterical laughter under control.

“
What’s
perfect?”

I turned to her with a manic, sleep-deprived grin plastered across my face. “I know how we are going to get into the facility without dying!”

“Travis, what are you going to do?” Akiko asked uneasily.

“I’m going to rig the whole section of the city surrounding the Kakodemoss facility to blow the power grid at midnight on New Year’s.”

Akiko just blinked at me. “What?”

“Just think about it, with all the parties raging that night, the Kakodemoss won’t suspect us to be up to anything.
Especially
if we’re throwing our own Astari Tahara celebration at The Embassy.”

Akiko just gaped at me before stating, “You know something, you really are just a step away from being a menace to society.”

“People have been telling me
that
for years,” I said with a slightly unhinged grin before I raced out the door.

AKU

I
opened my eyes. My head
was pounding, and I didn’t know how long I had been out. It could have been moments, or days. I blinked my eyes a few times, and realized I was laying on the floor of my room. The cold linoleum pressed to my cheek. And then I noticed something carved into the wall under my utilitarian twin bed.

8+6=14

And below that familiar message was something new.

Don’t forget who you are.

Who… I—? A blinding surge of pain like a lightning strike ripped through my mind, and I clutched my head between my hands, curling into a ball. It hurt so bad, worse than anything I had ever felt in my life. So painful I saw black, and then white, and then red.

Let me out!
a voice in my head screamed. A voice that sounded like my own.

The pain surged again, and I curled tighter into a fetal position. I was going to be sick. I held my body rigid, trying to fight against the pain. But it was too much—much too much. And finally it won out. I let go in a tormented whimper and gave in to the pain. And everything went black.

PATRICK

I
heard a
whooshing
sound that
got progressively louder. And a few moments after that, I realized that it was my own heartbeat I was hearing.

I sat up slowly—breathing hard, black dots still flashing across my eyes. I rubbed the back of my skull as I looked around the small room I was in. There was something unsettlingly familiar about it, which probably meant—

Aku?
I felt a little stupid calling out within my own head to myself, but being alone would be worse.

Yes?
Aku replied uncertainly.

Where are we?
Maybe I should have said
where am I
, but it just felt too weird. Really this whole thing was strange enough as it was.

We are in our room at the Demoss facility
, he answered in a voice that sounded unbelievably tired.

I looked around the tiny room in alarm.
Seriously?

Unfortunately
, he replied, not sounding any more happy about it than I was.

Do you know how to get out?
I asked, the panic running rampant through my body.

He paused for a very long moment. So long I thought that maybe he had been a figment of my pain-addled imagination.
Maybe.

So how do we get out?
I asked as I looked down at what I was wearing. White exercise pants, a white and black raglan long-sleeved shirt, simple white shoes, and long white gloves. Same as what Chan-rin had been wearing when she ran into me at The Embassy, except for the gloves.

We need someone to open the doors.

I looked away from the white gloves and at the door to my cell skeptically.
And how do you suppose we do that? Or do you have a magic skeleton key lying around somewhere that I don’t know about?

There was a short pause and I might have been mistaken, but I was fairly certain Aku was laughing.

TRAVIS

I
pulled up to the gate
in a ridiculously good mood considering Parker still wasn’t answering my calls, and my little brother was being held captive and experimented on in a Kakodemoss facility. Probably mainly due to the fact that I always got a bit of a high from solving a complicated problem. Or the fact that I had had next to no sleep since Christmas Eve.

As the Protectorate officer walked out of the gate house and up to my Porsche, I rolled down my window.

“Director Centrina Viliyata,” the Protectorate breathed, a bit taken aback.

“Is the Chancellarius here?” I asked as I beat a cheerful rhythm on my steering wheel.

“Yes,” he replied, looking a bit uneasy at the huge grin on my face. “He, Grand High Councilor Vallen, and Director Kirihara are inside.”

“Perfect.”

The Protectorate just continued to stand there.

“Were you going to let me in?” I asked as I stopped drumming, and arched an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, uh, right away, Sir.”

I took the stairs two at a time and darted down the hallway until I was just outside Alex’s study. Then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pushed the door open.

The three of them—Alex, Roy, and Kiskei—all turned to look at me in alarm. The concerned look on their faces not disappearing when they noticed the large grin on my face, and the wild look in my eyes.

“I figured out a way to rescue them without us all winding up dead,” I informed them excitedly.

Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh,
really
?”

“Yep,” I replied, my grin getting even larger if that was possible. “I need you to throw the biggest Astari Tahara celebration Karalia has ever seen.”

As I finished explaining my plan, Alex, Roy, and Kiskei just stared at me, their mouths hanging open.

“When I asked you to figure out a way to get our people in, this was
not
what I had in mind,” Kiskei said as he ran his hand across the back of his neck.

“Well I—”

“This is far better,” he said with a grin.

Alex stood abruptly, and started pacing his study. He stopped, and held up his finger like he was going to say something. But instead he looked back down, and continued pacing. Then he stopped again, his hands coming up to his mouth. He turned quickly, his eyes wide, and slowly lowered his hands. “Travis, if this works, I’m going to have to think up a new honor to award you.”

“Please, don’t. I can’t even really manage the one I’ve got,” I sighed with exhaustion. Anytime I tried to explain just how heavily the honor weighed on me, no one except Nualla seemed to get it.

“Besides, there’s only one honor I want, and you can’t give it to me,” I mumbled as I looked away from him. Fingering the small piece of circular metal, and chain in my coat pocket.

“What?” Alex asked in confusion.

“Never mind,” I said with a sigh as I looked back at them. “Look, do you mind if I make use of that guest room again? I’ve been up for over thirty-six hours straight, and I’m not positive that I could make it back home without causing an accident.”

“Of course.”

“That’s probably also my cue to go. I have to prep the Amurai for the amended mission. And some of them are not going to be too happy about it,” Kiskei announced as he stood.

He walked over to Alex and gave him a hug, whispering something to him as he did. Then he pulled away, and looked over in my direction. “Keep your phone close, I may need you to answer a few questions.”

“At least give me six hours, that’s all I’m asking,” I groaned.

“I can do six, more might be pushing it,” he said, a small crooked grin tugged at his lips before he walked out of the room.

I followed Kiskei out the door shortly after that, on my way to some much-needed sleep.

“Travis—” Alex called out when I had made it halfway down the hall. I stopped, and turned to look at him. “Now that you know the whole story, do you understand why I always had to keep you at a distance?”

I did. Really I did. I had always been so bitter about growing up in the orphanage. But now that I knew the truth, I finally understood why it had been necessary. It had been to keep them safe. To keep
me
safe.

I nodded.

“And…” Alex looked away for a moment before looking back at me. “I want you to know that no matter what happens, you are part of our family, now and always.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and nodded again.

We stood there silently in the hallway for a long time before I asked something I hadn’t ever had the courage to bring up before. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? That I look like him.”

Alex smiled at me weakly. “Only a little,” he admitted and then continued, “His hair was longer.”

I nodded again, and turned to go.

“But it also makes me glad.”

“Glad?” I asked, turning back toward Alex.

He nodded. “That even though your eyes are Mi’s, I can still see so much of Josh in you. And it reminds me that not everything lost is gone forever.”

Count Down till Midnight

Monday, December 31st and Tuesday, January 1st

TRAVIS

I
leaned against the wall, pretending
to sip my cider, and tried to look “festive.” It was really surreal standing among the masses of people decked out in Astari Taharan formal wear as modern music played with traditional instruments filled the huge banquet hall, knowing that any moment now we were going to have to execute a rescue plan I had designed. I should have felt like James Bond. Instead I just felt sick to my stomach with anxious, flesh-eating butterflies.

“You actually wore it,” Nualla said with a bit of surprise coating her voice as she came to stand next to me.

I looked down at the Medal of Valor that hung on its blue grosgrain ribbon around my neck. I hadn’t wanted to wear it, but it would have been more than dishonorable not to.

As I looked back up at her, the
déjà vu
of the moment hit me full force. Nualla was wearing a deep, midnight-blue dress that blended to a lighter blue at the bottom like drifts of fog sliding over the nighttime city skyline. Silver beads flowing down the dress in lines like falling stars—or tears.

It was the same dress she had worn last year for Astari Tahara, I was certain of it. Because the moment I had seen her in it was one I would never forget. Because it was the night I had almost proposed to her. Right then and there in the middle of hundreds of people. And that moment colliding with this one threw me off balance in such a way that I almost began to believe that this was a dream. But the absence of those overwhelming feelings for her that had been my constant companion for years made me certain that it wasn’t. It was startling how much our lives had changed in the last year. So much so that they were nearly unrecognizable. That the Travis and Nualla we had been less than twelve months ago were somewhere lost and faraway.

I shrugged, trying to push away the ghosts of the past. “The gods felt like honoring me, and I felt like not pissing them off.”

Nualla looked at me with a hint of a real smile that disappeared nearly as fast. Like clouds drifting across the moon.

“Are you…are you nervous?” she asked in a quiet voice as she leaned against the wall beside me. The beads of her crown clacking into each other with the movement.

Nualla, along with Loraly and Skye, had been told what we were going to do tonight. That we were planning to cut the power, break into the Kakodemoss facility, and rescue Patrick and Nikki. But we hadn’t told them the details, where the facility was, or anything about what had been done to Patrick and Nikki. One, so they would be believably surprised when it happened. And two, because the things the Kakodemoss had done to them…well, it was something you could never forget once you knew.

“As hell,” I admitted before I pretended to take a sip of my cider. Normally, in the given social situation I would have been downing the stuff like water, but tonight… Tonight I needed to be ready for anything to go wrong, because it probably would.

Nualla looked up at me, her eyes glassy and threatening tears. I reached my hand out toward her, and hooked my pinky around hers. “We’ll bring them home—
both
of them,” I promised, even if I’d have to die to make it so.

Nualla squeezed my pinky tighter. “You better.”

NUALLA

I
pressed my fist into my
teeth, and held in a sob as I heard someone else enter the bathroom. I should have been completely alone here. I had especially chosen to come here because it was so far from the party. So far that no one would wander in accidentally and hear me crying. But apparently I was wrong.

I had been okay. Well, as “okay” as anyone
could
be with their husband and cousin being held in a Kakodemoss facility and probably being experimented on. But then some stupid person had asked where Patrick was. And then it was all I could do to get somewhere private before I broke down.

The intruder entered the stall next to mine and I held my breath, rethinking my decision to separate myself from everyone. I raised my hands up as silently as I could, and wrapped my fingers around the metal bars of my crown, careful not to bump any of the beads. My crown wasn’t weapon sharp, but it was better than nothing. But then I heard the distinct sound of a garment bag being zipped open, and then a moment later a sparkly dress hit the floor.

I looked on in rising confusion as the person in the stall next to me slipped on tight black pants, and sleek, sturdy flat-soled boots like the ones the Protectorate wore. Maybe it was a female officer preparing for a late shift? But if that was true, why wasn’t she using the Protectorate locker room?

I stood statue-still as she continued to change outfits. And several minutes later, she pulled the sparkly dress from the floor and rezipped the garment bag.

Her stall door banged open, and black boots moved with cat-like silence across the stone floor to the wall of sinks. My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I slowly opened my stall door, peering out.

A perfect replica of myself stood in front of the long row of sinks and mirrors. She pulled her black and lapis-blue streaked hair into a ponytail, a long black ribbon in her mouth. As she held the fistful of hair in one hand and pulled the ribbon from her mouth with the other, Kira finally noticed me watching her. She paused for only a second before she pulled the black ribbon tight.

Kira was dressed from head to toe in a Protectorate uniform. Flat-soled, black knee-high boots, tight black pants, a black kimono top, and long black undersleeves, the unusual sheen of the SteelSilk fabric making the outfit look strangely beautiful on her. But it was the parts that weren’t Protectorate standard issue—the wide hood, the black obi sash around her waist, and the cuirass adorned with an intricately embroidered dark gray lotus on it—that reminded me immediately of—

“You’re an Amurai,” I blurted out in shock. But of course she was, and of course she was one of the ones going on the rescue mission tonight. Because she was the only one who had been there before. Because
she
had been one of the Kakodemoss’ test subjects.

Completely ignoring me, Kira flipped the large hood over her head and reached for the garment bag. Flinging it over her arm, she turned and started toward the bathroom door without acknowledging me whatsoever.

I rushed quickly forward, and grabbed her wrist. She whipped back toward me, and glared at me with angry, guarded eyes. “What?” she spat out, her chin jerking up a tiny bit as she said it.

I looked down at our hands, running my teeth over my bottom lip, and then I looked back up at her. “Please, bring him home.”

Kira’s expression seemed to soften and harden at the same time, and I released my hold on her wrist. “I will do my best, Arius.”

She started toward the exit again and I called out, “Nualla.”

“What?” Kira said, turning back to look at me.

“Please, call me Nualla,” I clarified.

Kira looked at me for one silent moment before she nodded. “Okay, Nualla.”

TRAVIS

I
was going to do it.
I was going to ask her, and I didn’t care if everyone and the gods was staring at me while I did it.

Without actually thinking about it, I downed the glass of cider I had been pretending to drink all night, and started toward Parker. She and Skye were about a hundred feet away, talking to a few Karalian officials and trying their best to seem cheerful. But I only made it about ten or fifteen feet when I felt someone tugging on the sleeve of my Astari Tahara
haori
. I looked back and was startled to see Chan-rin standing there.

“Chan-rin! What are you doing
here
?” Ms. Cowens had taken the children back to the orphanage over twenty minutes ago, and Chan-rin had been among them.

She didn’t answer, just handed me a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” I asked as I looked down at the folded slip of paper.

“Key,” she answered.

“A key?” I repeated in confusion.

“For the doors.”

“What doors?” I asked with growing concern.

Chan-rin looked terrified, but also very determined. “The doors in the bad place.”

My heart shuddered and skipped a beat. It was a trap—a safe guard. The Kakodemoss had rigged the building to be impenetrable even if the power was cut. Of course they had. If we had gone forward with the plan they still would have been alerted—we all would still have died.

I swallowed hard. “Chan-rin, where did you get this?”

“From Aku,” she replied as she stared up at me with large eyes.

“Is this how you escaped?” I asked as I held up the folded piece of paper. It was stupid, we had asked her so many things about where she had come from, and what it was like there. But as far as I knew no one had asked her
how
she had escaped.

Chan-rin nodded.

“Thank you for warning us. They will have changed the code since then, so this is useless now, but thank you for telling me. Now at least I won’t be sending them all to their death.”

Chan-rin furrowed her brow. “Aku did not give this to Chan-rin before.”

“What?”

“Aku gave this to Chan-rin and Chan-rin came here to Big-Big Brother.”

I froze, my heart screeching to a halt. “You can still talk to Aku?”

Chan-rin nodded. “Chan-rin has to…concentrate, but Chan-rin can hear Aku, if Aku is very loud.”

I just looked at her, and then at the passcode on the paper, then back toward where I had been going. Parker was nowhere to be seen, but Skye was still there.

“Chan-rin, I need you to wait right here.”

“Ah, Director Centrina Viliyata,” Jordan Vass, one of the council members on the new Grand Council, said with a slight bow of his head.

“Pardon me, but I need to borrow Kyria Skye for a moment,” I replied with what I hoped was a reassuring smile plastered on my face.

“Yes, of course,” Councilor Vass said with a grin before he turned to an exotic woman in a brilliant blue
sari
standing next him and answered her question in Daemotic.

Skye let me lead her a short distance away before she asked in a low voice, “What do you need, Travis?” Then she looked like she was about to have a heart attack. “Oh gods, has something happened?”

“No, not yet,” I said quickly before she jumped to any conclusions.

“Then what—?”

“I need you to watch Chan-rin for me.”

Skye blinked at me in confusion. “What?”

“Please, all you have to do is keep her with you until this is all over,” I said, darting a glance at the large clock on the wall across from us before I looked back at her. It was almost time for us to head out.

Skye looked over at Chan-rin where she sat at a table folding silver strips of paper into stars.

“It will
really
help me concentrate if I don’t have to be worrying about her, too.”

Skye looked back at me, and nodded once. And then she did one of the last things I was expecting—she threw her arms around me and hugged me fiercely. “You bring them home,” she whispered, nearly in tears, into my ear.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure they do,” I promised.

Skye squeezed me a little tighter. “And don’t do something stupid to get yourself killed in the process.” It was such a motherly thing to say that it stung just a bit.

“I’ll do my best,” I said around the lump in my throat.

Skye pulled away, and then narrowed her eyes at me. “And there’s one more thing.”

“Which is?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

“If you don’t ask that girl to marry you, I will never forgive you.”

I just blinked at her. “What?”

Skye shifted her eyes to either side before she looked back at me. “I know she’s pregnant, and I was under the assumption that it was
yours
.”

I couldn’t help it as my jaw fell open. “How did you—?”

Skye gave me a don’t-be-stupid look.

“Right…of course…um, I was already planning on it,” I babbled as my hand went unconsciously toward the ring in my
haori
pocket. “There just hasn’t been a good time to…”

Skye let out an exhausted sigh, and looked off across the dance floor. “There
never
is. But a bad time is better than never getting a chance to.”

“Where’s your uniform?” I asked Kiskei as I followed him into the elevator on our way down to the garage level. Though I had spent every spare moment I had looking for Parker after I talked to Skye, I hadn’t found her before Kiskei found me.