I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (75 page)

I turn at the sound of Irin’s voice, but there’s no one there.

“Junco?”

I whirl again, this time to look for Moju. “Guys?”

Nothing.

“Guys? Moju? Irin? Are you here?”

And then the world… wavers. Shimmers. Blinks. Skips. Shudders.

“Guys?” The ground begins to tremble and my heart beats faster. “Are you here?”

The sucking feeling is back, the one where I feel like I’m being pulled by some invisible force, like when I was inside the blackness of the Pillar. “Guys? Is this you?” I try to walk away, back into the house, or down the porch steps to the dock, but my feet are stuck. I can’t move. I struggle harder, my heart rate picking up beats like crazy, my skin suddenly wet with sweat.

“Guys!” I call out, trying my best not to panic. “Help!” And then the force… sucks.

It sucks me down, and my lower body begins to sink through the wood slats of the porch. I’m translucent as I pass though the decking, and then my feet enter the dirt-covered ground.

“No! No, no, no!” I grab onto some tree roots sticking up our of the soil and then…

Everything disappears.

I’m in the dark and it’s pulling me.

My mind races with insanity, a jumbled mess filled with hate, and sadness, and anguish, and desperation, and revenge, and I become her again.

That other Junco.

Not this Junco. This Junco is normal. Is capable of love and friendship, and loyalty.

But that Junco.

She is evil.

And I am her.

The sucking feeling increases and my hate and anger grows with each passing fraction. It fills me, pouring into me, all the death I’ve caused, all the jobs completed without any remorse or emotion. All the training. All the raging prairie lions, and night dogs, and guns, and knife throwing. All the cave tests, and the mutants, and the procedures at the Stag Camp where my body was altered. All the emptiness and loneliness, and endless, endless,
endless
fucking days of self-loathing and confusion.

I explode into a shower of white light, pain radiating out from my core, until I feel like I’m going to lose my mind for good and never make it back.

I cry as my pieces float away into the nothing. The tears flow down my cheeks. “I don’t want to be her anymore,” I whisper to no one. I am alone, so I whisper to no one.

“Junco?”

“Irin! Where are you?” I have no eyes now. I’m pieces. I’m shattered. I’m how I should’ve been the last time I was here. Just nothing. I have no body, I have nothing.

“Junco! Come back!”

I can’t
, I say. But I can’t say it, because now I have no mouth. I have no voice. I have no say in anything.

“That’s not true, Junco.”

Inanna! You bitch! I will kill you!

“OK, I’ve had enough.”

And just as she says those words the shudder is back. The skip, the blink, the shimmer, the wave.

Something slams into me and the pain, beautiful pain, rockets through my whole body.

I want the world to go black, but it won’t. Because it’s white. I’m in that white place again.

“Let’s try this again,
daughter
.”

I’m lying face down on a hard cold floor, something like polished white marble. My arms flail out, reaching, searching for something to ground me to this reality when my fingers bump into something hard and cold.

Stone.

I wrap my palm around it.

“Flick it on, Junco. Fight me again if you want, but I assure you—I’ve already adapted to this reality. I will win, I will win easily, and we don’t have the time to fuck around with your childish revenge schemes. So pick that weapon up, flick it on, and let’s get this over with if that’s what you need.”

I roll over and look up.

White.

I tip my head to my right.

White.

To the left.

Yellow.

That fucking bitch.

I’m on my feet in an instant, my SEAR knife out, high ready stance. “You!”

She looks down at her manicured fingernails. “Let me know when you’re reasonable. I can wait.”

I close my eyes, suddenly very tired, then power down my knife and slip it under my shirt where it docks on my body with a soft sucking sound. “What do you want? Why do you do this to me? You are nothing but an evil, evil bitch!”

She yawns. “Yes, yes, yes. Anything else? Just get it all out, Junco. We’re on a strict time schedule and you’ve already wasted three days. While you’ve been vacationing in the Pillar, flirting with Isten and sleeping off your self-imposed insanity, everyone else has been working. Lucan is gone, you know. He’s on trial as we speak and you’re thinking about revenge? Really? I thought the two of you were close. Didn’t you tell me that? He loves you?”

“He does love me,” I say quickly. “He loves me.”

She rubs her nails on her yellow gown like she’s got nothing better to do than think about her manicure. “And you him?”

“Yes.”

She stops her pretenses and looks at me hard. Her eyes are blue, too, her hair golden like mine. Her shape is different. She is very tall, and strong-looking. She has her weapons on her, those arrow things, and her SEAR is in her palm. It’s white, I see now. Not blue like mine. “Then prove it. Stop thinking about yourself and think about him. He does love you, I suppose. In his own way. This whole scheme depends on your actions, Junco. And I expect your compliance.”

“You stole me,” I whisper. “You stole me away. You took my wings. You tortured me.”

“It was necessary, Junco.” She eyes me coldly, like I’m data. Like I’m nothing but a result one gets after a science experiment.

“It hurt,” I reply.

She shrugs. “It was necessary. You understand these words, Junco? It was necessary. When you killed the Peaks mayor—which, by the way, I had no idea was for securing that extra weapon you showed up with. Well done. Your secret-keeping is exceptional because I never—”

“Shut. The fuck. Up.”

She stares at me.

“Just shut the fuck up. I can’t take it anymore. Isten says I have to leave the Pillar, and since you’re here and Sera is gone”—I leave out HOUSE because maybe she knows about her and maybe she doesn’t, but our rule has always been deny, deny, deny. Tier was the only person I ever trusted with that info, Sera learned about her by default—“I can only assume you’re my ticket out. So get on with it.”

She smiles like she’s won. But she hasn’t. I’m not done yet, she’ll see. “You will activate your Pillar, the Halo will form, and we will leave together, go to Peak City, and await the arrival of the High Order and Lucan. There you will complete your mission. I have a little surprise for the one responsible for stranding me here on this rock of a world for all this time.”

“And Lucan?”

She shrugs. “I’ll deal with him after.”

“But—this is supposed to be his end? We’re supposed to be punished? Dissipated, for real,” I add, since I obviously fucked that whole thing up doing it inside a Pillar. “And then… what?”

She smiles. “You know, your perception of what’s going on here is skewed.”

My eyes narrow. “Is that right?”

“Your hate for me is unreasonable. I’ve done all this to save you, Junco. I am the one who will save you. I am the one with the brilliant plot, I am the one with the surprise at the end.”

“Well, you have a funny way of saving me. You stole my wings!”

“You’re not avian, Junco. You are High Order. Wings are temporary and unnecessary. Tell me you were attached to them in some way and I’ll apologize,” she says lifting her head and one shoulder at the same time in defiance to my accusations. “But if you take a good hard look at it, you’ll realize you never even know what to do with them. They’re not part of you, Junco. They’re like hair. Something to be cut off.”

My whole body shivers.

“Like hair,” she repeats.

And before I can stop them, I’ve reached back to my shoulder blade and slipped my fingers in under the neck of my shirt. The bumps are still tender, the skin still feels bruised. I bet if I looked in a mirror it would be discolored. Cut off like
hair
.

I don’t even know where to go with that and it takes me several seconds of staring at her mouth to realize she’s still fucking talking about useless appendages. How her morph went, how I was lucky one of those fucking High Order things didn’t get here and find me with wings, because believe her, the way they lop them off can be cruel.

I shiver again.

And all of a sudden I need to get out of here. I don’t care if she keeps this Pillar, I don’t care if she’s on the wrong side, I do not care one fucking shit about any of this. I just need to get the fuck away from this monster.

“Take me back, I’m ready. Tell me what to do, to get this Pillar thing going. What do I do?”

“First of all, I need that knife.” She nods down to my stomach.

“Like hell,” I practically snort.

And then she pulls out another knife from the folds of her yellow gown. And I know immediately. Because that one is vibrating with a frequency that calls my name. It hums
Junco
. It sings to me with a soothing melody that reminds me of the piano. “Give that to me,” I demand.

She tosses it in the air and I catch it, powering it up before my arm completes the arc.

My SEAR.

I admit, most of all that nastiness I was just lamenting about is gone. This weapon is me and I am the weapon. “I am the weapon,” I whisper out loud.

“No, Junco. You are not the weapon. You are
Aesin’s
soldier.”

“Who the fuck is Aesin?”

“And Tier,” she continues, ignoring my question, “is Lucan’s weapon.”

I think about this for a moment. Like it should mean something, something very important. Of course I knew Tier was Lucan’s weapon. It’s no secret that Tier is Lucan’s number one. Lucan has hinted at this before.

“Now, you have your true SEAR, the one that’s for ending Lucan, happy?”

I look down at my SEAR, power it down, remove the other knife, and replace my weapon on the dock. This time my whole body hums with its placement. Was it always like this? Or is it more pronounced since it’s been missing for so long? I hold up the spare SEAR in my hand. “Why do you need this?”

Her expression reads like… indulgence. Like I’m some baby that needs to be cooed to in order to sit still for a shot at the clinic or something. “You will see very soon. But I must say, the forethought that went into securing this weapon, Junco…” She shakes her head a little. “It’s astonishing. And with no training, either. How long ago was this made?”

I blink. And then count. “Five years?”

“I’m stunned! Happy, do not misunderstand, I’m thrilled because I always planned on using Gideon’s knife, but this is even better. You’ve been carrying it, it’s got your imprint on it. It’s… you. And yet benign at the same time. Simply brilliant. Your farsight is spectacular for having zero preparation and training.”

I’m not sure what this means. “I—” I what? I have no explanation for this really. I was so compelled to secure a spare SEAR knife for Gid and I back then, I killed the Peak City mayor in cold blood and never had a fraction of remorse. What must Aren have thought of me that morning? When I came home and told him, so nonchalantly, that I’d just killed a very important politician because I wanted a weapon.

I am truly one very sick bitch.

“Here, take it. I don’t want it.” I step forward and she
almost
steps back. Almost. But she catches herself at the very last possible moment and holds her ground. Our fingertips brush against each other when she reaches for my spare knife.

There is no spark of connection. No electricity, no warmth. Nothing. Just cold skin against cold skin.

We are both yellow and we are both cold.

When I look up at her face she’s got a wary expression. “What?” I ask.

“You’re ready to finish this?”

“You gonna tell me what my job is?”

“No, you report to Gideon. I’m not to discuss any of it. My role, once you’re removed from here, is complete. I have placed all my pieces on the game board. I have endured thousands of years of punishment on this planet for
him
. I have completed my mission. I am just a spectator, Junco. I am at the mercy of the winner now, whomever that may be.”

I think about this for a few seconds, not sure if it’s significant, not sure I need to know, not sure I want to know. “OK, then let’s go.”

“One thing,” she says as she places a hand on my shoulder. Once again, her touch is sterile and cold. “You will stay by my side as we engage the pillar and form the Halo and then we will exit together.”

I put on my most serious and solemn look and nod my head. “OK, sure.”

She smiles with satisfaction and then grabs my hands and closes her eyes. So she totally misses the smirk that went with my promise.