The imperial placed his palms on the table and hung his head.
Tayel smirked. “Guess your idea wasn’t so great after all.”
Jace gave her a reproachful glance.
The man sighed. “Bet this is real funny to you.”
“Kind of sad actually,” she said.
All the fight had been sucked out of him, leaving him sort of deflated-looking. She sighed. Maybe it was her grief, or the satisfaction of at least getting a snide remark in, or maybe it was Jace’s persistent, frustrated stare, but she did sort of feel bad for the guy. He was far away from home. Stuck, just like her, and she was being just as unpleasant as he’d been.
“Sorry,” she told him. “This isn’t my day, being a refugee and all. I hope stuff works out for you.”
“I hope so, too,” Jace said.
“Thanks.” The imperial looked them both over, and held out his left hand. “I’m Fehn.”
Tayel wasn’t sure if she should have been more taken aback by his attitude change or the hand of choice. She had never shaken hands with her left before. It just wasn’t customary. Maybe it was an empire thing, but she performed the quick switch against her instincts.
“Tayel,” she said hesitantly.
Jace shook his hand next. “My name’s Jace.”
“I’m sorry about before,” Fehn said. “This isn’t exactly my day, either.”
His station’s attendant turned from a conversation with the guard behind the desk. “Hurry up please. There’s a line.”
“Sorry,” Jace said. “Maybe we’ll see you around.”
Fehn nodded. “Maybe.”
Tayel rose her hand in farewell. Jace lined up behind her, but she took one step away from the station and stopped still as a statue. In the next line over, arms crossed and glaring right at her was the woman in the Sinosian clothes.
Chapter 5
Forty million miles away from Elsha and drifting through space within the Rokkir’s Floating Isle, Ruxbane closed his colleague’s report. Everything was on schedule. The invasion couldn’t be more perfect, but there existed another problem. He tossed the tablet aside and clicked to the center screen on his desktop monitors, where a long list of names grew in real time as the seconds ticked by. Pride burned inside him at how successfully the Elshan camps were filling up with those witless refugees, but fear was there, too. If none of them had the answer to his problem… no. That wasn’t worth thinking about. Not yet.
He narrowed the names down to human registrants. It didn’t shorten the list as much as he’d hoped. A lot of work needed to be done. Too much work needed to be done. He scrolled through a few names and sighed.
“Ruxbane?” Jin’s voice carried from the entrance to the lab.
“Over here,” Ruxbane called back.
He turned off the monitor. That he had an illness was secret to no one, but he covered up the gruesome details where he could. He didn’t make a habit of letting anyone in. It was for their own good.
Jin stepped into view looking the same as she had for hundreds of years. Her slender frame was accented by tight woven fabric, her four arms crossed as two pairs across her chest, and her bald head cocked to the side. Aging in appearance was not an issue for the Rokkir, who could shape their native form as they wished. Even so, she maintained her appearance with more enthusiasm than most.
Ruxbane shifted his gaze away from her gentle smile. “Did you come here to stare or is there some relevance to your visit?”
Her face lost its glow. “Today’s shipment of blood samples from Elshan refugees came in an hour ago. I’ve inventoried them as you asked.” She looked at the monitors behind him. “Are you sure you want to destroy all the non-human samples? There are other uses, you know.”
“If you’re the one finding use for them, then keep and utilize them as you desire. Otherwise, yes, I’m sure. Keep only the human blood and keep them in order.” The pinch of a headache nagged him.
Her soft eyes narrowed as he rubbed his temples.
“What?” he demanded.
“Have you thought about telling anyone exactly what’s going on with you?”
“I’ve told my physician.”
She rolled her eyes. “Other than him, who has to know.”
The pain intensified. “I have thought about it, and it’s not a good idea. My personal developments aren’t what’s important right now.”
“I can think of an argument against that. It’s gotten worse, hasn’t it?”
He stayed quiet for too long.
She rose her voice. “I just want to help you.”
“I don’t want your help.”
He wanted to be left alone. Taking Modnik, taking the Igador system — those things were important. His people’s future rested on a successful takeover.
His headache dulled, and a familiar heat in the front of his skull surfaced. His throat tightened. Then again — the heat burned — this was important, too. In the next few days even he had precious little time to work on the tasks at hand. He pressed his palm to the back of his neck as the sensation moved there.
“Ruxbane?” Jin stepped forward.
If he did let people help, if he did let people in, too much time would be lost from their takeover. It wouldn’t be worth it. The heat filled his brain, trickled down through his spinal cord. He remembered the list of human refugees. There were thousands of them. Finding the gene which could help him wouldn’t be hard with Rokkir technology, but deciphering what to do with it? His hand twitched with a fiery, tingling sensation. It might not even exist in that population.
He breathed in.
“Ruxbane.” Jin’s voice was an echo, a dull ache against his ears. Her hand touched his face, smoothed over the unshaved stubble encircling his mouth.
He breathed out.
Like a flame to gunpowder he exploded. His hands rocketed up to shove her away and a primal growl escaped him. He would kill her. Torture first. He pulled the aether to him, the dark substance forming a wider and wider diameter around his clenched fist while he stomped toward her, her frightened face as she backed away soliciting a sneer. He forced his palm outward, and the small gathering of aether knocked her back. She slid across the floor, but he kept after her. Her mouth moved and she held her hands above her head, but he heard nothing. Felt nothing. He gathered more aether to his fist and the darkness wavered around him like an electric storm.
Stop, Ruxbane pleaded with himself. The heat fluctuated. The gathered force of aether around him smelled like damp Aloman dark stone. If unleashed, it would surely kill Jin. He stared at her through eyes he no longer believed were his own. He was not this primal beast — he couldn’t be, but the heat demanded he do otherwise. It felt good to do things like this — to harm, to kill. The aether grew stronger around him as he prepared to fire it. No!
“Go,” he sputtered. He took a long step back and grimaced at the tremor of holding too much power for too long.
Jin stood and ran. Attack! the heat screeched, though it wasn’t a voice so much as an urge — the excitement of the hunt, of the kill. He obeyed and directed the aether — but not at Jin. He fired the surge of darkness into the empty space of the lab. The cloud cleaved through a table, exploding the beakers, tubes, and equipment along the way. It crashed into the wall on the other side of the lab and sent ripples of energy through the entire room.
Ruxbane fell to the ground, his breath sucking in and pushing out in shallow, painful gulps. He fought the sensation — that miserable heat.
He would never admit to anyone, ever, that he cried then. Jin had vanished, and his despair drove him to tormenting thoughts. Thoughts that this would never go away, thoughts that he was failing his people. But the thought that tormented him most was that he had almost hurt Jin. No, he had hurt Jin.