CHANGELING: Book Two in the Weaver Series Read online

  Immediately I stabilized.

  “I am not without resources. The Elders will be told of this. No one can know of your ability to circumvent security measures. Technically we should be trapped in the lab without Pez to accompany us, so we must wait until The Elders send another escort. Most likely they will tell Tal her son has been taken. We will be told our help is not required. Stay calm. I have a plan.”

  Then he blinked out.

  I drifted for a moment gathering my thoughts. The Bindao was too new for me to feel confident in it. Yes, we were attached, but Mez was a faint whisper of existence, as if he were a satellite transmission that had been knocked out by a solar flare. The rebels were doing something to interrupt the signal. We should be able to call him to us but I knew the connection had to be stronger. Plus, if we tried now and it worked the secret about our abilities would be out. It was still tempting nonetheless.

  Cass popped into being beside me.

  “Kal says get your ass back and stop trying to think of ways to rescue Mez on your own, Silver.”

  “He really said ass, huh?”

  “Yeah you’re right, that was me because you’re being an asshole. Let’s get back and do this with Kal, who has a way better shot at succeeding than we do all by ourselves. Quit being stupid, Stupid.”

  “Wow, spank you very much, Cass.”

  The attempts at humor weren’t helping but it was better than screaming like a loon. Kal would have a plan—after all, he’d said he did. Our guardian hadn’t really let us down yet when it mattered. He did love his nephew. Whatever Kal had up his sleeve had better be good.

  Chapter Fourteen: Plan T isn’t the Plan

  It went just the way Kal predicted. The Elders sent someone else from the Guild of Discovery to release us from the lab along with two Agents with smoothly shaved heads like Kal. We were questioned succinctly and summarily dismissed by curt assurances that they had the matter well in hand. The replacement for Pez was a dry, wrinkle-skinned male with yellow white hair that was thinning on top and a muddy complexion. His hands had a tremor but his voice was smooth, deep and reassuring if you were the type who needed it. We were escorted to the arches of Denu without ceremony and left like an afterthought.

  Kal wasted no time with talk. He was out of sight with a whoosh of ozone and we followed. We ended up standing on our bed on top of the rumpled covers.

  Cass said out loud, “We’ve got to imagine a different place to arrive. This is ridiculous.”

  We hopped off and ran through the tunnel to the living room in search of Kal. The living area was vacant but we could hear sounds of movement from his room. The evidence of dried kush juice seemed like a reminder of a time years in the past, not an episode of mirth from just this morning. Our steps slowed the closer we came to his private space.

  “Kal?”

  My sister’s voice had a hesitant waver. Like a pop-up serial killer in a scary movie, he filled the entry arch to his room and forced us backward as he walked forward. We might have squealed in surprise but he was in a pair of his Wranglers with no shirt. The rest of his garments were tucked into the crook of his arm. Cass stood us to attention as he passed. Mesmerized by the overlapping puckered scars all along his upper body our eyes drank in the evidence of torture that had to have broken him. It was as if someone had taken a scalpel-tipped cat-o-nine-tails and lashed him repeatedly from waist to neck, front and back. The puffy lighter skin stopped just over the curve of his shoulder joint as if he wore an uneven shirt of prior pain.

  Words deserted us both and Cass forgot to breathe momentarily. White spots danced in front of our eyes. I sucked in air and they cleared to reveal Kal sitting on the floor, still shirtless, pulling on a boot. His muscles made the raised parts of his skin ripple like leeches. He finally looked up at us and saw our sucker punched expression. Silently our guardian grabbed the shirt he’d draped across his thighs and put it on. We didn’t stop staring until Kal slipped the last button through its corresponding slit. The plaid print was loud and eye catching with lines of sparkling gold and a few vertical dashes of bright green mixed in with blue and gray.

  I found our voice. “So your master plan doesn’t include blending in? Granted, I know we can cover with a light field but if anyone lays a hand on you they’ll feel the real deal underneath.”

  Kal gave a flicker of his nictitating lens and his brows furrowed. “If a rebel is close enough to touch me it is because I allowed it and he will be dead soon anyway, Silver.”

  “I don’t understand the big picture, Kal. What are the rebels fighting against? No one has ever said, at least around us. When Pez and that man were talking they mentioned some things about a person named Kai that made us think he might be Shiva. They also said Sil had experimented with this ‘Kai’s’ genetics. Tell us something.” I sounded raspy and exasperated. My twin was just as curious and frustrated.

  Kal tugged on his last black boot and pushed the denim down to rest raggedly around the lopsided heel. He stood slowly to don his duster by dramatically flaring it like a cape and sliding his arms into the sleeves.

  “First you must know our history to really understand. The beginning of Axsian civilization was filled with war and almost unrecognizable from the way we live today. The Clans were nomadic, fighting constantly for the right to roam in another Clan’s territory and life on the surface was hard. The Imini were peaceful and held themselves apart, as a people, from the Aniy. Our females grew tired of dead mates and murdered children in the name of pride and wrath.

  The Aniy women sought an alliance with the Imini. Every woman and every child of every Clan banded together and disappeared into the secured tunnels of the Imini, refusing to allow the men access unless they agreed to peace. It was a terrible time in our history before we were allowed to join The Galactic Alliance, when we were as uncivilized as Earth is now.”

  Kal made a noise of disgust by sucking his lips against the gaps in his sharp teeth then brushed one hand against his arm as if he were dusting dirt off his sleeve. Jaz had made the same gesture on our first day in Denu when she insulted her brother and Lil had acted horrified. We wondered at its meaning.

  Cass prompted, “And?”

  “The rebels are a throwback to that time. There have always been grumblings and resentments of the Imini and the matriarchal power structure by Aniy males. In the last twenty years the opposition has grown bolder. Like the Clans of old, the rebels couldn’t agree on anything and so were deemed a weak threat by The Elders. Things changed. The resistance found a leader all the Clans would follow and began to attack sporadically in various cities. They named themselves Baelc Eftborenne, or to your Earth tongue, Pride Reborn. I was assigned the task of searching out their leader. I did not have to look far.”

  Kal stared at the toes of his boots for a moment before he continued. His fingers rubbed absently on the slick buttons of his shirt front. Cass was about ready to prompt him to speak again and I chafed at the time we were wasting standing here, talking, doing nothing. His bald head rose and when he spoke again it was if by rote.

  “Shiva’s real name is Kai and he is my nephew through an older child of my father’s, although he would only claim the relationship as a mockery. It is because of Kai that Jaz’s first husband is dead and Lil never met her biological father. When I got too close to Shiva’s identity he came here when I was visiting Denu and killed Jaz’s husband then threatened to kill a pregnant Jaz unless I left with him. We were on the surface, so there were no DNA protocols to keep him away.”

  Something clicked mentally. All of Jaz’s hard looks and moody dark times had a root. That root was rotted with grief and anger but at least now we knew why Lil’s father was never brought up in conversation. Other things tumbled into place as guesses so I asked, “The scars are from Kai aren’t they? You were tortured and they would have finished it, but somehow you got away? No offense, Kal, but what does this have to do with rescuing Mez now? What’s the plan? How do we even know where the—”
I stuttered mentally over the Axsian rebel title and said, “Pride Reborn are?”

  His lips stretched back in a grim parody of amusement. “I have seen the man Pez met with today. I am related to him, in fact. Tre is yet another brother who does not claim me. Rebellion seems to run in my cynn. I will pull him through the Web and make him reveal where Mez is.”

  Cass looked around the faintly glowing walls of our living area. Our translator was glitching and leaving in Axsian words again. I inferred ‘cynn’ to mean family. Kal couldn’t mean to bring his half-brother here because the Imini protocols would interfere. Kal also hadn’t answered our earlier question about Sil’s involvement in genetic manipulation.

  She asked, “Where are we going to do this?”

  Kal narrowed the skin ringing his black on black eyes. “We are not doing this. I will persuade Tre to tell me where my nephew is and then I will come back for you.”

  Cass got worried. “Don’t you need someone to guard your back?”

  He pointed a finger for emphasis. “You would not be involved at all if I did not need you to breach their DNA protocols. It is too much of a distraction to worry on your safety as well. Wait here until I return. Do not do anything unwise without me.”

  I snorted. “Just with you, right?”

  Kal ran a hand on the back of our head and cupped the nape of our neck then pulled us against his chest. His heart was thumping like a bass drum. We could feel the bumps of his scars under his shirt now that we knew they were there. Kal kissed the top of our head before he stepped back and disappeared.

  Waiting is agony. I left Cass to do it alone and stretched my restless mind in the Web. The drifting gas-like clouds of discarded memories held no beauty today. My focus was hazy as I played connect the dots with distant Weaver lights. Mez was tantalizingly out of reach - an itching phantom limb begging for a scratch. Would Pez wonder at why he couldn’t block our access to the lab and waylay us as well? We could claim our Vector status had something to do with it, and it did, because the assumption was we’d absorbed the talent from Jaz when we’d healed her from the venomous vine incident. My thoughts swayed and undulated with my essence as I turned that fact around and around. Could I find Pez because of our Vectorness? If I could find Pez did that mean Mez would be with him? I concentrated with all of my will.

  Cass popped in, jogging me out of my intense search.

  “What are you doing, Silver?”

  “Before or after you interrupted, Sister?”

  She picked through my surface thoughts.

  “Pez is hiding, Silver. Agents are on the hunt for him. If he can disguise himself like Kal, how do we have a hope of tracing him? Give it up. We haven’t even been able to find Laser Eyes. Our unique uncontrollable nature isn’t giving us any advantages on that front.”

  “I have a feeling Kal is exceptionally talented at hiding his presence. If he can sense where other Aniy are when light is bent around them maybe he can hide himself in the Web better than anyone else too, Cass.”

  “Concentrate on Mez not Pez. I think you’ll have better luck. Whatever the rebels are using to block the Bindao isn’t one hundred percent. I can feel the faint echo through you. It flows in and out like a disturbed wavelength. If we can bypass DNA protocols, why not this too?”

  My sister was right. I wasn’t thinking straight at all. Before we arrived on Axsa the only person I was used to caring for was Cass, then briefly Gerome, Maggie, and the Lee’s—Kara more than James. Now Mez was at the forefront of a whole host of people we both felt an obligation to protect. It was better not to feel at times like these.

  I listened to the currents of stray thought flowing all around us. The day the Bindao had taken me to Mez I had been doing just this. A tiny ping, like a dot on a sonar screen, sounded from far away and then faded to silence. I inched forward, dragging my sister. For every ping I pulled us closer to Mez. Finally, after a seemingly interminable inchworm of progress his light shone, battered and frayed on the yellow edges.

  Elation and joy surged, even from my twin. She was in this with me no matter what. It was heartening that Cassandra cared simply because I did, without a need for another reason. I broke a piece of myself off like a probe and caressed the buttercup yellow in front of me. Mez barely stirred and when he did it was sluggish and nearly imperceptible.

  Cass said, “Now what, Silver? Do we wait for Kal or try and pull Mez to us?”

  “Hold on, I think we’d better see the lay of the land before we do anything, Sister. Maybe I can flesh with him. If they have him drugged he may not be able to speak mind to mind at all.”

  I sank into Mez’s essence and concentrated on the physical world and his body. It helped that he had no fight in him. He seemed to be in a coma-like state without dreams. Maybe that was good. At least I thought it was. There wasn’t any use in torturing an unconscious victim so maybe these drugs they had him on were sparing him pain. To be safe I ran through his vitals to make sure his blood pressure and oxygen levels were okay. They seemed low but not terminally so.

  I pictured Mez’s eyes and wrapped the sound of his beating heart around my mind until I was fully immersed in becoming him. The sensation was intensely disorienting as if I wore a space suit on the inside of my skin. Breath came slow into his chest and his eyes were closed. His ears only picked up silence for several giddy ups of his pulse. A foot slid across the floor somewhere close by and I was glad this was the first time I’d fleshed with anyone besides Cass otherwise I might have been in enough control of Mez’s body to jump.

  Did I open his eyes a crack to see the room or should I just burn off a sufficient amount of the drugs to make him coherent? If he stirred and gave us away could I pull us out fast enough to avoid the guard or whoever was in the room with him? The chance of harm, no matter how small, coming to a person you loved was always unattractive. Feeling torn, I dug down into his bloodstream and examined the drug flowing in his veins. Obviously it was a depressant but I had no clue as to what kind. Flushing it from his circulation would be good but it was already interacting with his central nervous system. I needed to begin by examining his thalamus—if he had one. A tiny bit of me was interested in all the similarities between Axsian and Earthling physiology and cataloging everything.

  I pictured his cerebral cortex and then dove directly through the gray matter to the very center where his thalamus rested on top of his hypothalamus. The cellular activity was extremely low. This wouldn’t do. Exerting an artificial gravitational pull, I drew the unnatural substance away and towards myself. Once I had it, I needed to figure out what to do with it. If I pushed it out through Mez’s sinuses and then his nostrils it would just get back in his bloodstream all over again. One of his ears might work though.

  Mez began to stir. In reaction to his last memory or my foreign intrusion, he began to rail against our presence in his body. With soothing emotions I warned against movement. “Mez it’s me, Silver. Don’t move. Your eyes are closed and someone is close but I don’t know who. Whoever the guard is needs to think you’re still out of it. Hold still while I finish dumping this junk they gave you out of your ear. It might tickle.” At the sound of my voice Mez relaxed. His curiosity was piqued.

  “Out of my ear? Will they see that? It’s a futile exercise anyway. They have a monitor on me to reflect my vitals. It will have shown my brain patterns have changed.”

  With that Mez opened his eyes and sat up. He’d been resting on a pallet on the floor. The room we were in was small and rectangular as if someone had converted a storage closet into a prison cell. A rebel guard did indeed stand by a metal door. His clothes were different than the Aniy standard. No flowing kaftan or loose tunic shirt for him. Close fitted pants with armored ovals on the thighs, knees, and shins graced his legs and a skintight long sleeve shirt with an actual breast plate finished it off. He made eye contact for an alarmed split second then left in a hurry. We could hear him yelling but the walls were thick enough to distort his words.

>   A dull electronic humming we hadn’t noticed before penetrated our awareness. Mez shivered as the condensed remains of the drugs we’d dumped in his ear canal trickled down the side of his neck like liquid wax. He stood, surprised at his steadiness, and walked over to a small box by the door that was the source of the irritating low buzz. Without ceremony he raised his right foot and crushed it under a calloused heel.

  “What was that?”

  “A dampener. They’re used to keep prisoners from being pulled through the Web. If you can’t find me you can’t take me. I imagine the walls are fitted with security measures as well to prevent bending in or out. You won’t be able to get us out of here but maybe my mother or Kal can track this location if they can sense me. We aren’t underground. This base must be on the surface somewhere.”

  Mez was impressively collected for a kidnap victim.

  “I can get us out, Mez, remember.”

  His silence was physical and mental. With a burst realization he said, “Let us leave then, Leoght Cor.”

  I reached back through the Web to give Cass a heads up and then pictured our bed again, mainly because it was the freshest most comfortable image. Just as the outskirts of Mez’s vision began to melt and flake away the door to his cell slammed open and Pez strode inside. He sniffed the air, scenting it for the ozone of our fledgling ‘port and grabbed Mez by the forearm. It was too late to stop the bend and I wasn’t skilled enough to separate us from him. We were going to have a tag along to Denu.

  Mez and I were ready this time for the soft bed but he still fell forward and I heard Cass grunt in our body as his weight knocked the wind from our lungs. Pez was nothing but flailing arms in the periphery as he tipped backwards off the side of the mattress to land on the hard floor with a loud thump and oomph of surprise. It might have been funny if the situation wasn’t so serious.

  Cass pushed against Mez’s chest and he flung us backwards gracefully to stand. It was surreal being inside someone else and looking over our body. For one, we really seemed pathetic and scrawny from my current higher vantage point. What in the world did Mez see in us? Our hair was a wild tangle and our face had a seriously pinched expression on it that made us look like a rat with our sharp nose.