Renegade ch 7: Free to Move

Night hung over Kobolast, and Topeca slept soundly, lost in a land of pleasant dreams until an irksome beep pulled her back to her bed. Turning on the light, she scanned with bleary eyes for the noisemaker and found it on the bedside table: Revel’s datapad, and he nowhere around.

Stupid thing.

She punched the ‘lights off’ button and rolled over.

The beep persisted, and she shoved a pillow over her ears.

I shouldn’t open it. Be a good girl, Topeca.

It beeped again.

But if I don’t open the message, it’s never going to shut up!

It beeped again.

I don’t actually have to read the message, just open it.

It beeped again, and she grabbed the datapad.

At first as small as the nail on her littlest finger, the device unfolded, growing larger than both her hands together. Its screen illuminated her face in the dark. She squinted at it, searching for the ‘open message and shut up’ button.

I am pathetically nosy, she chided as she opened the message and began reading.

It was from Xlack Ekymé. He had made it to Tala and wanted to know what his mission was.

That was fast. It would be incredibly rude to make him wait after he so quickly did as asked.

“Computer, where’s Revel?”

As always, there was a bit of lag before the computer’s voice interface understood her question and formed a response with the grainy timbre of an old man. “Revel K’alaqk is in a meeting with the High Defenders of Yakru.”

“Without me?” she blurted.

“You are not invited.”

Topeca’s lower lip jutted out before she realized the computer would say such for her protection. It was programmed to believe she never secretly attended these meetings.

She fixed her pout. “He left his datapad here. Will you give it to him?”

“Is that an order, Lady K’alaqk?”

Topeca had only been allowed in the Tower for three days now. She kept forgetting the computer didn’t understand her mannerly speech.

“Yes, Computer, I want you to give Revel his datapad. It’s important.”

The computer’s response was an unintelligible series of squeals that made Topeca wish she had read the fire evacuation plan. She made a mental note to do so as soon as possible.

As she searched for this information on Revel’s datapad, the computer questioned, “Does a Sereh’s order outrank those of Watchers?”

Topeca highly doubted it. “Explain your dilemma.”

“Prior to your command, Revel K’alaqk ordered he not be disturbed. His meeting is currently in a heated dispute. I predict the order you gave instructing me to interrupt will put his life in danger.”

“Then don’t!” She jumped out of bed, tripped over a furrow of river rocks, and flung open the tiny closet. “Leave him be!”

She imagined the careful tension in Revel’s meeting. If the computer were to smash it with a datapad delivery, it would turn volatile.

And the High Defenders likely don’t know about Ekymé’s assignment yet.

She threw a dark disguise over her nightgown. “Forget about my order. Here’s a new one: Direct me to where this meeting is and inform me when the discussion is less tense please.”

A map appeared on Revel’s datapad, and a line traced a path for her through the maze of Aylata Tower’s corridors. It was ridiculously far.

Pointing on the map to a place just outside the room where Revel was, she amended, “Uh, actually, I’d rather you teleport me right there.”

“Is that an—”

“Yes, that’s an order. Teleport me there!”

Gripping Revel’s datapad against a wave of nausea, Topeca found herself in a brightly lit hallway. She looked at the door before her, noted the yelling voices beyond it, and began pacing. Her eyes fell back to the datapad, fingers reopening Ekymé’s message.

Recalling her earlier conversation with Revel, she thought of how Ekymé’s loyalties and life were easily lost so far away. Her mind ran through a dozen absurd situations, including one where he was captured and refusing to talk, awaiting further instructions before deciding what to do next as huge, ugly thugs beat him to death.

“A good commander doesn’t leave his people waiting,” she whispered, repeating the most famous quote of the first Ravida.

On the message screen, she hit reply.

***

Xlack stared at his datapad, wondering if his response had gone through. He was out of range of the Napix dataseas, but the datapad was an adaptive little device. It told him it had contact through the network here and claimed his message had been delivered. He would just have to trust it, his only connection to home here in Vlavaran, Tala.

The city gleamed in diminishing sunlight, not that the daystar had been all that bright to begin with. Tala and Knalz were the foster children of many stars, shuffled from one to the next in a long revolution around the bulbous Zakernii Nebula.

The tram Xlack rode followed a translucent band of light between blocky, shimmering skyscrapers. The car was crowded and pungent with the press of people, a slightly sour smell amongst all these Tala, like a sodden lumberyard. Rell would have found it fascinating had he not slept, belly full, curled up in the pocket beneath Xlack’s Ier sheath.

Feet braced against the tram’s sudden turns, Xlack stood between Alez Rifo and Kix Entrycii, a Knalcal as tall as Xlack’s shoulder. Birthmarks glistened silver against the wet-sand shade of his skin.

Twi and Lanox loitered on Rifo’s other side, while behind Entrycii, the one introduced as his amaraq, Srev Stevalok, leaned against a long window, dripping in boredom. His stocky, corded build was a common trait of Zalerits, as were his sharp nose, wide mouth, and eyes without sclera, but there the similarities ended. Unlike a Zalerit, Stevalok had only one pair of eyes, and vertical pupils sliced large, paler irises.

Datapad held inconspicuously by his thigh, Xlack thumbed open an app and ran an analysis. As translucent layers of a human-shaped diagram appeared on the screen, he raised an eyebrow, gaze too easily adopting its crooked squint.

Hydrostatic tubes formed the alien’s skeleton, giving stability to muscles woven in mind-boggling complexity. Many creatures made use of the flexibility, strength, and finesse inherent in hydrostatic designs—humanoid tongues were of similar construction. Yet, beings whose whole bodies relied on this were usually simple, like the worms found in the soil of almost every inhabited world.

Stevalok’s humanoid form was a million times more complicated.

In a voice Kizmet’s librarian would have approved of, Rifo noted, “Ya don’t recognize what he is.”

Xlack matched his volume. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

Rifo smirked. “He’s from Lettaplex.”

“Where is that?”

Stevalok threw them a condescending look. “Think you’re so highfalutin you can’t ask me questions directly?”

Xlack blinked at him, taking a second to decipher the twang. “You speak?”

At the top of vacporter four, Stevalok had let Entrycii voice all the introductions. Now his gaze burned into Xlack, body stationary in an unnatural way aboard the rocking tram. Arms crossed, Stevalok appeared half-asleep, but something about him promised an explosion of motion at any moment.

“You can stop staring at me anytime, Creepface.”

“Be nice, Stevalok,” Rifo chided.

“I am nothing if not nice. I am the very essence of— Ack!”

“Oh yes, ya are the essence of a scream. That explains a lot,” Rifo mocked with a roll of his eyes, but Stevalok was already launching off the window. He landed in the center of the car, stance a low crouch, as the crowd parted. Rell clung to the back of his stretchy shirt, tiny claws fully extended, five per hind foot and six per forepaw.

Grabbing him around the middle, Stevalok stood and held the beastling high. Rell squirmed.

“You have very sharp teeth, Runt.” Stevalok’s dark fingers probed a circle of punctures at the nape of his own neck, nearly hidden by his cords of hair. Blood welled, rendered glossy slate with a faint shimmer of chrysolite to Xlack’s eyes.

As surprise prickled, he reminded himself that chrysolite blood simply marked Magni heritage—not something only Aylata possessed.

Stevalok’s face softened. “You are a little cute.”

Rell’s teeth sunk into Stevalok’s thumb.

Flung and squealing, the beastling flailed.

Xlack caught Rell and cradled him close to his chest. “Don’t throw him!”

Clinging to his master’s jacket, Rell hissed at Stevalok, who sucked his wounded hand.

“Now ya are infected.” Lanox rummaged through a satchel slung over her shoulder. “Ya had better let me inject ya with the antidote.”

“No needles,” Stevalok refused, words muffled around his hand.

She captured his arm. “But ya will sprout purple pimples and transform into a swamp monster.”

Entrycii waved at her serious tone. “That’s how he wakes up every day.”

Xlack’s datapad beeped. Revel K’alaqk’s name blinked on the screen.

“Lanox, not joking! Don’t stick me with anything!”

With a ding, the intercom proclaimed, “Tram two-five-six approaching stop seven-seven-six. Please exit orderly and be respectful to yer fellow passengers.”

Despite the recording’s admonition, the opening doors triggered a mass exodus that involved a lot of shoving, and the small group of Adjuvants was squished against the opposite wall.

Slipping into the crowd, Xlack exited the tram.

“Wait, Ekymé, ya are—” Rifo started, but the doors rushed closed, and the tram took off again.

“This is Snook Park. Welcome,” a recording announced as Xlack stepped beyond the deck’s wooden slats at the city’s edge. Brambly trees twisted together to form high arches above a rocky path, shadows dripping from their black bark and metallic leaves. It smelled like pudding left in the sun. The temperature was dropping, and he was glad for his versatile Adapt fabric.

Pewter and inky scales glistening, Rell scampered down to explore and find a place to do his business.

Xlack opened K’alaqk’s message: Your speed is unmatched, Ekymé. I am extremely busy at the moment. Please hold on.

“Weird message,” he mumbled. “Kind of pointless.”

He typed back: Tell me the details of my mission now!

After a few moments, the reply came: ARE YOU IN DANGER?!!

“What’s with the caps?”

He sent: LIKE YOU CARE! Tell me my mission or I’m getting back in my Oha and going back to Kizmet, and I’ll never ever take another order from you.

The space beneath this last message remained blank. Xlack paced, fingers hovering under buttons opposite the datapad’s screen. His response sounded childish, and he wished there were a way to retract a message. Was K’alaqk laughing at him, rushing from room to room within Aylata Tower, showing all his friends?

Rell tacked across the path, sniffing every other dry fern. A branch of a spiky plant shivered in the wind, and he swatted at it, pleased when it shivered harder.

With another beep, a new message appeared: Your mission has something to do with bringing something back.

What was that supposed to mean?

Like what, a rock? A feather of some ambiguous bird that only lives on some imaginary mountain? Grow up, K’alaqk. I’m serious.

The next message came as soon as he hit send: I’m sorry. Please don’t fly back yet. Just hold on a little longer. Call you soon! :>

Now a smiley face? This was the oddest messaging series he had ever had with anyone, and disturbingly, it was with Revel K’alaqk.

Xlack stopped, unease dripping down his back. He turned, eyes scanning the canopy of thick branches above for what his Kinetic senses assured him was there.

“I wondered how long it would take you to notice me.”

“What are you doing here, Spycykle?” Xlack glared, radiating despise, though Lorm Spycykle seemed blind to such concepts when they were directed at him.

Rell charged to take his preferred position just in front of Xlack’s left boot, grainy roar dropping into a gurgling growl. He stood proud and tall, smaller than his master’s foot but every bit cast of bravery, onyx eyes fixed on the stalker.

Like a young rebalo crawling among the rafters, Spycykle was barely visible, cloaked in shadow high in a thick tree. His clothes were dark like most Defenders’, but his shoulders lacked the short cape adorned with a shining sigil that would have marked to which legion he belonged. Instead, faded sigils lined his sleeves and marched down his back and chest, one for every legion that had rejected him. Fifty-two was a lot, especially considering he was only about to turn thirty.

Spycykle glared back, exuding the same despise. “What am I doing here? Same thing you are: rescuing the crew of the Isike, capturing a few Adjuvant prisoners, and returning home not to share one degree of glory.”

“I was sent here. Please don’t tell me K’alaqk thought sending an irresponsible Defender would accomplish anything.”

Spycykle inspected his nails. “You don’t seem to think highly of me.”

“Let me put this simply: Go away.”

Hands raised, Spycykle jumped out of the tree, and Rell scurried behind Xlack’s boot.

“Ouch. Words are weapons, Ekymé.”

“Your pride and ambition are choking hazards.”

Spycykle laughed. “Maybe we aren’t the same, then. See, you will fail this mission, and I will succeed, even if I have to make sure you don’t get in my way.” His gaze dropped to the beastling peeking around Xlack’s ankle, and a cruel smile sliced his lips.

Xlack drew his Ier. As the weapon’s electric snap echoed between the trees, the fervent beep of his datapad chased it.

Spycykle vanished.

Xlack scanned the dense forest as he answered the call. “Talk!”

“Calm, Ekymé.” K’alaqk's face appeared on the screen. “You sound as if something has gone wrong. Topeca assured me this would be good news.”

Why would Topeca—

He must have been messaging Topeca earlier. That made a lot more sense now.

Xlack bent and scooped up Rell, who had occupied himself with gnawing at a bootstrap. The beastling slinked along his arm, growling at the datapad, often his rival for his master’s attention.

“It was good news until Spycykle showed up.”

“You have watched your back since the day you were born. Spycykle should be no threat.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

As Xlack’s mouth formed the words, surprise softened them. He shouldn’t have cared about these people, but as Spycykle’s taunts ran through his mind, he saw Twi and Rifo, faces twisted in agony. Pity mourned for any subjected to Spycykle’s mercy.

Rell had almost reached the datapad, paw raised and claws extended to slash at the screen. Xlack caught the scruff of his neck and placed the beastling near his Ier sheath. Grunting, Rell found his favorite pocket below the weapon’s home and crawled inside.

“I’m curious to receive the details of my mission.”

“Of course. You remember our experimental ship, Isike? It disappeared some time ago and was captured by Knalcals. Each member of the crew wears a tracking device. Rescue them and return them home.”

So, Spycykle had been right about part of the mission.

“I shall—”

“While accomplishing that, do you think you could handle bringing back a local of Magni descent?”

Okay, Spycykle had suspiciously known about this whole mission.

Xlack gripped the datapad tighter. “Did you send Spycykle here?”

On the screen, K’alaqk’s face gave nothing away, silver eyes sharp like shards of a shattered mirror. “That, I will leave to your discernment.”

“I’ve already discerned it. What were you thinking?”

K’alaqk sighed. “Ekymé, the crew of the Isike relies on you, as does the entire empire. Avoid Spycykle if you feel you must, but do not fail us.”

Xlack wanted to throw something, but as satisfying as it might have been to watch the datapad sink into a thick tree, that wouldn’t answer his questions.

He forced his hand to remain still. “Why natives of Magni descent?”

“Like the lightcurvers, they are cousins to us, but we know little about them.” K’alaqk’s head tilted, and the leaning pikes of his bangs impaled the datapad’s frame. “You understand how they might be a threat?”

Xlack nodded. Lightcurvers were dangerous.

“I shall do as you ask, K’alaqk.”

“Good.” With a smile, he cut the transmission.

Xlack sent: See you soon! !>

K’alaqk replied: If you wish me to suspect you are a teenaged girl at heart, do continue to type like one.

Xlack fell over laughing.

***

Dusk tumbled beyond the horizon, and the city lights of Vlavaran cast ever-moving, upside-down shadows. Their undulating dance reminded Twi of giggles, as if the darkness laughed at her. On a flat section of roof belonging to the Knalcal Embassy—a building that resembled a frozen splash—she and Lanox waited for Rifo, Entrycii, and Stevalok to return.

“The missions tonight were quick.” Lanox leaned back on a slanted eave, one knee bent, as the warm wind toyed with her myriad of ringlets.

“Keep alert.” Twi stood near the edge of their level ledge, scanning the scene below. “The Aberrant we met tonight were low-rankers.”

Lanox rolled her eyes. “We’re low-rankers.”

Looking over her shoulder at her amaraq, Twi grinned smugly. “Stay a low-ranker if you wish.”

“Like I’d want my life to be as complicated as yers.” Lanox mimed a yawn. “Ya see my hair, how it blows in the breeze? It represents my freedom, unlike yers, how it’s twisted and confined in that conglomeration of braids crisscrossing every which way.”

“It’s still free to move.” Twi flipped a few plaits over her shoulder. “You're comparing everything to hair today.”

“Ya would have us be invincible.”

Twi’s grin turned grim. “If only we could be invincible.”

She used to tell Hrausq Seven-One-Nine they were. Or could be if they tried hard enough. Sep’s death on Kelis had wrenched such confidence from her, though. She knew Lanox missed the old Twi, that she forever searched for her just as Twi scoured the skies for Sep.

Lanox’s eyes scanned the stars now, and she changed the subject, voice soft but accusatory. “Ya weren’t really looking for him.”

“Ekymé stepped off the train on purpose. If he wants to, he’ll return. If he doesn’t”—Twi shrugged and rested a hand on a protruding roof piece—“let someone else take care of him.”

“Someone like the Aberrant or the authorities who’ve been greedy to use hybrids like us since forever?”

Twi didn’t acknowledge the attempted guilt trip, eyes on the skyline. Fear chilled her as lights in the surrounding structures flickered. They spelled out a scrolling message that would only have been readable from this vantage point. She followed the blinks in a counter-clockwise circle.

Three-Two-One.

Twi whispered the numbers aloud, taking an indecisive step back, and Lanox leapt into a readied stance. As a volley of sharp-edged discs flew toward them, Twi lifted both arms, ’netics calling for the air to harden in a semi-spherical shield.

The discs never reached it.

Behind her, a lone figure dropped to the roof, and under his command, the weapons hovered. “Hello, Navaria.”

Twi whirled, meeting silver eyes that mirrored her own. Thin lines of Knalcal scales glinted in the city lights, tracing a pattern near identical to hers through skin a shade duskier.

“Rogii Moshee,” she breathed, drawing back.

He smiled, voice full of false charm as the discs tucked themselves into a pouch on the back of his belt. “You remember me. I was afraid you wouldn’t after that nasty fall I heard you had.”

“I’d rather plunge from a thousand balconies than have anything to do with you, Aberrant.”

“Harsh.” Rogii’s head wagged, his hair—a vivid smalt to cobalt to white gradient—too gelled to move. His wrapped tunic and pants claimed the deepest blue edged in brown to complement his woven boots and the half glove concealing his left palm.

Colorful and dark to help him blend with his natural habitat of shadows, but nothing black. Aberrant never wore black.

Behind him, Lanox tiptoed closer, a kanaber’s sleeping handle gripped in the fist held at her side. As she raised her arm and a short laser blade flashed into crimson existence, a giant pounced, curling her into his somersault.

A pink hand caught the kanaber.

Stillness reigned an instant later. Lanox was dazed and glassy-eyed, piled hair an uneven cascade of white-gold. Her body hung limp in the rough embrace of a Lettaplexal man twice her size, hands engulfing her biceps.

The kanaber hovered at her throat, held by a stocky Zalerit woman whose short, white hair was pulled into four tufts, two tiny and two larger in mimicry of her two pairs of eyes—a rare trait considering all Zalerits here were greatly mixed. She had their Talent, too. The luminous skin that peeked through the crisscrossing ribbon of her shirt deepened to match the crimson of her weapon.

Twi raced to Lanox’s rescue, sidestepping Rogii. As a coin flew from his pocket and met his hand, it expanded into a thin cylinder and sprouted a glowing tentacle. The lightwhip cracked, coiling around Twi’s ankle. Quick steps kept her on her feet as her gaze cut to Rogii’s mocking grin.

“Feel like testing me, Navaria?”

“Release Lanox.”

“If you insist,” Rogii conceded, smirk condescending. “Narkom, Mikana, when have we ever wanted little Lanox?”

As his fingers snapped, his intention sunk into Twi’s heart.

“No!”

Lanox tumbled down the side of the slick, steep roof and dropped into the lightless alley below. Twi leapt after her.

The lightwhip caught her wrist. Though her feet kept going, her arm did not, and she fell on her back, hanging by the faintly glowing cord. It defied her ’netic push, feeling alive as it tore through her durable sleeve and into her skin.

Rogii hauled her back onto the ledge. “All I want is to talk.”

Scrambling to her feet, she twisted free of the lightwhip’s hold. “You can talk to your flunkies.”

“If they had the information I needed, I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of finding you. Now spill everything you know about the stranger in the black oha.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Rogii laughed. “You can’t just walk up to an Aylata and ask questions. They’re like…like… Narkom, help me out with an analogy.”

The Lettaplexal grinned, pointed onyx teeth cutting his lip. “A bag of chips.”

“Narkom, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Twi ran.

The highway that curved around the embassy looked like smoldering lavender glass. Above it, a flamboyant billboard floated level with this roof. Gaze on the racing vehicles below, Twi jumped for the advertisement.

Narkom’s round eyes gleamed through the pale green mask stamped into his ruddy skin—another mark of Aberrant. “She wouldn’t.”

“You bet she would.” Rogii sprung after her.

Twi leapt off the billboard. Wind howled in her ears, competing with the growl of an approaching hovercycle. She extended her arms, directing her course. As the skeletal transport dashed beneath her, Twi’s ’netics lassoed it.

The vehicle bobbed. Twi’s feet slid from the back of the soft seat to the shelf behind the driver’s heels as their trajectory leveled, toes half a body’s length above the slick road.

The driver twisted around. “What—”

“Can you give me a ride?” She mustered her sweetest smile.

“Sure, what true biker wouldn’t give a ride to a beautiful girl who fell out of the sky? Where—”

A rain of gunfire erupted. Thick bullets encased in white light screamed as they tore through transports and bounced off the road—wild, beautiful sparkles.

The bike spun, incompliant with the driver’s panicked attempts to correct its course. Other vehicles were blurred streaks skimming much too close. A wispy forcefield distorted them further, taking out a bridge’s rail just before Twi’s ride crashed. She and her driver would plummet into oblivion, their deaths mentioned in subtext on the morning news.

The driver clutched the nearest object—rough, cold, hard. Not falling. He opened his eyes, finding he hugged part of the guardrail. Debris splashed into the wide river far below.

Righting the bike, Twi shook off the burn of his fear and forced his viewpoint from her mind. “You’ll be compensated for your cycle.”

“Yeah, but that’s actually my uncle’s bike!”

She winced, but in this moment, she needed it more than he did. Without a reply, she took off, racing against traffic.

Behind her, the three Aberrant wove through a shrieking mix of small, pike-like transports, other sleek hovercycles, and big, boxy barges. All coasted no more than hip height above the shining, svelte road. Travel instructions winked in soft gold on its surface, upside down to Twi since she headed in the wrong direction.

She folded into the cycle’s aerodynamic pocket and slammed her heel on the speed control.

Mikana had acquired a racer’s bike, its paint convincing the eye that flames danced across its body. She was close enough, Twi could have grabbed her hand.

Banking a hard right, Twi drove up a fancy Welcome to Vlavaran sign. Her stomach flipped, protesting gravity’s grip as she twirled through the air and sailed over the Aberrant. With another stomp on the speed controls, she landed in the flow of traffic, headed the right way this time. Sharp-edged towers blurred beyond the highway’s edge.

Mikana pulled a tight one-eighty. Narkom and Rogii followed.

Despite passing traffic left and right, Twi’s bike was no match for the racer. In the mirrored casing on the handlebar, she watched Mikana devour the space between them.

This isn’t working.

She exited the freeway and dove into the maze of darker city streets.

At the first traffic signal, she turned left without bothering to notice which direction the indicator faced. She turned left again at the first narrow alley. Taking a right at the next street, she twisted through bumper-to-bumper traffic. The racer’s motor rang in her head.

Mikana was on the other side of the line of transports. “Surrender, Cousin, and we won’t have to harm you!”

At least ‘cousin’ was less demeaning than ‘three-two-one.’ Twi turned right.

The Aberrant followed. The shops lining this slender corridor were closed to respectable business this time of night, windows darkened, offering anonymity to those who sought it. Mikana’s glowing magenta skin was a beacon here, her fear and frustration palpable.

Zalerits hated the dark. To Twi’s Mind Talents, the blend of emotions was a spicy heat at the back of her throat.

A silver circle appeared in Mikana’s hand, and thunder accompanied its transformation into a long, tendrilled staff, like a double-ended broken wisk. That crashing sound as it opened gave the weapon its slang name: ju’wack.

It swung down on the front of Twi’s cycle.

She swerved. The electric pink strands of Mikana’s ju’wack sliced a shallow ravine across her cycle’s nose. Smoke rose from melted edges, but the vehicle kept going.

“I’m more trustworthy than a Napix Aylata,” the Zalerit claimed as her weapon careened down a second time. Scarlet tendrils met it and shoved back—Twi’s own ju’wack gripped in her right hand and angled awkwardly across her front.

“Running just makes it harder on yourself.” Rogii’s voice boomed from all directions. His ’netic specialty was air. It carried sound however he wanted. It moved however he wanted.

As Twi deflected Mikana’s strikes, a whirlwind formed around them. The gale ripped her from the hovercycle and stole her breath, squeezing her like giant, invisible fists.

Twi pushed back. Sweeping gestures and angled palms dictated her course. Her eyes closed at the wind’s insistence. She felt rather than saw Mikana and her racer soar through the tornado, ju’wack sundering Twi’s borrowed hovercycle.

She cringed. She would have little difficulty anonymously depositing its worth in its owner’s account later, assuming she survived this, but without a vehicle, outrunning these Aberrant became a lot less likely.

Diving under Mikana’s slash, Twi stretched toward the racer, her own ju’wack closed but still in hand. The burning tendrils of the Aberrant’s weapon passed a fingerbreadth above her arm, and her skin tingled in warning.

As the stamina-draining whirlwind subsided, the racer dropped back to regulation height. Twi grasped the handlebars, elbows locked to prevent her from faceplanting on the headlight. Her legs curled, feet hanging above the road.

A racer was not designed to have a passenger dangling from its front. It zigzagged as Mikana tried to keep it from spinning out of control. Twi flinched as buildings and vehicles whipped by.

With a kick at the Aberrant’s wrists, she knocked the ju’wack from Mikana’s hand. One danger gone, but off-balance, the racer fell on its side. Sparks flashed as it skidded down the smooth street. Twi landed on the hovercycle’s current upside, gripping the fuel tank behind the handlebars.

Thunderous and reeking of grease, a barge drove over them. Its bumper brushed Mikana’s pearlescent tufts as she yanked Twi into a headlock. Twi thrust her elbow up under the Zalerit’s ribs. Mikana grunted, weight pressing on Twi, but her hold hardly loosened. A cargo transport pulled alongside, oversized and formed of a million square panes.

The driver leaned out his window. “Some of us are actually trying to drive here!”

Unlatching a pistol from her belt, the Aberrant took a haphazard shot at him, and the transport sped away.

Twi twisted out of the headlock, knee prying Mikana’s leg from the bike. Her left foot pushed off the ground as her right mashed the speed controls, and the racer righted as it took off without the Aberrant.

They would not catch her now. Twi wove her way back to the Knalcal Embassy and found Lanox on the ground behind disheveled trash bins. She was unconscious, a swelling bruise on her forehead, but besides that, no major injuries stood out to Twi’s scrutinizing eyes.

Relief escaped her in a sigh. She didn’t ask how Rogii could do this. His games were always cruel, but rarely did he come to her with a question.

Wrapping Lanox’s vest tighter, Twi hoisted her onto the back of the racer. The Aberrant wanted to know about ‘the stranger in the black oha.’ Ekymé obviously, but what did Twi know that she could spill anyway? What in the world was an Aylata?

She ordered the sys laced over her ear to dial Rifo. Either he, Entrycii, or Stevalok would ensure a doctor tended Lanox. Twi had someone she needed to find.

Continued in Chapter 8: Cute Ashen Curls

Thank you for reading!