The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (34 page)

Last Mission:
No completed missions.

I was going to be sick. They had
chipped
her. She wasn’t even a Marked One, and they had made her part of the program. But even as I thought about what they might have done to her during those eighteen procedures, something worse surged to the front of my mind.

They had Patrick. They had chipped Nikki…and they. Had.
Patrick
.

I didn’t want to know—would have done just about anything to not be the person to check—but I knew I had to. Because he was my little brother, and I had to know.

I clicked on
8
, my hand shaking so badly I nearly clicked on
9
instead.

Designator:
Aku

Birth Name:
Patrick Centrina

Identity(ies):
Patrick Connolly, Patrick Centrina, Patrick Galathea

Program Status:
Inactive — re-chipped — Awaiting reinstatement

Number of procedures:
4,385

Astari Saiku status:
Success

Last Mission:
8-26-2012

More Missions

Subject posses superior visual processing, speed, and memory manipulation abilities…

I just blinked at the screen. Astari Saiku,
that
was what they had been trying to make this whole time? The star children. The children of the gods. The first daemons. The perfect beings. What we had been before we had been split into three. Before we had become the Kalodaemons, the Kakodaemons, and the Marked Ones.

I stared at the screen in revulsion, the Kakodemoss were trying to play god. They had been trying to recreate something that hadn’t existed for over fifty thousand years—if ever. And they had
succeeded
.

My eyes darted back up to Patrick’s stats, and I swallowed down the awful taste in my mouth. The Kakodemoss had succeeded in creating a Astari Saiku, but at what cost?

4,385.

The number of times they had injected him, cut into him, scraped and poked and prodded at his brain.

4,385
.

No wonder he was so terrified of needles.

4,385
.

I was going to be sick.

4,385
.

But even as the bile was churning in my stomach something worse settled in and squeezed my heart painfully. The Kakodemoss had succeeded with the Avensana Project, but it hadn’t been
their
project from the start.

Sometimes the Truth Is the most Dangerous Thing of All

Friday, December 28th

TRAVIS

I
marched into Kiskei’s office more
angry than I think I had ever been in my whole life.

“You
knew
, didn’t you,” I accused in a deadly voice, a voice that was almost a growl.

“Knew what, Travis?” Kiskei asked with an exhausted sigh.

“You
knew
the moment you saw that symbol on Chan-rin’s uniform. You
knew
what they were doing, and you didn’t say anything! Nualla almost
died
because of your fucking secrets!”

“Travis, what on earth are you talking about?” Kiskei asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“The Avensana Project,” I growled.

Kiskei froze. And it was the look on his face—that look right before the hard, trained mask slid into place—that gave it away more than anything. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Don’t
lie
to me!” I shouted as I threw the tiny flash drive onto his desk. “It’s all on there. The studies. The experiments.
Everything
. All the work that’s been done on the Avensana Project for the last thirty years.”

“The Avensana Project was disbanded over eighteen years ago. Everything it was—everything we hoped to achieve—it died with Nikk,” Kiskei finally admitted, avoiding my eyes.

“Nikk’s not dead,” I growled through gritted teeth.

“What?” he said, looking back up at me quickly.

“Oh, don’t
even
pretend like you didn’t know,” I said with contempt as I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. “You knew
exactly
what he was doing. He
told
you. He left that message. He’s been undercover this whole time as the Kakodemoss facility director Eskel Valerik. Continuing those horrific experiments!” I clenched my hands tighter until my nails bit into my palms just so I could get the next part out without leaping over the desk, and beating Kiskei to a pulp.

“Do you
know
what they’ve been doing to my brother?
Do you
?!” I screamed at him, throwing the words as savagely as if they were a blade I could stab through him. “They’ve put him through 4,385 procedures over the last sixteen years!”

“Message?
What
message?” Kiskei asked in a startled voice.

“The one he recorded just before the Avensana labs collapsed. The one he left on the servers…” I answered, but the more I said the more I realized Kiskei had no idea what I was talking about. That his look of shocked surprise wasn’t an act. Because no one could fake that kind of fear in their eyes.

I stumbled back a step, as my stomach dropped out. I was really going to be sick this time. They hadn’t known. Nikk had been waiting—waiting for
years
—waiting for them to come pull him out, and they hadn’t even known they’d needed to. He had been trapped there, waiting for a rescue that was never going to come. Because they had thought he was dead.

“Travis,
what
message?” Kiskei shouted as I turned and bolted from his office, praying like hell that I actually made it to the nearest garbage can.

After I’d thrown up everything that could possibly be in my stomach, I had trudged back to my apartment, and collapsed into my bed with my shoes still on. Mainly because I just couldn’t bring myself to bother to take them off.

It was so much worse than I had ever feared it could be—what had happened to Patrick, and the others. The horror and injustice of it all was unfathomable. The stuff of nightmares. But quite possibly the most sickening part of it all was that my father and his friends had had a hand in it.

The anger I had stormed into Kiskei’s office wielding like a blunt weapon had disappeared the moment that I had realized that Kiskei had never known of Nikk’s last message. But it was now back again, building up like a boiling pot. Waiting to boil over, and destroy the nearest thing. Like a mirror, or a glass or—

“Travis?” someone called out.

—Kiskei.

“Go away,” I called back.

Why the
fuck
had I left the front door unlocked?

There was a sound, and I looked up. Kiskei was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, his hands in his lab coat pockets. “Travis, I need to talk to you.”

“Well too frakkin’ bad, because I’m all out of give-a-fuck for today,” I said sarcastically as I looked away from him. Because if I kept looking at him I was going to do something regrettable, and I knew it.

It had been hours, but my anger at him hadn’t lessened. If anything, it had grown. Seething and boiling beneath the surface like volcano.

“Travis, I—” Kiskei started, as he neared my bed.

“I said, GO AWAY!” I screamed as I launched myself at him.

I wanted to hurt him—
needed
to hurt him. I wanted someone—
anyone
—to hurt as much as I did. But I especially wanted
him
to.

I swung my fist at Kiskei even though I knew it was useless. Even though I knew he would stop me. But as my fist met his flesh I realized he hadn’t.

I pulled my hand away from his face slowly, just staring. And I just stood there for a stunned moment wondering if it was all real.

“I hit you,” I pointed out in an uncertain voice, breathing heavy.

“Yes,
genius
, I am aware of that,” Kiskei said sarcastically, rubbing his jaw.

“You didn’t move,” I sputtered, still in shock.

“Naw,
really
? What gave you
that
brilliant bit of insight?”

“Why?” I was too stunned even to snap back at him.

“Because…I deserved it,” Kiskei grumbled. “
And
it was the only way to shock you enough to see some fucking reason.”

I looked back at him in confusion.

Kiskei let out a heavy, exasperated sigh. “You may like to think this proclivity for explosions of yours is just some residual teenage angst. But I have news for you kid, it’s as much a part of being a Centrina as that genius is.”

Kiskei moved his jaw around, and glared at me. “Gods, you punch just like Josh.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t ask,” he said, holding up a hand.

“I wasn’t
going
to. I really don’t give a fuck why my dad punched you, he’s
dead
,” I said savagely as I pushed past him and walked down the hall to the kitchen, the anger bursting through my temporary shock.

I pulled a glass from the cupboard, and filled it with water. Then I took a swig, and swished it around my mouth before spitting it into the sink. As I stood back up I gulped down the rest of the glass. Then I placed it carefully back down on the counter so I wouldn’t be tempted to throw it at Kiskei.

Gods, and to think this jerk was almost my father-in-law.

But the thought just made me think of Parker and the fact that she
still
wasn’t talking to me. And that just made me want to curl up in a ball on the floor and drink. A
lot
.

“So why are you here?” I asked as I leaned against the counter, and folded my arms across my chest.

“You might have been wrong about a lot of it, but you were right about some of it,” Kiskei said as he moved into the room. “I had my suspicions when I saw that symbol on Chan-rin’s clothes, but I knew for certain the moment they pulled that thing out of your brother’s back.”

“So why didn’t you
do
something?” I asked accusingly.

“You think I
haven’t
?” Kiskei asked in disbelief, his eyebrows shooting up. “I’ve spent the last four months trying to figure out how in
hell
the Kakodemoss got a hold of our research and our tech. Furthermore, I’ve called in every favor I’ve ever earned to bring in Amurai from across the world to help protect Karalia and find the Kakodemoss base here. I’ve—”

“Well that’s fan-fucking-tastic. You’re doing something
now
so everything’s just peachy,” I snapped sarcastically as I rolled my eyes. “Well,
fuck
you! Where the hell were
you
when my little brother was being jabbed full of so many needles we don’t even know
what
the fuck he is anymore? Where were you when a Kakodemoss agent infiltrated The Embassy and nearly blew Nualla to the fucking stars,
huh
? Where were you when all the other shit went down that was caused by
your
fucking experiments? Because you sure as fucking hell weren’t here ‘protecting’ us! I’ve nearly lost every person who ever meant anything to me because
you
couldn’t do your fucking job!”

“
Hey
! Do you think I don’t
know
that?! Do you think I don’t blame myself everyday that nearly all my friends are
dead
because I couldn’t keep them safe? That children—my
friend’s
children-were used in experiments
I
designed?” Kiskei shouted back as he moved purposely toward me.

“You may hate me right now, Travis, but I can
promise
you that you will never hate me as much as I hate myself. So go ahead, hate me. Hate me for listening to Kass. For helping make those chips. For thinking I knew more than the stars,” Kiskei continued to shout as he gestured wildly. “But you
cannot
blame me for not saving someone I didn’t even know needed saving!”

“They wouldn’t have
needed
saving if you hadn’t made those damn things in the first place!” I screamed at him, as I moved within striking distance. One of us was going down, and it wasn’t going to be
me
.

“I
know
that! But blaming me won’t bring them back, either, Travis! Trust me, if my death could bring them back, I would do it in a heartbeat. But the universe doesn’t work that way, and you know it!”

I opened my mouth to hurl more angry words back at him, but I couldn’t. He was right. I hated him for it, but he was right. No matter what I did—what
anyone
did—I would never be able to turn back time. Never be able to save my parents. To save Patrick from all those experiments. There was nothing—absolutely
nothing
—I could do. And what I hated more than anything in the world was that helpless feeling. Of things being completely out of my control.

I dropped my eyes and unclenched my fists. I had been clenching them so tightly that there were angry red cuts in my palms, and a small trail of blood had started to snake its way across my skin. “What am I supposed to do, then?” I asked in a low voice, my bottom lip quivering.

Don’t cry, you idiot. You’ll never forgive yourself if you cry right now.

“What?” Kiskei asked uncertainly, caught off guard by my sudden change in tone.

“What am I supposed to
do
?” I asked again in a choked voice as I slumped down into a heap on the floor. “He was my little brother. I should have been there to protect him. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t do
anything
!” My shoulders sagged in utter defeat, my arms falling lifelessly to the wooden floor. Because as much as everyone else had failed Patrick, I had failed him the most.

“Travis?” Kiskei asked hesitantly.

I didn’t answer, just continued to stare into nothing as I tried desperately to keep it all in. But like everything else, it was a useless failure.

My body shook as I tried to stop the onslaught of tears that were escaping down my cheeks.
I said not to cry, you idiot!

“There wasn’t anything we could do then, but we can
now
,” Kiskei continued gently.

“What?” I asked with a sniffle, still unable to get my shaking body back under my control.

“What I
actually
came here to tell you tonight was that we have to go brief the Amurai for the mission,” he said as he crouched down in front of me.

“What mission?” I asked, looking up.

“The rescue mission.”

I just stared at him in non-comprehension as the tears continued to slide down my face.

“You didn’t look over
all
the files did you?” Kiskei asked with a small sigh.

I shook my head, because I couldn’t manage to find the words to say something.

“The address of the Kakodemoss facility—it was hidden in there,” Kiskei said as he stood, and held out a hand to help me to my feet.

“What?” I said, finally able to make my lips work again.

A small weary smile spread across his lips. “Travis, we know where they are.”