The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (40 page)

The baby! How could you forget about the baby? Her baby
—your
baby
, I admonished myself within my own head.

“However, my leg most definitely
is
broken,” Parker continued with a grimace.

I nodded one short nod, and stood quickly. Gritting my teeth as I prepared to lift her.

“What are you
doing
?” Parker asked as I wrapped my arms around her, and lifted her up.

“Getting you somewhere safe,” I answered through gritted teeth. Trying my hardest to ignore the pain shooting through my body, and how very wet my kimono top was. Telling myself it was only sweat, but not really believing it.

“But you’re hurt,” Parker protested as we started to make our ascent back up the stairs.

“So are
you
. And I’ll be
damned
if I’m just gonna stick around and wait for someone to get us.”

A Monster Hiding behind a Smile

Tuesday, January 1st

PATRICK

P
atrick, get up
, Aku said
urgently, but I just couldn’t make myself move.

Patrick, you need to get up
, Aku said a little more fervently, but still I just laid there.

PATRICK!
Aku shouted, and I finally opened one of my eyes as the blurred shapes of shoes came into view.

I furrowed my brow, confused at the odd angle of them until I realized my cheek was resting on the cold, white linoleum of the corridor floor.

I looked up slowly to the owner of the shoes as he looked down at me.

Eskel
, Aku growled with seething hatred.

“Aku?” Eskel asked in confusion, his head cocking to one side like a viper before it struck.

A painful surge raced up my spine, and I nearly threw up.

We have to fight him together!
Aku pleaded urgently.
It’s the only way.

Fight who?
I managed past the pain.

The other us. The one Eskel controls. The one with no soul.

How?

You have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. Eskel will know we are resisting if we show any hint of emotion.

I don’t think I can,
I moaned.

There was a pause and then Aku said,
Then give me control.

What?

I have much more practice pretending to be him.

Aku—

Do you trust me?

Did I? Did I trust Aku to let me come back once this was all over?

He warned you about the Machanta, didn’t he?
Some small part of me in the back of my mind whispered.

I closed my eyes, and did what was quite possibly the hardest thing I had ever done.
Okay.
And then I let go.

A heartbeat later my eyes slid open, but not because I had moved them. My body rose up slowly into a sitting position and my head tipped forward, looking at the floor.

“
What does Director E ask of Aku?
” my voice asked in Daemotic, an eerie, unfeeling calm to it.

“
Find out what is going on. Cut down any enemy who gets in Aku’s way. And when Aku is done, Aku is to return to Aku’s room,
” Eskel ordered in Daemotic.

“
It will be done, Sir,
” Aku stated, my lips moving robotically through the motions.

Without another thought, Eskel passed us on his way to the Machanta room.

What are we going to do now?
I asked Aku within my own head.

We’re going to do what he asked,
Aku answered as he moved silently to his feet. The only sound the soft
click-whoosh
of the
wakizashi’s
scabbard retracting to become the blade’s guard.

We’re going to do
what
?!
I asked Aku incredulously.

Patrick, you need to trust me—

Trust you?! You just said we were going to kill—

Enemies. Eskel ordered us to take down enemies. And right now, he’s the only one here.

Oh.

Yes,
oh
. So will you please stop shouting for one moment? This is painful enough as it is without you shouting at me, too.

Painful?
But even as I asked it, I heard the strange electronic screaming growing louder with every step Aku took back toward the Machanta room.

I’m going to need your help
, Aku said as we moved forward.

Well, you’ve got it, because I’m sure as hell not going anywhere.

Aku didn’t say anything after that, but I knew he was smiling.

Eskel was standing in the doorway of the Machanta Room, unmoving. Clearly caught off guard by the destruction before him. Which gave us the only advantage we would ever need.

Aku stepped up close to Eskel as silent as a shadow. So stealthily that Eskel didn’t even know we were there until the blade of Shawn’s
wakizashi
was being held to his throat.

Eskel tensed, and froze deadly still. “How did you overcome the program?” he asked in an unbelievably calm voice—in English, this time.

“We accepted that me and him are one and the same,” Aku answered through gritted teeth. The screeching of the Machanta was almost unbearable, like an ice pick to the skull. But it seemed to be having little to no effect on Eskel, which meant it was only us—those with chips—that could probably hear it.

“So which of you is it that is talking to me now?” Eskel asked in the same unconcerned voice.

“The one who desires your death from the bottom of his soul,” Aku answered, his eyes narrowing in pained concentration.

“Of course,” Eskel replied with an amused huff.

“You don’t seem very concerned to have a blade to your throat.”

“When you create a monster, you should never be surprised when it comes to devour your soul,” Eskel stated, his cruel smile reflected in the shine of one miraculously untouched black monitor screen.

“You have no soul,” Aku spat savagely, his hold on the titanium blade tightening. “Someone who would do those things to his
own
people could never have a soul.”

“My people? That’s an interesting notion,” Eskel said as if he had never considered the idea. “You are wrong, however. The Kakodaemons are not my people.” Aku opened our mouth to interject, but Eskel continued on. “And neither are the Kalodaemons, or even the Marked Ones.”

Eskel let out a heavy sigh and made to turn, but Aku pressed the blade closer and he froze again.

“You are all so in love with being separate—of
hating
each other for your differences—that you have all lost sight of the most important thing.”

“And what is that?” Aku asked derisively.

“That we were the children of the gods—the stars. That we were as close to immortal as anything on this wretched planet
ever
will be. And we just let it slip away from us as if it was nothing. So
what
if a few have to die so that we can regain our birthright? I will not dishonor their noble sacrifice by letting conscience get the better of me.”

And that’s when I realized that we were all just lab rats to him. Just interesting things he could watch, and tinker with in his pursuit for near-godhood. And worse, that he believed, with total conviction, that all the atrocities he had committed, were right.

“You’re sick, you know that?” Aku said in stunned disgust.

“We all are, that’s the point,” Eskel said with a slightly unhinged bark of laughter. “We are all in such desperate need of fixing.”

I could feel Aku’s anger boiling up, mixing with my own and overtaking the pain so there was nothing left of us but a seething pillar of unbridled rage.

“I’m going to kill you now,” Aku stated, a deadly edge to his voice like a titanium tipped blade.

“I made you too good a warrior to ever doubt that you would do otherwise,” Eskel said as he stared unflinchingly back at us through the reflection of the dark screen. And then his eyes slid shut.

We had him. We
finally
had him. All those years he had done all those horrific things to me—to Aku—and now we finally had him. I could feel Aku’s rush of emotions like an approaching hurricane. The almost sickening desire to slide the blade across Eskel’s throat. To watch the acidy green blood pour down the front of his pristinely white
sherwani
coat like rain. And I reached out gladly to let the emotions sweep over me, but something—something in the back of my mind was screaming a warning.

Why isn’t he resisting?
I asked suddenly.

Because he had to have known that it would someday end like this
, Aku answered with a strange, twisted glee.

Maybe…
I agreed reluctantly, but even as I did, I realized something was off. Eskel was as ruthless as he was cruel, but no one in their right mind would just stand by waiting to die. Not unless—

No, Aku, stop! Something’s not right!
I cried out frantically as I tried to regain control of my body.

Stop fighting me, Patrick! He deserves to die! The bastard deserves to
—

Eskel’s body arched suddenly toward the blade as he took what was nearly his last breath. The deadly sharp blade of the titanium
wakizashi
slicing a line as thin as the edge of a sheet of paper across the crease of his neck.

Parakalo makara Nikkollas mai Chan,
someone pleaded inside my mind. A familiar voice. A voice that had been a constant companion within my head for years. A voice I would have known anywhere.

And Aku froze.
Patrick?
he asked uncertainly within my head.

I think you and I both know that wasn’t me
, I replied.

And he had to know it wasn’t me. That it was Nikkollas, because these memories—these memories of that voice—were his, long before they had ever been mine. But even if we hadn’t recognized the voice, it was the simple hopeless plea cloaked in anguish—
Please forgive me my One
—that gave it away.

Aku didn’t retract the blade in case it was a trick. “Nikkollas?” he asked cautiously.

The person sucked in a startled breath of air, and his eyes flashed open. He turned slowly—careful to avoid slitting his own throat—and looked over his shoulder at us. And then he raised his hands slowly, to show he wasn’t a threat, but Aku didn’t let down his guard for a second.

“Aku?” Nikkollas asked in a hesitant voice. Both of his hands went slowly to the pendant at his throat and he turned it, his hands shaking uncontrollably. His image shimmered and blurred and became someone else. Someone
I
recognized. Sure, he was a bit older, and the expression in his blue eyes looked haunted and deeply weary, but I was sure it was him. My parent’s friend. Nikkollas Varrook. Nikk.

It’s Nikk!
I shouted within my head.

Are you sure?
Aku asked guardedly.

Of course, we’ve seen his picture a dozen times. He was my—our parent’s friend.

I hope you’re certain
, Aku said reluctantly as he finally lowered the blade.

I am
, I said with slightly more confidence then I felt.

Nikk looked more closely at the blade, recognizing something we hadn’t, and relief spread across his face. “They’re here, aren’t they?” he asked, shining hope filled his eyes. “Josh and Mi, they’re finally coming.”

“They’re not coming,” Aku stated in a dead voice.

I wanted to throw up, because the sick, horrible truth of it had finally settled in like a noose around my throat. Eskel had been using the chip to control Nikkollas in the same way he had controlled us. Only worse, because Nikk had been waiting for a rescue that would never come. Because most of the people he had been waiting for were dead.

“That’s an Amurai blade, I’d recognize that type of hilt anywhere,” Nikk countered confidently.

“The Amurai are here…” Aku answered before swallowing hard. “Just not
them
.”

Nikk looked at Aku skeptically. “There’s no way Kiskei could have convinced them not to—”

“They’re dead,” Aku said in a strange, detached voice that didn’t sound like mine.

“How do you know?” Nikk asked distrustfully before his eyes filled with horror. “Did you
kill
them, Aku? Did they make you kill them?”

Aku shook our head. “I didn’t kill them.”

Nikk’s brow furrowed. “Than how do you—?”

“I know because I’m also Patrick Centrina-Galathea and they were my parents.”