The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (8 page)

Travis looked at me a moment after my words drifted to silence, and then bowed his head. I lowered the pendant over his head, and didn’t release it until my fingers brushed against the fabric of his midnight blue
haori
, and he finally raised his eyes to look at me. There were so many unspoken words captured behind those eyes. So much that you could never explain to people. So much you would only
truly
understand if you had been there with us, walking through those bodies. And this stupid piece of metal, no matter how beautiful, would never be enough to make up for what he had been willing to sacrifice.

“By the power vested in me by She, Most Brightest in the Sky, I, Nualla Galathea, Arius of Karalia, name you, Travis Centrina, son of Joshua Centrina and Misaki Tashiro, Travis Centrina Viliyata,” I announced in as loud a voice as I could manage past the lump in my throat. And then I dropped slowly to my knees, and bowed my head. “May the gods reward your courage in this life, and the next.”

“From the stars we are born, and to the stars we must, one day, return,” the assembled crowd called out loudly in unison before the sound of three thousand people dropping to their knees filled the courtyard.

TRAVIS

I
had thought standing up in
front of a room full of hundreds of people to accept the position of director of the Department of Technical Research and Development had been anxiety-inducing enough. But I don’t think I had ever felt more uncomfortable in my entire life as I did when over three thousand people dropped to their knees, and bowed before me.

But it was Nualla dropping to her knees in front of me, in full
chancellarius
regalia, that really did a number on the already frantic beating of my heart. Because aside from this one honor, the
chancellarius
only bowed before one set of people. The gods. And as I stood there, stone still, waiting for them all to raise back to their feet, I wondered if everyone else who had received this honor had felt like a fraud. Or if it was just me.

Unidentified Species

Monday, November 5th

TRAVIS

“D
irector Travis Centrina Viliyata, director
of the Department of Technical Research and Development,” KARA announced as I stood in the biometric scanner booth, watching the screen. The species section on screen flashed between
Kalodaemon
and
Marked One
before finally announcing
error
.

“Error, unidentified species,” KARA stated loudly.

“Dammit!” I cursed as I stomped back over to the computer.

I ran through the code again, but nothing—absolutely
nothing
—seemed to be wrong, and yet the scanner array seemed to be broken.

Because of The Embassy closure I had spent the last month working out of a rented office across the street from The Embassy, doing everything I could to complete the Kalo Automated Response Assistant program. Well, everything I could do without being able to access the
actual
KARA, because she was in said Embassy lab. Labs we couldn’t actually gain access to until today. So this was the first time I had been able to run the new biometric program I had designed through the scanner booth we had built shortly before the attack. All that work and the thing wasn’t even frakking working.

“What’s wrong?” my assistant Akiko asked as she came up and placed another cup of coffee on the table, removing the empty one.

“Oh, nothing. Just weeks worth of work down the drain,” I snapped sarcastically as I slumped down into my chair, and folded my arms across my chest. I had spent the last four hours trying to get the damn biometric scanner program to work, and now I was so frustrated I wanted to chuck the damn thing out the nearest window. Which would have been a real feat of skill considering the tech labs were in one of the sub-basements of The Embassy, and the thing basically looked like an eight-foot-tall silver gazebo.

“Huh?” Akiko asked, her eyebrows raising above her pair of thick-framed cat-eyed glasses with the slightest tinge of blue to the lenses. Akiko was the only daemon I had ever met who wore glasses. But then again, she was
also
the only one I knew who had
nekkrothea
, the rare genetic condition that rendered her unable to see our world in much the same way as Marked Ones.

“The biometric scanner is throwing back an error, and I have no frakking clue why,” I clarified as I picked up the coffee.

“What kind of error?” she asked as her black-blue eyes flicked toward the scanner booth.

“It can’t seem to— You know what, just go stand in the damn thing and see for yourself,” I said sourly before folding my arm across my chest, and taking a sip of the coffee.

Humoring me, Akiko walked over and stood in the center of the biometric scanner booth.

“Akiko Miyakawa, assistant to the Director of the Department of Technical Research and Development, Kalodaemon,” KARA announced.

I just gaped at the screen, my coffee cup halfway to my mouth. “Well of course
now
it works,” I said with an exasperated huff.

“What was it doing before?” Akiko asked as she walked out of the booth, and joined me next to the computer.

“It worked fine until it got to the species—” I stopped talking. The species section. The
species
section was having a hard time determining my species.

“Travis?” Akiko asked in a curious voice.

“Huh?” I replied, turning my head toward her.

“You didn’t finish.”

“Oh, um, ignore me, everything’s fine,” I said in the most reassuring voice I could manage as I turned back toward the computer, and pretended to be looking over the code.

Akiko looked at me suspiciously for a moment longer, but then continued on her rounds of the labs.

When she was far enough away I looked down at my hands. The virus. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me earlier. The mutation had
changed
us—changed us to something
other
than Kalodaemon.

As nonchalantly as I could, I slipped on my ear-piece. “KARA, Call Kiskei Kirihara,” I instructed her.

The other line rang three times, and then Kiskei picked up. “Hello, Travis, what did you—?”

“We’ve got a problem,” I said quietly, cutting him off.

“What
kind
of problem?” Kiskei asked in an equally low voice with an edge to it.

“Uh…”

“Do I need to come down to the tech labs?”

I looked around the labs, there were
way
too many people around for this conversation.

“Not such a good idea. I’ll meet you in your office,” I said quickly before tapping the button on the ear-piece to disconnect the call.

“So what’s going on, Travis?” Kiskei asked when I walked into his office.

“It’s, ah…the biometric scanner booth,” I replied in a startled voice, caught off guard. I was fairly certain that Kiskei didn’t spend a whole hell of a lot of time meeting with people, being that you had to walk past most of the labs in the Department of Medical Research and Development to actually
get
to his office. But still, he hadn’t needed to look up to know it was me that had entered his office.

“What, is it not working?” he asked, finally looking up from the screen on the desk in front of him. His black-blue eyes as serious as a knife’s blade.

“No, it’s working alright,” I replied, blowing out a long breath of air.

Kiskei narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Then what’s the problem?”

“It won’t identify anyone with the K1-2012 mutation as
Kalodaemon
.”

“
Oh
,” Kiskei said, his eyebrows shooting up. “That
is
a problem.”

“On the bright side, no Kakodaemon will
ever
get past that system,” I stated as I jabbed my thumb back in the direction of the door.

Kiskei stood and started pacing his office, his hand curled up against his mouth in thought. Pieces of his pitch-black hair spilling free from his ponytail each time he turned, so that when he stopped, they formed a dark forest on either side of his face. Reminding me once again that if anyone had ever looked like a
ronin
lost in the wrong era, it was Kiskei Kirihara.

“If I could get you the genetic markers for the K1-2012 mutation could you add them to the list for Kalodaemons?” he asked as he traced his fingers across the ePapers covering his desk.

“Well sure,” I answered as I ran my hand back through my hair. “But wouldn’t it be easier just to make a new designator like we did for Neodaemons?”

“Yes, but I think we should hold off until we fully understand the extent of the mutation.”

The emotions flowing off of him were making me uneasy. It was almost like he was trying to—

“Travis?”

“Hmm?” I replied as I jerked my head up to look at him.

“Will that work?” he asked as he arched his eyebrows for emphasis.

“Yeah, just get me the data, and I’ll include it in the system,” I replied distractedly.

“Well, for that, I’ll need you to go visit Parker in lab 7B.”

“Why?” I asked suspiciously. I mean, I loved
any
excuse to go see Parker, but Kiskei’s emotions were putting me on edge.

“So she can run your blood against someone who’s
actually
still a Kalodaemon.”

The Truth Is Whatever You Make It

Monday, November 5th

TRAVIS

“S
o why are you only sticking
me
with needles?” I asked as I watched Parker slide the needle into the crook of my arm.

The Embassy hadn’t officially reopened until today, but a few of us had been allowed back into our labs ahead of time. So other than a lot of cleanup and a new door, my office had been fine. And the subbasement tech labs had been untouched. However, apparently nearly all the experiments in the med labs had been spoiled. Which meant all of the blood samples they had taken from Patrick and Nualla had had to be dumped, and they were in need of a fresh batch.

“Because your brother is sociologically damaged,” she answered as she filled up another vial with my blood. Her beautiful British accent coating the words like syrup. A result of her living in Kaigan Kirian until her and Kiskei had moved to Seattle when she was fourteen.

“And you’re saying I’m not?” I asked with a crooked, ironic smirk.

She gave me a wry smile, and rolled her startlingly blue eyes at me. “
And
he has a pathological fear of needles.”

“And Nualla?”

Parker looked at me with playful dubiousness, her long, Norwegian blond ponytail bouncing slightly with the movement. “She’s an
arius
, I can’t very well go around sticking her with needles, can I?” She had a point, Nualla was already in the tabloids enough as it was.

“So you get to be my guinea pig,” Parker continued on in the same playful voice.

I stiffened, Patrick had been someone’s guinea pig for fifteen years. Just how many times had he been subjected to injections before he learned to fear the needles? And had he developed that fear consciously, or had they taken so much of his memory away that it had become just a slow building aversion until it boiled over?

Parker froze when she realized what she had said. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way—I didn’t think—”

“It’s okay,” I said stiffly, because it really wasn’t. “Are we done here?” I asked in a clipped voice. “Or did you need more?”

“No, that—that should be enough,” she said as she placed the syringe into the carrying case next to the others.

“Cool,” I said as I slipped my lab coat back on, and started toward the door. The clock on the wall said it was already nearly three o’clock, and I had promised Chan-rin that I would be there when she got out of her first day of school.

Parker’s hand darted out, and she grabbed my wrist. I stopped, and turned slowly back toward her.

She looked up at me, her eyes large and pleading. “I’m
really
sorry, Travis.”

There was normally a fierce wildness behind her eyes that scared me to death. That, and the fact that she was Kiskei’s daughter. But at the same time, I knew that fierce wildness was something I’d walk through fire for the chance to have. It was normally there—that fierceness—but not at the moment. No, at
this
moment her eyes held only vulnerability and uncertainty. And it was that fragileness beneath the cracking veneer of confidence that made me pull her toward me.

I hadn’t kissed Parker since that first time in my bedroom two and a half months ago. There had been way too much going on between then and now to figure out just where we stood. But as I slipped my fingers behind her neck, deepening the kiss, I didn’t care, because all I wanted to do was kiss her.

Gods
, I didn’t know how you could miss something as much as I missed kissing her, but I did. Right down to my bones.

She let out a soft moan against my lips as I pressed her back against the counter behind her. Bringing my other hand up to cup her face, my thumb against her cheek. And then my phone alarm started buzzing in my pocket, and I pulled away from her.

“I’m really,
really
sorry, but I have to go,” I said as I all but bolted from the room.

I rounded the corner that lead to the school section of The Embassy at three fifteen, and was already thinking of ways I could make it up to Chan-rin. The hall was mostly deserted except for two girls looking to be in the eighth grade by the way they filled out their uniforms.

The Embassy school uniforms were unlike anything that any
other
school in the city had. The girl’s uniforms especially. They had a Japanese flair to them, but they looked closer to the Victorian era than they did a Japanese school girl. Knee-length gray dresses with wide short bell sleeves like someone had cut a kimono top off at the elbows. And the emblem of the region embroidered over the heart on the light-blue sailor suit collar.

“Um, excuse me, do you know where Miss Lovelle’s classroom is?” I asked one of the girls.

She turned, and made no attempt to conceal the way her eyes appraised me. “It’s down that hall,” she answered with a mischievous smirk to her lips. “Third room on the right.”

“Thanks,” I replied as I swallowed hard, continuing in the direction she had pointed. The emotions rolling off her were like a slap to the face. And I was fairly certain that in a year or three she was going to cause the boys in her class an
unbelievable
amount of trouble.

The next hallway was completely desolate except for a slight, blond Marked One sitting on the floor against the wall. Her knees pulled up to her chest and her chin resting on them.

Frak.

“Hey, Chan-rin, I’m sorry I’m—” I started as I reached her.

She leapt up, and threw her arms around my middle. And that’s when I noticed she was crying. The realization hitting me hard like a punch to the heart.

“Chan-rin, what’s wrong?” I asked as I folded her in my arms.

“They made fun of Chan-rin because Chan-rin has no last name,” she wailed as she buried her face in my stomach.

“Oh,
mai chisaya astari
,” I said as I smoothed her hair.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I should have known—should have known how cruel kids could be. They had been mean when I was in school, and I didn’t think a whole hell of a lot had changed since then.

I pulled her hands gently from around me, and crouched down in front of her. “Of course you have a last name, Chan-rin. It’s Centrina, same as mine, same as Aku’s was before he married Arius Nualla.”

“Really?” she asked me with large eyes that nearly broke my heart.

“Promise,” I said with a gentle smile as I tapped her nose with my finger.

She scrunched her nose up at my touch and then threw her arms around me again, speaking so fast in Daemotic that I was only able to make out a few words.
Abandon… Family… Belonging.

When she finally released me, I smiled reassuringly at her again. “Chan-rin, can you wait here for me while I go speak with your teacher?” She looked at me a bit uncertainly. “Then we’ll go get ice cream,” I promised.

“Okay, Big-Big Brother,” she replied cheerfully, her eyes disappearing into happy slits. “Can we go get Nikko first? Nikko has never had ice cream,” Chan-rin asked as she clasped her hands behind her, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.

I tried to keep the smile plastered on my face, because when Chan-rin asked if Nikko—her purple stuffed rabbit—could have something too, it meant that Chan-rin had never had it herself. And every time I realized this it made me want to cry. “Of course.”

I walked down the hall until I reached Chan-rin’s classroom, and poked my head in.

“Um, excuse me, are you Miss Lovelle?” I asked a woman who could only really be a few years older than me, at best.

“Yes, can I help you?” Miss Lovelle asked, looking up from the tablet at her desk.

I walked into the room, and couldn’t stop myself from remembering how I had vowed
never
to set foot in The Embassy classrooms ever again.

“I know it’s the first day back, but there seems to have been a mistake on the roster, and my little sister’s last name got left off.” It wasn’t a lie, not really. Chan-rin was our little sister in all but name.

Miss Lovelle looked at me for a moment, and then asked in stunned disbelief, “
You’re
Chan-rin’s brother?”

“Travis Centrina,” I said as I held out my hand to her. “The director of the Department of Technical Research and Development.”

“I know who you are,” she replied as she slowly placed her hand in mine. Her eyes wide with wonder as I shook her hand. “I was there on Saturday.”

“Oh,” I said, pulling my hand away from hers. She was looking at me with a strange sort of awe that made me unbelievably uncomfortable. “Well, uh, about the name…”

“Yes, right,” Miss Lovelle said quickly, snapping out of her daze. She slid her fingers across the tablet in front of her, and typed into it. “It won’t show up on the official records until later since they are considerably backlogged at the Department of Records, but I can start reading it off tomorrow in class.”

“That would be great, thanks,” I said as I shifted my weight, and tried to think of what to say next. I had never had a problem lying through my teeth in the past, but for some reason it had gotten so much harder lately.

“Well, Chan-rin’s waiting for me in the hall, so I should be going,” I said uneasily as I gestured out to the hallway.

“Congratulations on your award, Director Centrina Viliyata.”

“Um, thanks,” I said before I turned, and started toward the door. I wished everyone would just call me Travis, because all the honorifics people were slapping onto my name were giving me anxiety.

As I reached the door I stopped, and turned back around. “Oh, and if Chan-rin doesn’t seem to understand you, try asking her again in Daemotic. Because English isn’t her first language; Daemotic is.”

Miss Lovelle nodded, and then she leaned over her desk toward me. “Can I ask, why
chan-rin
? Why fourteen? I’m sorry if that seems rude, but I’ve been wondering all day.”

Because that was the designator they tattooed onto her back at the Kakodemoss facility. Right before they did gods-only-knows-what to her.

I justed stared at Miss Lovelle, and let a smile spread across my lips to mask the lie. “Because that’s how long my parents had been married when she was born,” I stated before I turned to leave.

Because sometimes the truth was whatever you made it.