Wrapped in Starlight
Kiiki has spent ten years in the Dome, the first to be dumped there when she was fourteen. Now, the Citadel is offering her a chance to get out and she is not hesitating. Her family will keep, she needs out
NOW.
Harken is a cloud-formed Nishan and Kiiki’s new partner. How can she trust a man who can choose any shape he wishes on a world where they want her to use her power talent for hours a day?
Her attraction to her strange companion grows with his appreciation of her skills. By the end of the assignment, she is incomplete without him, and he is obsessed with protecting her. Her injuries have occurred because of the nature of her talent, and there is nothing more frustrating than a protector who cannot protect his charge from herself.
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The power was out in the entire city. There were no lights glowing where once the thriving carnival had pumped a glow into the night sky.
Kiiki and Nilla were at the top of the great wheel, the highest point for two hundred miles, and they were stuck.
“Kiiki, we are going to die up here. I just know it!” Nilla’s hands were tight on the security bar.
“We are not going to die. They will get the power going, and we will rotate gently back to the ground without dying. Keep calm and relax. Enjoy what there is of the view.”
“There is no light, nothing to see by!” Nilla was jerking around in her seat, looking this way and that.
Kiiki sighed and sat back. “There is the starlight. Relax and let your eyes adjust to the night. The starlight gives plenty to see by, a lovely world of blue and white.”
Nilla was quivering, but she remained calm for a full hour with Kiiki’s efforts of distraction used to their limits.
Kiiki smiled in relief as Nilla began to look at the tiny bits of light that the universe provided, and she used them to see the city in the distance.
The ride that they were trapped on shuddered when a man below them, tired of waiting, clung to the edge of his car as it swayed wildly. “I have to try.”
Nilla screamed as the man dropped eighty feet and landed, twisted on the ground. The eerie light of the stars outlined his body.
Nilla sobbed, “We have to get down. We have to get down.”
Kiiki nodded. “You are right. We have to get down.”
Holding her friend tight to her shoulder, Kiiki wrapped herself in starlight and grabbed the safety bar. Her body turned the light into energy, and the mechanism of the wheel began to slowly move.
Couples ran from the wheel as it slowly rotated down to let them off.
Kiiki kept the power flowing into the ride and ignored Nilla’s shocked stares.
When their seat slowly lowered into place, Kiiki released the safety bar and whispered to Nilla, “Get off. I have to ride it until everyone has gotten off. Run, so that they will not question you. The cameras went down with the power, hide your face, change your clothes and forget you ever met me.”
“You are…”
“I am what I have always been, but I have never needed to use it. Who knew that carnival night would involve a citywide blackout? You run, I will hide. They will find me, but I will soon be a schoolgirl memory. Go, Nilla. Go and don’t look back.”
Nilla looked as if she wanted to fight, but instead, she tumbled off the ride as soon as she was able while Kiiki climbed into the sky once again.
Kiiki sighed and stood on the swinging chair that had housed her and her friend. When the final person was away, when there was no one else in danger, she did something she had only practiced once. She jumped off the ride and flew in a column of icy light.
They would catch her. They couldn’t help but follow her power signature. Her free time was finite, but before they caught her, she was spending an evening wrapped in starlight.
She perched in a lookout tower that let the Dome occupants know when they needed to conceal the parts of their talent that fought their way out of the restrictor suits.
Kiiki’s power was electrically expressed, so the restrictor suit had no chance to make its way into her flesh. One night in the Dome with the starlight shining on her, the suit had screeched in protest, but had given up its attempts to dampen her energy.
The lookout tower was her home. Few fliers were strong enough to make it up and back again. Kiiki could manage it without trouble.
A gong sounded on the ground level near the council chambers, and she got to her feet. With the wind snapping around her, she jumped into the open air and wrapped herself in electric currents, surfing slowly in a wide spiral until she was standing in front of the hall.
The council was waiting for her, and she took her seat.
One of the male talents, Cerran, spoke. “Kiiki, we have heard that the Citadel is negotiating for your skills. You may be called out, and if you go, we want to you try and get a message back to us. Physical talents are not all being brought to the Dome, and we need to find out where they are going. Our sources say they are alive, but no one can say where.”
Kiiki frowned. “How do you know this?”
Urik filled it in. “One of the new arrivals had a sister in psychic service. She told her sister everything she knew about the plans for the talents, but she disappeared days before her sister was brought here for a stone-manipulating talent.”
“Oh, Shehrail. She is worried for her sister.” Kiiki nodded. “It appears she has reason to be. Why would the Citadel want me?”
The councillors laughed, and Voopil gave her a look that said she was not too bright. “You are a source of unlimited energy. If Resicor was not bound by laws against your style of talent, you would have been an emergency response team and have travelled to every natural disaster on this world.”
Kiiki shrugged. “Well, I was one of the only talents snagged as a teen, so there might be some truth to that. The complete lockdown of physical talents came just before I manifested. I guess they were caught by their own regulations.”
The council degraded into a conversation about politics of psychics and what the mental manipulators were up to.
Kiiki listened absently with a slight smile on her face. She was getting out and into the direct caress of starlight. Sunlight and moonlight would touch her skin once again with no barrier to weaken them. It was almost too much to hope for.
It was a personal joke to her that the restrictor suit that was supposed to bind her talent merely provided insulation for her. She left the suit’s capabilities for insulation and bodily control intact but channelled her power around the fabric that touched her skin.
She could and did remove the suit when she felt like it, but it was simply easier to wear it and blend in with the other talents in the Dome.
A flaring light on the ground got her attention. With light ease, she dropped from her watchtower and glided to the ground.
“Yes, Urik, what do you want?” She stood before the hulk of the strongest man in the Dome and blinked curiously.
“Togger believes he has regained some of his accelerated movement. We wish to test him. Will you help?” The grin on his dark features had a hint of cruelty, and the rest was amused anticipation.
Kiiki chuckled and walked into the council chambers with him. “Of course I will help.”
It was traditional to use one working talent to test the
ability
of the new ones. Togger had been in the Dome for two weeks and chafed at his assigned chores. If he wanted a new assignment beyond delivering meals to the domiciles, he was going to have to prove himself.
Kiiki took the seat that allowed the light of the moons and stars to come to her. No one sat near her—they knew better. “Put the lines down, Urik. Let’s see if Togger is as fast as he says.”
Togger was shifting nervously, his weight rocking from foot to foot. He was twenty-five, but in the light of evening, he looked to be about fourteen.
Urik and a few of the others rolled out strands of wire. They were insulated, but they would allow Togger a measure of safety.
From her seat, Kiiki eyed Togger. “So, how do you want to do this?”
He blushed furiously, and with a sigh, Kiiki realised that she was still younger than this fool. “I will start with an arc ball, and all you have to do is ground it to have it dissipate.”
She concentrated and held her hand out, watching a mild dose of energy form a ball in her palm.
He swallowed, “Will it hurt?”
She released it, and it struck out at him with a bolt of energy before whizzing around behind him. “Only if you don’t catch it.”
A bolt zapped him in the ass, and the ball swung away, taunting him.
Kiiki had her lids half closed, watching his energy field as he powered up. She could see the electric impulses of his body when she sat in the starlight. A fine map of miniscule wires showed her his nervous system, and as he fought to wake his talent and fight free of the suit, he vibrated slightly.
She controlled the ball with the speed of thought, zapping him in differing areas as he tried and failed to catch it. Kiiki kept it at chest level so that he could grab it if he caught up to it, but his speed never reached more than slightly superhuman.
After twenty minutes, he was sweating, and she was getting a headache. “Enough. Togger, give it some time. Urik, did you bother telling him that the restrictor suit isn’t functional beyond the basics? He is fighting something that isn’t even there.”
Urik sighed. “You have spoiled my fun, Kiiki.”
Togger was standing in place, astonished. “What?”
Kiiki got to her feet. “The suit you are wearing runs your biological functions and keeps you clean, but aside from that, it doesn’t do squat. Sure, it’s bonded to your skin, but with the right stimulus, it might be convinced to remove itself. Oddly enough, most newcomers don’t realise it. They are told it keeps them restricted, and they accept it. The rest of us had to fight our way out of the fields, and we wanted it more than life itself. I have known ten talents who died while trying to free themselves. What did you do beyond trying to stretch a little?”
Togger was opening and closing his mouth in shock when Kiiki’s suit spoke to her.
“Kiiki Waythorp, please report to the entryway.” It was more polite than most summons.
Kiiki looked to all her friends, the only family she had had on a daily basis for ten years. “I suppose that this means goodbye for now.”
Togger was shocked. “You are a Waythorp, and they still locked you up?”
Kiiki lit her body with the glow that the stars gave her. “Do you think that this could be covered up for long? Even with their influence, my parents could only arrange a second visit every year under the guise of an assessment.”
Her suit chirped a reminder. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I have an appointment to keep. I will return when I can.”
Urik cocked his head, “You want to return?”
Kiiki nodded, “For better or worse, this is my home. I just want to feel the light on my skin once again.”
She left the council hall without a backward glance. Her goodbyes had already been said, tears shed. There was nothing left but the future and a brighter possibility.
The path to the only entry into the Dome was well worn by folks pacing back and forth in an effort to calm them with the only contact with the rest of Resicor.
Kiiki heard her suit chirp again and pressed the button for the door. It scanned her hand and opened to allow her in.
The airlock was just as she remembered it—snug, hostile and filled with armed men. Even her visits with family were done under the fully armed escort that kept her in their sights.
Three new figures were waiting next to her parents.
“Mama, Papa. How are you this fine evening?”
Her parents rushed forward, ignoring the audible clicks of weapons.
Kiiki let tears fall as she stood in her family’s embrace.
Her mother whispered frantically. “They suspect that you have broken free of the suit, so we pulled every string we could to get you off Resicor. Go with these folk from the Citadel and live a good and happy life.”
Kiiki stood straight and brushed at her cheeks. “I will make you proud.”
Her mother caressed her cheek, and her father held her shoulder. As one, they spoke, “You already have.”
Kiiki smiled at their touch and the touch in her mind that mimicked the physical. There were downsides to having two telepaths as parents, but there was a freedom in always living an honest life. If you didn’t have to hide anything, you were fine. Concealing information was like sending up a flare.
Their position in local government and as a respectable family had been called into question with a daughter who flew, but a few well-placed bribes and she had been sent to the Dome with little fanfare. Her parents were upstanding citizens, and ten years ago, there had been no off-world option. Now, things were different.
The information flooded into Kiiki’s mind as well as the location to nine different credit accounts she could access if she needed to. It was the only gift they could give her as they sent her on her way. They might never see her again, but if she touched those accounts, they would know she was well and living on her own.
One of the Citadel personnel stepped forward. His voice boomed in the quiet room. “Kiiki, please come with us. We have a launch window.”
She nodded, gripped each of her parents in turn and followed the folk with the swaying robes out into the moonlight. She didn’t need to say goodbye—she would be back as soon as she could arrange it.