Daughter of Destiny (18 page)

Zane shook off Coran’s
hand. "I’ve made up my mind, Coran. I’m going back, and I’m not
going to wait for IGC’s approval."

When they reached the
deployment office, Zane filed his resignation, and Coran went to
get his new orders. Afterward, they met up again in the
hall.

"Looks like this is it,
Zane.
Quizark G
oloths are causing problems again. I’m
shipping out tonight."

"I suppose that’s for the
best." Zane stepped toward Coran to clap him on the shoulder, but
changed his mind and gave him a brief hug instead. "Good luck.
You’ve been a good friend, and I thank you for that."

"I know I haven’t acted
like it, but I’m glad you found Katarina. She seems like a great
woman. I hope everything goes well for you two."

"Thank you, Coran." Zane
turned to go. Then he said over his shoulder, "Be careful out
there."

"You too."

***

Zane rented a small
domicile in Brakenlu, the largest city on Yopmar. It took a week to
find a ship that suited his purposes. Three times larger than the
small long distance recon ship he and Coran flew to Earth, it could
withstand ion storms, solar storms, and a whole host of natural and
unnatural occurrences without breaking down. He ordered the fastest
sub-light engines on the market and the newest in warp technology.
He even found a working cloaking device on the black market.
Holo-emitters combined with sensor screens were adequate for most
ships, but they wouldn't hold up to a detailed sensor scan. Two
months later, he finished the ship, rechristening it
Mi’ica
Praepa,
"Star Flyer".

Zane walked out of Yopmar
Interstellar Bank after naming Coran custodian of his account. He
wove in and out of the heavy pedestrian traffic with practiced
ease, as he planned his route out of the system. Atmospheric fliers
whipped by overhead, adding a deep thrumming noise to the cacophony
on the streets. Unlike Earth, no trees, flowers, or anything living
decorated the streets. Greenery could only be found in arboretums
and the wealthier residences. Wall-to-wall duratanium and
plasti-glass towered over him, interrupted only by the shadows of
alleyways.

Lost in vector
calculations, he paid no attention to the alleyway until a Goloth
leaped out at him from its dark abyss. Zane caught the movement in
time to spin away. His hand went to his waist for his service
phaser, but he no longer carried it; he was an unarmed civilian
now. Cursing his lapse of watchfulness. Zane turned to meet his
attacker. "Come on you krula fodder."

Instead of launching an
attack, the Goloth stood still, a sly smile crossing his
face.

Before Zane could reach out
to sense the Goloth’s intent, a broad arm wrapped around his chest
and the blunt end of a phaser dug into his back. Electricity rioted
through his nervous system, ripping his synapses raw as he
convulsed. He felt rough hands shove him into a vehicle before
darkness pulled him under.

***

"I don't care how much
money they university could make. We are not selling the patent.
I'm not letting some company charge insane fees for this treatment.
We got FDA approval and we can make enough to cover costs and
perhaps a little extra and still provide the treatment at an
affordable price."

The dean glowered at
Katarina from across the expanse of his glossy wood desk.
"You're

being exceedingly
short-sighted, Dr. O'Brian."

"I'm being humane. There's
a difference."

He leaned forward and
offered a smile she didn't trust. "Think of how much more research
you could accomplish. If we accept the offer your lab will
essentially be funded for the rest of your career."

"It's my patent and I'm not
selling; not to the company who priced the vaccine so high. Have
you watched the news? Hundreds have died. It might not be the
millions that died before we developed the vaccine, but those were
hundreds that shouldn't have gotten sick at all."

"You're being overly
simplistic, Dr. O'Brian. There are fools out there who don't
believe in vaccinations, and some of those people possibly got the
vaccine and it didn't take. There's been no study, so you can't
blame the cost of the vaccine on the recent outbreak."

"And the outbreak before
this one, and the one before that?"

"It takes time to vaccinate
an entire world population."

Katarina scowled. "Funny
how places like India and Africa keep reporting vaccine shortages
and death tolls higher than other countries." She cut off his
response with a curt shake of her head. "Nevermind. I'm not going
to waste my breath arguing politics with you. I made my choice. Had
I received proper credit for my work on the vaccine I would have
made the same choice I'm making now, but that's water under the
bridge." She stood. "I am the principle investigator on this
project and my decision is made."

The dean rose from his
seat. The high priced suit draped nicely, hiding the bit of
middle-aged paunch around his middle. Katarina bit her tongue
before she made the mistake of saying something scathing about his
salary.

"I hope you think about
this some more, Dr. O'Brian. Your refusal to consider the good of
the university will not bode well when the tenure committee
meets."

She sent him a look of
disgust and left the office without giving him the satisfaction of
a response. She stalked out of the administrative building and
walked down the street to her building, crossing the trolley tracks
and cutting through the building used for classes. She took the
stairs to work off some steam when she reached her building. Midway
up the third flight a wave of dizziness hit her and a flash of
heat, almost painful, but not quite. She grabbed the handrail and
took deep breaths until her heart quit racing. The strange feeling
came and went so quickly she couldn't track its source.
"Zane?"

He didn't answer, but she
didn't expect him to. She closed her eyes and prayed that whatever
she felt was something random. It happened sometimes when someone
nearby got injured, the intensity blasted through her walls.
"Please be okay."

***

Zane lost count of how many
dark, damp rooms he woke up in. Depending on the jailer of the
moment, sometimes they drugged him and left him alone. Other times
they skipped the drugs and just beat him unconscious. When he was
aware, he took care not to let his feelings transmit across his
link with Katarina. Zane couldn't bear to think of the terror she
would feel if she shared his torment.

He almost wished for
blessed oblivion. Every part of him ached. The remnants of
sedatives made it difficult to determine how long since his
capture. As the fog in his mind cleared, he tested his limbs.
Nothing was broken, and his arms and legs were free for a change,
but weakness pervaded his body. He blinked in the bright glare of
halogen lights. Accustomed to dark closets with little or no light,
his eyes watered and squinted as they attempted to
adjust.

He pushed against the floor
with his palms and rose to a sitting position. Seamless walls
surrounded him on all sides except for the high-energy force field
a few paces in front of him. No furniture of any kind decorated the
cell. He spotted a sensor-controlled covered compartment for
relieving himself, but the sliding door could not be removed from
inside the cell. One look at the emitters mounted on the door frame
outside the opening told him that touching the field would injure,
perhaps even kill. The one avenue of escape meant taking out
whoever came into the cell, if someone ever did.

He smelled a foul odor, and
it took a few seconds to realize it came from him. He grimaced at
the stains on his clothes. It would take more than a three minute
shower to get him clean. A scraggly beard hung past his larynx, so
he calculated that a minimum of a month had passed. Hair growth
repressor lasted about a month for him, and after that his beard
grew at about six times the rate of the average human male. Zane
started to stand, but his head spun with dizziness and his muscles
cramped and rebelled at the exertion. He let his body fall back to
the ground. Zane covered his face with shaking hands.

Dread filled him at the
thought of dying in this hole and never seeing Katarina again. He
would give his soul to hold her one more time. Zane pulled his
hands away from his face and waited for his fate. Whatever the
Goloths had in store for him, he refused to give them the
satisfaction of breaking his spirit.

Champagne corks popped.
Music played at a low volume while people laughed and spoke in
animated voices. They celebrated the spectacular results of her
clinical trials and FDA approval went through just last week. Even
without licensing the patent to big pharma, generous alumni sent in
donations to support the program. The gene therapy she tweaked
worked even better than the statistics in Zane's files reported. If
treated before the disease began compromising organ functions, so
far it showed a ninety-two percent cure rate.
Reaper w
as no
longer a death sentence. Instead of excitement, Katarina felt
adrift. Her disgust with administration prompted her to draft a
resignation letter. She dropped it off at the Dean's office on her
way to this stupid shindig. With Zane's assistance, she
accomplished what she set out to do, and felt no desire to continue
working where profits meant more than saving lives.

Her conscious bugged her
for taking credit for essentially some alien scientist's work. She
adapted it, but accepting all the praise being given felt wrong. At
the moment she didn't even know if she wanted to remain a
scientist.

To add to her frustration,
her search for her biological father seemed at a dead end. She
poured through her mother's records, which Naia had stored. She
combed through old letters, printouts of emails, and even the boxes
of memorabilia her mother kept. Nada. If she ever kept anything, it
got lost or her mother destroyed it.

A couple strolled by and
their lovey-dovey display forced her to turn away after returning
their greeting. Six long months and she missed Zane more with each
passing day. For the last month their link remained quiet. Once or
twice she swore she felt a twinge, anger maybe, but couldn't she
couldn't be sure.

Katarina sipped fruit punch
and calculated whether she could slip out without anyone noticing.
She wanted nothing more than to go home, lie down, and rest her
aching back. She only bothered showing because she was guest of
honor, and she couldn't be
that r
ude.

People kept waving at her
or offering congratulations as they passed. Still, she eyed the
crowd, intent on escaping as soon as possible. She nodded to one of
the department’s financial backers as he walked by telling the dean
a joke involving three nuns in a car.

She grimaced into her fruit
punch. Granted she understood test tubes and nitrogen freezers
didn’t grow on trees, and the days of government funding and grants
disappeared with decades of recessions, but that didn't make the
schmoozing any more palatable. She headed toward the buffet,
planning to mollify her mood with something sweet.

Katarina’s eyes narrowed as
she spotted across the room a tall blond man chatting with the dean
of graduate students.
It can't be.
She circled the periphery
of the crowd so she could see the man's face. The minute she saw
enough to confirm her suspicion, he looked directly at her. Glasses
hid his eyes, but she felt them, and his undisguised power, focus
on her. He said something to the dean and then headed straight in
her direction.

He walked around the linen
cloaked tables and servers carrying liquor and sodas with the grace
of a dancer. His aura of power rippled through the room, drawing
the gaze for an instant of every human he passed. The dazed looks
that followed suggested he wore a glamour of forgetting, which
meant once he passed the humans forgot they spoke to him or saw
him. Such trivial magic did not work on her and the fact he allowed
humans to see him at all spoke to his vanity. A song lyric that was
an oldie even for her mother ran through her head.
You're so
vain. I bet you think this song is about you.
She snickered,
but managed to compose herself before he reached her.

"Kat," he spoke her name
with warmth, as if they were the best of friends.

"Sidhe," she responded in a
clipped tone that bordered on rude. His departure on the California
beach still irked her.

"My name is Torin. I give
you leave to address me thusly."

This guy needs to join
the twenty-first century.
"What do you want, Sidhe?" When he
narrowed his eyes, she hid her smile in her punch.
Damn, he's
easy to ruffle.
It was all kinds of insane to annoy the faerie,
but it sent a thrill of edgy excitement through her, made her feel
alive when most days she felt half dead, just going through the
motions of life. Her powers surged to the surface, humming inside
her, ready for her to tap into them.

Torin blew out a breath and
muttered, "And to think I thought Finn difficult." He took a second
before addressing her again. "I give you my word, Kat, I mean you
no harm. I came to congratulate you on your accomplishments and to
deliver a small bit of advice."