Fractured Mind Episode One (A Galactic Coalition Academy Series) (11 page)

As she walked along the platform, she saw
the train shift off behind her. It disappeared back into the
streamlined white-blue sealed-tunnel, a shield flickering into
place behind it. As soon as the shield covered the tunnel mouth,
she saw a mini explosion within that propelled the train forward at
insane speed.

In an instant, it was out of sight.

The superfast train tunnels crisscrossed
through the landscape, forming a backbone to the city.

She walked along the platform, smiling when
she saw some moss growing in a damp patch at the corner of a
ramp.

Nature out here was irrepressible. She even
saw a butterfly waft past, flying close to her face before
fluttering off into the city.

Hooking her hair behind her ears, she let a
natural smile play across her face. It helped chase away the
remnants of her terrifying reaction to that broadcast....

She muscled her bags further up her shoulder
and walked quickly over the platform, finding the ramp that led
down into the city.

Though she desperately wanted to be
distracted by the view, she had to focus.

First things first, she had to find a job.
Then Sarah Sinclair would start a new life.

Away from the Academy and her problems.

Lieutenant Karax

It had been several days now.

Several days of perfecting the Sora program.
And several long, hellish days of not being able to
concentrate.

For a second.

There was no news on Sarah. Not a word. She
still had a personal civilian communication device, but she wasn't
picking up.

She'd gone through all the correct steps in
quitting the Academy, and though she'd had an altercation with
Morq, she certainly hadn't committed any crimes. That meant he
couldn't rely on the security network to track her down. Bottom
line was she'd done nothing wrong, and if she didn't want to be
contacted, that was her right.

It was driving him mad.

But it wasn't the only thing driving him
mad.

In the few seconds he scrounged together the
attention to focus on his task, he couldn't shake the feeling the
Academy was making a mistake.

He kept trying to explain his misgivings to
the admiral, but he had nothing more concrete than an ever-growing
sense of foreboding that shadowed him like a storm cloud.

He had no idea how a program like Sora could
work. She was too smart, too adaptable. He'd attempted to gain
access to the program's source code, but the trader's had denied
his request.

As he walked along the corridor, he tipped
his head to the side, staring out the windows.

He wanted the view to distract him. The bay
beyond was particularly blue today, like a gem. The sun glinted off
it, refracting around the glass buildings of the campus.

The view was lost on his tumbling mind.

His WD beeped. Rather than bring it up and
check on the urgent message, he swore under his breath.

It would be the traders again. With more
questions. They wanted to push this deal through as quickly as they
could. He kept trying to tell them it had nothing to do with him.
That he was just here to make sure it would work.

They seemed to think everything was riding
on his decision.

Karax wished he had that power. If it were
up to him, he'd have kicked the traders off campus on day one.

He brought up a hand and wiped it down his
tense brow, fingernails dragging over his skin and probably leaving
red irritated tracks.

His smarting flesh was a distraction. One
that couldn't last.

His goddamn WD beeped again.

He brought it up reluctantly and thumbed the
receive button. “Karax here.”

“No more wait,” one of the traders said in
his distinctive halting tone.

Karax clenched his teeth so hard he was sure
his WD picked it up. It would probably sound like a rasp over
metal. “I'm currently detained,” he lied.

“Inappropriate. Must move now.”

Karax rolled his eyes, pinched his nose, and
hissed a breath through his teeth. “We're moving as fast as we
can—”

“End this message now. You will come to
facility.” The message abruptly ended.

Karax wanted to grab his WD, wrench it off
his wrist, and smash it against the wall. Heck, in his current
mood, he half wanted to take it to the armory and shoot it.

Instead he shifted his jaw from
side-to-side, locked his unwavering gaze on the floor, and marched
forward, body as rigid as a flag pole.

He didn't get far. Just as he was wavering
between kowtowing to the traders or ditching them, he ran into
Cadet Nora Falcone.

Not literally. But she did run right up to
him, her cheeks flushed.

She didn't pause to say hello. “Do you have
her contact details yet?”

He could have drawn her up on her curt
demand. He didn't.

He understood exactly what she was going
through.

Reluctantly he nodded. “I've got them, but
she's not receiving calls.”

Nora looked desperate. “Give them to me –
I'll see what I can do.”

Karax hesitated. Even though he'd promised
Nora he'd share Sarah's contact details, technically it was against
the Academy's privacy rules.

He could get in trouble for breaching
them.

Nora didn't drop his gaze. She gritted her
teeth and spoke through them, “She doesn't have any family,
lieutenant. She'll be out there on her own....”

Guilt shifted through his gut. He opened his
mouth—

“We have an obligation to look after her.
She doesn't have anyone else.”

His stomach sank even further. “Fine, I'll
hand on her details.”

Nora clasped her hands together, closed her
eyes, and whispered an emotional thank you.

He let his hand drag down the back of his
head as he clenched his teeth. “I'll send them through to you—”

“Now,” she demanded.

Again, he could have pulled her up on
that.

He didn't. He understood the desperation
flickering in her gaze – if only because he knew it was matched by
his own.

He didn't pause. He brought up his WD, typed
in a few commands, and sent it to the cadet.

Almost instantaneously, her WD beeped. She
yanked it up, eyes drawing wide as she brought up a jerky finger
and tapped it over the screen.

Half a second later, she let out the breath
trapped in her chest. It wheezed through her teeth, sounding like
air escaping a cracked pipe.

“You won't regret this, lieutenant. I will
get in contact with her,” Nora said with quite some determination,
“And make sure she's okay.”

“Let me know when you do.”

With that, he turned away. And for the first
time in days, the guilt started to lift.

Started. It would take a heck of a lot more
to eke it from his bones and muscles.

No matter how hard he tried, Lieutenant
Karax simply couldn't shake the feeling that Sarah Sinclair was in
trouble. Or if she wasn't in trouble, she would be soon....

...

Sarah Sinclair

She'd found some work.

She'd answered an advertisement around town
for one of the Zhangjiajie floating bars.

She'd never heard about them until she'd
arrived here.

Nightlife culture was a different thing
around the Academy. Regulated. Watched over.

You had very few options if you didn't want
to run into the E Club or the Security Force.

Out here it didn't matter.

Zhangjiajie was right at the foot of one of
the transport elevators that manned some of the Earth's mega
structures in orbit. Everything from Station Zero to the
shipbuilding yards.

As such, it was a worker's city, packed full
of aliens who worked hard during the day and played hard at
night.

Though the city itself was packed full of
bars and clubs, that's not where she wanted to work.

That's why she'd used what little money she
had left to hire a returning bubble transport to the Zhangjiajie
floating mountains.

Just outside of the massive city that had
sprawled through the mountains over the last several hundred years.
Those mountains were jam-packed with breathtaking natural
phenomenon. Tall stacks of fingerlike rock formations capped with
dense green growth, magnificent waterways and wondrous creatures of
the water, earth and sky.

As the persistent fog and mist crawled
through the valleys beneath the mountains, they seemingly cut them
off from the ground, and you could be forgiven for thinking the
peaks detached from the very earth and floated through the
skies.

They didn't.

But the famous floating bars of Zhangjiajie
did.

As her returning bubble transport beeped
that she'd arrived at her destination, it hovered low to the ground
and the glass door in its side opened. She hooked a hand on it,
threw her bags onto the damp forest floor below, and jumped
out.

As soon as she disembarked, the bubble
transport beeped. “Returning to dock. We hope the passenger has had
a pleasant ride. Please consider using Zhangjiajie Returning
Transports again. Enjoy your day.”

Without another word, the bubble transport
shot up into the sky, into a bank of clouds, and out of sight.

She pushed a hand up and over her eyes as
she watched it.

It was nothing more than a transparent round
ball with a seat inside. Nowhere near as versatile, maneuverable,
or ultimately safe as a mini cruiser. Still, it had gotten her
here.

She leant down and picked her bags up,
ignoring the dampness they transferred along her back and down her
plain civilian tunic.

Sarah Sinclair hadn't been off world that
much. A couple of times with Academy training, sure. But she hadn't
ventured through the galaxy.

And yet, as she pushed her way through a
rock path cut through the dense undergrowth... it reminded her of
something.

Deep down, she felt something churn in her
gut. A long-forgotten memory, maybe, just the feeling... she'd been
somewhere like this before.

She swallowed it, literally, as she sucked
in a gulp of air.

There was one thing she couldn't deny as she
made her way forward, her boots trudging over the mossy, damp
rocks.

That feeling was distant now. The one that
told her someone was walking over her grave.

She could barely feel it. Yes, it was still
there, right at the edge of her mind, but it was no longer as
terrifying and uncontrollable as it had been at the Academy.

She tilted her head, bringing a hand up and
pushing a branch from her face.

She should have left the Academy years ago.
She should never have joined.

Her civilian communication unit suddenly
beeped. She wasn't wearing it, but it reverberated through her
bag.

Frowning, she wondered whether she should
ignore it.

She knew full well who it was.

Lieutenant Karax.

And she knew full well what he wanted to
say.

That she was a coward for quitting the
Academy. That she needed to return, face up to what she'd done.

She didn't need to hear that.

So she ignored the call. Five minutes later,
however, her communication unit began to beep insistently once
more.

Though Lieutenant Karax had been trying to
contact her continuously over the past several days, he wasn't
usually this persistent.

Letting out a terse breath, she stopped,
unhooked her bag from her shoulder, let it slide down her arm, and
yanked open the flap. She pulled out her communication unit.

And stopped.

A picture of Nora's smiling face hovered
over the screen.

... Sarah's stomach sank. It felt like it
plunged through her gut, down past her legs, and sank into the
center of the earth.

She couldn't face her friend.

Before she could stop it, a message began to
play.

Nora's voice.

“Please, Sarah, please just answer. I need
to know that you're okay. Please.”

Sarah screwed her eyes shut, trying to damp
back the tears that threatened to splash down her cheeks.

Before she knew what she was doing, she
thumbed the accept button. Still standing there with her eyes
screwed shut, she technically faced her friend. “Nora, you don't
have to worry – I'm fine.”

“Sarah!” Relief exploded through Nora's
tone. “Where are you? What happened—”

“You know exactly what happened, Nora, you
were there,” Sarah's tone dropped unavoidably, the raw emotion of
the past few days welling up and infiltrating her voice.

Nora paused. “I'm so sorry. Sarah, I'm so
sorry. But you have to come back—”

“There's no way that's going to happen. I'm
fine without the Academy,” she put a lot of emphasis into saying
the word fine.

“Sarah, we're all worried about you.”

Sarah couldn't help but snort. “Who is this
we, Nora? You're the only person who ever cared—”

“That's not true. Lieutenant Karax has been
trying to contact you ceaselessly since you left.”

Sarah snorted again, this one so derisive it
was completely at odds with her usual soft character. “Why? So he
can reprimand me? He doesn't have any authority over me
anymore—”

“Sarah, just wait for a second. He wanted to
say sorry. He feels guilty over what happened. Just hear him
out.”

Sarah pressed her lips together. No, that
wasn't quite right – she ground them together, harder and harder,
as if she was trying to turn her flesh to dust.

“I know what you're thinking, but I'm
telling the truth. And so is he. I genuinely think Lieutenant Karax
wants to apologize. And he's worried about you.”

“... There is nothing to be worried about.
Like I said – I'm okay.”

“Where are you?”

“I found my own feet. I'm fine,” Sarah
insisted.

“Sarah...” Nora suddenly paused.

Sarah frowned. Even though she wanted to end
the conversation, there was something pressured about the silence
that got her attention. “Nora?”