Fractured Mind Episode One (A Galactic Coalition Academy Series) (18 page)

It wouldn't. It couldn't. And he didn't have
the time.

With a grunt, he pushed forward, dropped the
knife, and picked up the standard med kit he'd managed to steal
from the train station office.

He drove down to one knee, fighting against
the suddenly woozy feeling that shook through his mind like an
earthquake. He had to unwrap his hand from his bleeding shoulder
and press it against the floor as he fought for his balance.

A few seconds later he reclaimed it, then
tipped forward, grabbed up the med kit, and ripped into it. Half
the contents scattered over the floor of the utility cupboard. He
clutched onto the wound repair kit.

With practiced movements he applied it to
the gouge in his shoulder.

A few seconds later the pain cut out
completely. It was replaced by a reassuring calm numbness. He
pushed the numbness away as he stowed the wound repairer in the
pocket of his pants and wiped the blood from his bare torso.

When it was gone, he walked over to the far
side of the utility cupboard and plucked up his tunic top.

He muscled it on and stood for a single
second, staring at his reflection in the shiny panel. Then he
jerked forward, grabbed the magnetic knife, and stabbed his
identity implant. He sent a surge of power pushing out from the
implant in his shoulder, ensuring the blow was so solid the
magnetic knife crushed the locator in a single blow.

It shattered and scattered over the floor.
With another grunt, he pushed to his feet.

Though he wanted to keep hold of the knife –
of any goddamn weapon he could get his hands on – he knew he
couldn't get on the train with it. And he had to get on the train,
because that would be the only way to get to Sarah.

While the intra Earth matter transporters
were impossible to get on without valid ID, he knew enough to sneak
his way onto the trains.

Wasting no more time, he shifted back,
kicked the useless contents of the med kit and the knife into the
far corner of the utility cupboard, then walked out the door.

He paused just as he opened it, flicking his
gaze from left to right, looking for any more agents.

When he saw no one muscling towards him
through the crowd, he pushed out and walked forward. Bringing a
sweaty hand up and thumbing his nose, he headed straight to the
nearest train platform.

He'd done what he could to hide his
appearance, though in reality getting rid of his identity chip was
the biggest step. While it was clear the Corthanx Traders had
agents on the outside and access to the Academy's systems, he
doubted they had equal access to the Earth defense security
network. If they did, they wouldn't have had to craft some hologram
of him to fool Sarah into giving them her location. They would have
just accessed her civilian communicator to figure it out for
themselves.

... But this was a gamble. If he was
wrong, and they did have equal access to the defense security
network, then he was already as good as dead. His face would be
picked up by one of the many security scanners and he'd likely be
dead before the train stopped.

But this was a risk he had to take, because
there was nothing else he could do. He was cut off from help, and
time was ticking down.

So Lieutenant Karax made his way slowly but
deliberately towards the train platform. From his current location,
it would take less than half an hour to get to Zhangjiajie.

From there, he'd be able to use the location
data stored on his WD to find Sarah. He just hoped she'd be there
when he came looking.

It had already taken him over seven hours to
shake the agents on his tail. Seven goddamn hours. He tried to push
that harrowing thought from his mind as he pushed forward and into
the train.

The doors closed behind him with a smooth
pneumatic hiss. He reached a hand out, clutched it on the wall, and
indulged in closing his eyes for a few seconds.

When he opened them, he pushed forward and
sat down, crunching his arms around his middle, ducking his head
down and pulling the hood of his jumper over his face.

One thought kept ricocheting through his
mind as the train took off.

If he'd been on the ball – if he'd stopped
to listen to a word Sarah Sinclair had said – maybe none of this
would have happened.

But he'd failed. So he was gonna goddamn fix
it.

Sarah Sinclair

She woke quicker this time. Her
consciousness split away from the tight embrace of sleep with more
force.

It wasn't enough to propel her into a seated
position, but it was close.

Her eyes jerked open and her head shifted to
the side, her hair fanning across her face to reveal a set of boots
standing less than an inch from her nose.

The boots were polished. Regulation.

For just a single second, relief punched
through her gut, then she let her gaze slip back and she saw the
owner of those regulation boots.

It wasn't Lieutenant Karax. It was a guy
she'd never met before. A guy whose face was littered with scars,
whose expression was about as cold as the furthest reaches of
space.

He had his head on one side and his arms
locked around his middle as he stared at her with a dead but
calculating gaze.

There was something so off-putting about
that stare, so inhuman. It felt as if she was gazing into the
fearsome eyes of the Grim Reaper himself.

She tried to shift back, but that was when
she realized her hands were locked behind her with some kind of
magnetic restraint. As she shifted, conjuring up what little
muscular strength she could, something activated from around her
ankles. Her arms snapped forward and pushed between her knees, the
restraints around her wrists locking against the restraints around
her ankles.

It crunched her into an uncomfortable ball,
her shoulders pulled at such an angle it felt as if they would yank
out of their sockets.

Finally a scream curdled up from her gut and
pushed through her lips.

The guy didn't make a noise, didn't move a
single muscle. Still stood just a couple of inches away, gaze
locked on her as she tried to writhe against her restraints.

A few seconds later she gave up, shoulder
and head flopping against the floor, a few strands of her hair
cutting in front of her eyes, but not enough that she couldn't see
as the guy finally shifted down to one knee and dipped his head
forward. He locked that same dead, terrifying gaze on her as he
reached a hand forward and flicked her fringe from her face. “Sarah
Sinclair,” he said in a raspy voice.

She didn't answer. Couldn't. She didn't have
enough control over her body anymore. It pulsed and surged with
fear, feeling as if every single cell was about to split apart.

Her breath came in ragged pants, rocking her
body back and forth, her shoulder crunching against the sticky
metal floor.

When she didn't answer, he plucked some kind
of sleek small scanner from an invisible holster around his hip. He
brought it forward, typed something on the screen, and a second
later nodded. “Sarah Sinclair,” he confirmed to himself. “What are
you doing on Earth, Sarah Sinclair? How did you leave the facility,
Sarah Sinclair?”

He kept using her full name, and every
single time it rolled off his stiff white lips, she shivered harder
until it felt as if she was trying to dig a path through the metal
floor.

“Who are you?” she managed, pulling together
enough courage to control her lips and throat.

He didn't answer, he simply rested there on
his haunches, arms propped on his knees as he stared at her with
that calculating gaze. “You're a long way from home, Sarah
Sinclair,” he said in that same tone.

Though the guy looked human, his voice with
anything but. It was too deep, too guttural. It sounded like a rasp
constantly grating over metal. Every single syllable, let alone
puff of breath, sent a cold shiver driving through her heart until
she was sure the muscle would freeze apart and crack open.

“Who are you?” she managed once more, voice
so choked she could barely understand it herself.

“I'm an agent of the Ornax,” he said
simply.

She hadn't honestly expected him to
answer. But she latched onto it. “The Ornax? Who the hell are the
Ornax? And what are you doing here? What do you want with me?”
Finding the courage to ask one single question split the dam
holding the rest back. They spewed from her lips like bullets from
a gun.

The guy smiled. It was the least flattering
move she'd ever seen. His face wasn't just riddled with scars – as
she stared at it, incapable of looking away, she realized the cuts
and grooves in his skin weren't the random result of mere attacks.
They looked purposeful. As if he'd carved up his face for art. For
some kind of statement.

It made her shiver even harder.

“Who the hell are the Ornax? What do you
want with me?” she spat one final time.

“We want you to come home. You should never
have been able to leave the facility, Sarah Sinclair. And now it's
time for you to come back to where you belong.”

“Facility? What are you talking about? My
home is here. I've always lived on Earth.”

“Always?” He arched an eyebrow. There were
three or four cuts running through it, some fresh, some years old.
As she locked her attention on them, she realized there was so much
scar tissue building up under each cut it looked as if he'd kept
opening them over and over again for years.

“You weren't born on Earth, Sarah Sinclair,
you come from the colony worlds.”

“That's a lie,” she said through gritted
teeth. “I was born on Earth to—” though she gaped her mouth wide
open, ready to say the names of her parents, she couldn't. She
couldn't remember them. Suddenly true panic tore through her, her
heart pulsing so hard she shook back and forth like a trembling
leaf.

“Your parents were killed in a Barbarian
attack. From that day forward you became a survivor, pushing
through the Barbarian border, completing whatever attacks and
sorties you dared to. We found you about 10 years ago, took you to
the facility, and that's where you should have remained. But
somehow, Sarah Sinclair, you escaped. You escaped and started a new
life on Earth. Now, why did you do that?”

“I have no... I have no idea what you're
talking about,” she spoke through clenched teeth. Her whole body
had seized with a terrifying tension. It felt like it would snap
her back in two.

A ringing began to fill her mind, growing
louder and louder as if her grey matter had been replaced by a
broken audio feed. “I have no idea what you're talking about.
You're lying, you're lying.” She began to rock back and forth,
crunching her shoulder and face against the floor. It didn't
matter. It was all she could do to comfort herself as that ringing
grew louder and louder and louder.

The guy shifted forward, dropped a hand
right by her face, and leaned his head down until he looked right
into her eyes. “It doesn't matter anymore,” he said in that cold
raspy voice, “Because you're coming back with me.”

He reached a hand towards her neck.

....

Fear. Fear the likes of which she'd never
experienced exploded through her. It felt as if it would sweep away
her personality and crack through every memory.

Just as he locked his hand on her neck,
something else rose up to meet it. Something that was never far
behind. Anger. True gut-punching anger. The kind of anger that
never went away. That grew and festered at every injustice until it
burnt like a holy fire deep in your gut.

As he latched his fingers against the nape
of her neck, that very same anger flared. It soared in her mind,
giving her just enough energy to shove forward. Though she didn't
have the strength to break the magnetic lock securing her wrists to
her ankles, she still managed to crunch forward and lurch towards
the guy with her knee. It was enough to unstable him, enough to see
him teeter back on his haunches.

She took the opportunity to roll onto her
back and thrust forward with her feet. They collected the side of
his face and he fell back into the bar.

She let a throat-punching scream tear from
her lips as she brought her feet forward and tried to kick him once
more.

Though she'd managed to surprise him once,
now he pushed back, shunted around the side of the bar, rolled to
the side, and pressed to his feet several meters away.

He pushed up slowly.

Though Sarah tried to shove forward, to
stand, there was no way she could manage it with her wrists locked
against her ankles. Instead she stared in horror as he took one
casual step away and reached for something around his back.

She heard a magnetic lock click.

Her eyes drew wide as he brought around a
small sleek gun. Though she'd never seen its like before, she knew
exactly what he'd do with it – knock her out and then—

Just before terror could completely undo
her, she heard something. By all rights she shouldn't have heard
it. It was too low, too soft, too measured. In many ways it sounded
like nothing more than a stone falling from the cliff top beside
her pod. But something inside her ignited at the sound, and that
something was hope.

The man didn't hear it, so he took his time
as he brought his gun around, shifting his grip around it until his
fingers sat just right along the smooth barrel.

He cracked into a smile, and it accentuated
every single scar that sliced across his cheeks and down his neck.
“There's no need to struggle, Sarah. It'll all be over soon. You'll
remember nothing but the hunt.”

She stopped writhing, stopped struggling,
stopped breathing. Her eyes drew so wide she was sure she would
never be able to close them again. “The hunt?” she said haltingly,
voice nothing more than stuttering puffs of breath.