Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (25 page)

“Pretty sure that’s a myth.”

“Yeah, right. Least it wasn’t a chalder vox,” I said.

“Those don’t count as household pets,” said Kay. “No one would be stupid enough to try bringing one of them to Earth.”

“
Has
anyone tried?” I asked, now curious. “Seeing as you know all the Alliance’s history?”

“Not everything,” he said. “And as far as I know, all reports from old missions to speak to the Vox leaders on Cethrax say, ‘Survived with limbs intact. Never again.’”

I laughed. “Please tell me that’s not an occupational hazard of being an Ambassador.”

“Nah, the staff turnover would be too high. They haven’t sent anyone into Cethrax itself in years.”

“Good.” But at least Cethrax was a known quantity. Did we really know what we were up against on Vey-Xanetha? Even watching Kay out of the corner of my eye, he gave nothing away about what he might be scheming. What Ms Weston had told me was a reminder: Kay didn’t volunteer information easily. Would that even extend to information about the gods of Vey-Xanetha? Or magic?

“You never went there, did you? Back in the Passages?”

I turned to him. “No. why?”

“No reason. Just I figured those hidden tunnels are right near the swamp.”

“Yeah.” I flashed him a smile. “But I didn’t need to go into Cethrax for the monsters to find me.”

“You figured your way around on your own, without a map?”

“I had help.
Is
there a map?”

“Only of the main areas. It’s on your communicator, along with one of Central.”

Oh. I ducked my head, kind of embarrassed I’d never checked. “Didn’t know about that one, either.”

“Really?” His eyebrow quirked. “If I’d known, I could have trolled you about the pest control department.”

“That’s not a thing?”

“It’d probably come in handy right now, but no.”

I laughed. My communicator buzzed and I jumped, narrowly avoiding spilling coffee on myself.
Smooth, Ada.

“They’re outside,” said Kay, putting his own communicator away. “Looks like we’re heading back.”

***

Another storm raged on Vey-Xanetha. Bolts of lightning seared the air, and the sky appeared clearer than usual, blood-red and cloudless. As lightning struck the mountainside, only metres away, everyone in the meeting room jumped.

Mathran seemed more agitated than before, understandably. “We cannot leave,” he murmured to himself. “But for how long can we stay?”

“One of the mysteries of the bloody Multiverse,” Raj muttered irritably.

I sighed. Kay had wandered upstairs, and I debated following him. With the sound of the storm raging outside, I didn’t feel entirely safe even in here. Iriel and Raj had got out their notes again, mostly copies of the Vey-Xanethan symbols.

“There’s really no similarities with any other world?” I asked Iriel.

“Maybe Klathican,” said Iriel. “But they’re considered to have the most ancient script in the Multiverse. No one knows for certain, of course. But that would mean Klathican computers should have been able to translate it.”

“That’s weird,” I said. I didn’t know much about Klathica, except on that world, injecting humans with magic was considered normal.

“Yeah, it had the first
computer
language,” said Raj, not looking particularly impressed. “But that doesn’t mean pre-Alliance, does it?”

“That’s it,” said Iriel. “The whole mystery of this place is that it seems to have avoided classification. It’s nothing like any world we have access to.”

“Any world
we
have access to,” I repeated, a certain file coming to mind. A world logged as ‘dangerous’. There were others. Hundreds of them. “Wait. You’ve been running comparisons with other worlds, right? What about things other than languages? Like the wildlife? There’s got to be some crossover if it used to be linked to another world.”

And the magic level? But the classifications were too vague. And no other allied world had sentient magical forces.

No other
allied
world.

Goosebumps sprang up on my arms. “Does anyone even know which world the kimaros came from? They weren’t always running amok around the Passages, right?”

“No…” said Raj slowly. “First time we found one was at the same time as Aglaia, but they didn’t come from that world.”

Because the Conners opened a doorway.
But they weren’t born, or created, in the Passages. If they didn’t come from here, then where?
Magical backlash given life…

“Good point,” said Iriel. “There’s so little in the information file.”

“Yeah,” said Raj. “Maybe we need to ask Ms Weston. She was in the archives, right?”

“Maybe
she
was looking for something…” I trailed off. Frustration swirled below the surface, like the answer hovered out of reach. So this world had nothing in common with other worlds in the Alliance. That didn’t mean it was alone in the Multiverse. Given how it
had
definitely been linked to at least one other world in the past, it couldn’t be.

And what happened to that world?

One person to ask. I didn’t
think
Kay would withhold information if it meant the difference between life and death. But maybe he had a theory. Or we could figure it out together.

Upstairs, his door lay open, but he wasn’t in there. A stairway at the end of the hall caught my attention. I hadn’t been up there before.

It turned out to lead to a large, deserted room, in the attic, judging by the support beams on the ceiling. Metal, not wood. And Kay sat on one of them, against the wall, feet dangling over the edge.

“Kay? How’d you get up there?”

“There are hand-holds.” He didn’t appear surprised to see me here.

I’ll take that as an invitation.
I made for the wall and pulled myself up, then grabbed for the nearest beam. I misjudged the jump and hung upside-down, my top riding up halfway.
Great,
I thought, flipping over the right way. Tugging my top down so I was decent, I sat with my legs dangling over the edge, right next to Kay, who regarded me with one eyebrow raised.

“Whatever I did right, tell me so I can keep doing it.”

“Uh…” I stammered, my face heating up.

“Eloquent,” he said.

“Quit it,” I said, acutely aware of the inches separating us. “Jesus. It’s freaking hot in here.”

“Not the only thing.”

I tilted my head sideways at him, thinking he was just messing with me, but his expression was serious. “Very funny. So what’re you doing up here? Thinking?”

He shrugged. “Waiting for the storm to die down. Anything happen?”

“We thought of something,” I said. I summarised our discussion. Kay listened, his face expressionless.

“So this world
was
linked to at least one other, but it’s either destroyed or cut off.” He nodded. “That makes sense. I reckon the three deities are some kind of backlash. Like the kimaros.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Well, the storm god, at least. Magical backlash given sentience. Sure, it’s not familiar to us, but like you said, there might be other similar worlds out there.”

“Yeah, not sure things worked out for them, though,” I said, unable to help it. Enzar. I didn’t know the details of the magic which ravaged that world. I’d thought it was third level, but after learning what the Royals had done to me, injecting me with pure antimagic, I knew magic went way beyond what I could imagine.

I glanced at Kay instead. He held a palm-sized rectangular metal device in both hands, one I’d seen before.

“I
knew
you used a tracker,” I said. “When you found those merchants.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised no one brought that up.”

“You weren’t planning to tell the others.” It wasn’t a question. Hell, if he hadn’t been forced to use the amplifier on the tracker to help me save Alber from the Conners, he’d probably never have told me, either. I’d once asked him if he trusted me, and he hadn’t answered. From what Ms Weston had told me, I was starting to understand why.

I indicated the tracker. “So that can pick up on my signal? What does it feel like, anyway?”

“Your signal?” He frowned. “I’m not sure there’s a way to describe it to someone who hasn’t felt it.”

“I did,” I reminded him. “When we went after Alber. It was like a radio signal. Like music only I could hear.”

“Yeah… if I concentrate, I can tell one person’s from another.”

“What do I sound like, Valerian train-crash music?” I asked, flashing him a grin.

He smiled back, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, of course not.” A pause. “Like a rabid chalder vox.”

“You!” I swiped at him, and he caught my arm.

“Not the safest place for a fight,” he said, indicating the not-insignificant drop. “I bet I could take a vox-kind up here.”

“Of course you could.” I rolled my eyes. “You could decapitate a wyvern from that roof beam.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Seriously?” I said, as he started to edge along the roof beam. “I forgot you’re a ninja-finishing-school dropout. Huh.”

Kay’s eyebrows lifted when I tightrope-walked across a particularly precarious area.

“Hell, yeah.” I sat down on the edge, over the centre of the room. “Bet you can’t do that.”

“Challenge accepted.” He joined me within seconds. For a moment, I felt like a kid running around over the roofs again, and not for the first time, I wondered what Kay had been like when he was younger. Even as a teenager. All I knew was he’d been arrested for arson and almost killing Aric when he’d accidentally used magic. And I wasn’t even supposed to know.

“I don’t get it,” I said, perching on the beam. “You said the last thing I needed was to be around someone like you. But you’re okay with being friends. That’s kind of mixed signals, you know?”

He looked down, no longer smiling. “Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to give you the option. You know what I am. What I’ve done.”

“Hello? I almost destroyed the
Earth.”

“You weren’t in control. You acted in self-defence. With Aric’s cousins–I wanted to kill them. I scared you. No,” he said, cutting off my response. “I did, and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care if you’re a killer. You said what I did wasn’t my fault. Why not cut your
self
some slack for once?” I edged along the beam, my heart beating faster. “Kay, you’re the one person I trust outside of my family.”

“You shouldn’t.” He shook his head. “I’m a Walker. We’re not exactly known for keeping our word.”

What else had his father done? “It’s not all you are. I’m a freaking
Royal.
My parents have killed whole planets, probably. Blood isn’t everything. Besides, I was raised by a killer, and she’s one of the best people I know.”

“Your guardian?”

I hesitated, torn between the instinct to keep Nell’s secrets and the need to make him understand. “She was the Royals’ servant, so yes. I don’t know how many of them she killed when she smuggled me to Earth. If anyone had betrayed us on Earth, she’d have killed them, too.
I
might have. Would that make you think less of
me?”

He shook his head. “Ada, that’s not the point–”

“When you were torturing those men, the Conners, you didn’t look like
you.
That’s what scared me. Because it’s not the person I know.”

Kay studied the floor below. “Maybe you don’t know me.”

“Bullshit.” I glared at him. “And if I don’t, then I
want
to know you. I don’t judge. You forget, I’ve spent most of my life keeping people’s secrets. Even—”

My voice caught. Delta. Skyla. Old Ada wouldn’t be here, talking to him. She’d never have taken the job offer. Old Ada didn’t trust anyone outside her family–but that wasn’t true. I’d let Delta and Skyla in, and they’d betrayed me. And now here I was trying to get through to someone who’d told me I’d be better off if I stayed away from him.

“Something up?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just–” Oh, dammit. “I just thought about my friend from Valeria. Or, he used to be.” Before I killed him. Would this ever get easier?

He nodded, getting it, but didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” I muttered, suddenly uncomfortable with the silence. “I know you probably don’t want to hear. Amanda said I should talk about it, that it’ll help… after what happened. I guess I’ve been acting weird, huh.”

“No, it’s normal.” He paused as if thinking, a frown pulling at his mouth. “I meant normal for what happened to you.”

“Uh-huh.”
Say something intelligent, Ada.
“See, I do know you. You keep trying to shut me out, but it’s not gonna work anymore.”

“Ada…” he said. “God only knows I keep getting this wrong. But it’s a dangerous job we’re in. And even the council might have taken advantage if they knew about your magic. I never told them—only a few people at Central know what’s in your blood. I said you used magic, and that was all the explanation they needed.”