His arms form a cage around me, resting on the hull of his favorite boat.
I stare up into his blue eyes. I find it hard to swallow all of a sudden. There’s no way I can tell him any of it. If I do, it would be as if I put a gun to the head of each person in Amster and fired. Kyon will slaughter them all with impunity.
“I didn’t see much,” I lie.
“You were gone a very long time. I think you saw plenty.”
“I saw your Alameeda Strikers stack wounded civilians in the streets of Rafe and burn them alive.” I hurl the statement at him. It’s my only weapon.
His eyebrows draw together as he scowls. “They’re not my soldiers. If they were mine, I’d be leading them out of Rafe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re your soldiers.”
“How can you say that?”
“You have but to claim them as your own. By not doing so, every day you’re allowing Rafe to die. Only you.” He believes what he’s saying.
“I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“You will.” He turns away from me, toward the entrance. “I’ve had enough of you for now. You can see yourself back to the house,” he says over his shoulder.
“You think you have me tamed, Kyon?”
Kyon turns with a cold look in his eyes. “I plan to bring you to your knees again, Kricket.”
“I hate you!” I rasp. “I wish someone would just kill you!” Icy air exhales from my mouth like smoke from dry ice. I try to stay in my body. “Why is this happening?” I whisper as my spirit involuntarily leaves my body.
My consciousness rises up into the air as my body collapses onto the wide planks of the boathouse floor. My head bounces off the floor with a dull thud. Kyon runs to my side, kneels down next to me. I float above him, bewildered and silent, unable to stay in this moment.
Even separated as I am from my physical self, I feel fiery heat in my nonexistent bones. Thunderous air rolls under my feet, propelling me into the future. In less than one second, I’m on the other side of the island by the small thatched-roof cottages that crouch in the tree line just off the white-sand beach. Darkness falls like it would if viewed in time-lapse photography. The waves crash against the shore until they cough up dozens upon dozens of black wetsuit-clad swimmers. These men emerge from the surf and form a small huddle on the shore.
Stripping off their masks and black, sealskin headgear, they each reveal short, platinum-colored hair. They’re Alameeda. Spitting out breathing devices, they leave them on the beach. One digs weapons out of a waterproof bag and hands them out to the others.
Without a sound, they spread out over the beach. They’re hunting. I move with them, a gazelle following lions. Soundlessly, they surround Kyon’s main house. Just as one almost makes it to our bedroom doorway, a squelch tracker emerges from it. It locks onto him, and a long spike projection ejects from its silver body. The metallic assassin device jets forward. A high-pitched scream comes from it as it impales the wetsuited soldier in the abdomen. He screams too, but it doesn’t sound like a seal’s wail when lasers flail out of the squelch tracker and cut him to ribbons.
An explosion on the far side of the house indicates that another soldier has found a trap set by Kyon. Two more squelch trackers find the Alameeda soldiers, reducing them to piles of flesh and bone.
Kyon silently emerges from beneath the white sand. He cuts the throats of two soldiers before they can even set foot on the stone patio. Kyon moves off the beach. He’s near our bedroom when a projectile tears through his side. Swinging around, he fires his automatic freston at the Alameeda soldier who shot him. They both unload hollow-pointed ammunition into each other. The enemy soldier falls to the sand without half of his face, but Kyon is a bloody mess too. He drops to his knees. His nostrils flare as he tries to gulp in air. Holding his hand to his side, he looks down at his abdomen and finds a large chunk of it missing. Unable to walk now, he crawls to the door of our bedroom.
Screams of pain come from inside—my screams. The pale moons shine on the bed where I’m fighting and clawing to get away from a soldier who is holding me down. At