Amid Stars and Darkness (The Xenith Trilogy #1)

“All right.” She began moving down the line, taking in more of the weapons on the wall. “But this peace treaty? It’ll stop whoever’s building from actually using them?”

“That’s the hope,” he admitted. “They’d be committing mass treason, and you’ve met Trystan. He’s not exactly the type you want to anger. After he and Olena are bound, our people will be his people. If the Kints kill the Vakar, or even if the Vakar kill the Kints, they’ll have to deal with him.”

“Unless he’s the one building.” She shrugged when he paused. “What? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Who better than Trystan to slink behind his dad’s back? Who, by the way, he has to hate just as much as Olena right now. You’re right: He’s not someone you want to piss off, and I guarantee the Rex has seriously pissed him off by taking his freedom away.”

“That’s not—”

“Yes,” she insisted. “that’s exactly what he’s doing. Take it from me. I know a prisoner when I see one.”

“You’re not a prisoner, Delaney,” he said softly, though there was little conviction in his tone.

“Tell me that again after you get me home.”

He reached for her, linking their fingers together and tugging her closer. “The second your feet touch Earth ground,” he promised.

There was a single table in front of the sectioned-off area, and he led her toward it. A couple dozen bracelet-shaped devices like the ones he and Pettus wore were arranged in neat rows on top of it. She recalled how it’d turned into a gun when Trystan had come upon them heading to the bunker.

“I want to teach you how to use a fritz,” he told her, lifting a silver band off the table. Then he brought her around the sectioned area and swung open a clear door, waving her into the room.

“Bulletproof glass”—he rapped his knuckles against the wall to the left—“just in case. This area was made for target practice.”

The far wall was blank, a white slate; facing it was an odd black rectangular thing set in the center of the room. It came up to her chin.

Ruckus moved toward the rectangle, flicking a switch at the side. A keyboard slid out of the bottom, and a screen flickered to life on one of the shiny black surfaces. It was clearly a computer, and he began typing away at it, glancing over at the blank wall when he was done.

Five holograms suddenly appeared before the wall, all forming the outlines of people. They were various sizes, some distinctly male, others female. The holograms glowed dark blue around the edges.

“No one’s gotten around to changing the color setting since the peace treaty,” Ruckus explained, noticing her thoughtful stare.

Clearly, the holograms were meant as murky representations of Kint soldiers.

“Here.” He handed over the bracelet, waiting for her to daintily slip it from his fingers. The corner of his mouth curved up, but that was the only sign he gave that he knew she was nervous. “Put it on.”

She slid it onto her left wrist, watching as it shrunk down to fit snugly. It wasn’t tight, but it wasn’t loose enough to even spin a centimeter on its own. She allowed him to take her hand and turn it over so she could see the bottom of it over her pulse point. There was an almost imperceptible circular hole there, like a pinprick.

“This is a sensor,” he explained, taking her middle finger and easing it down toward the hole. “They’re programmed to react only to a specific user’s fingerprint. I reset this one this morning and adjusted it to fit you.”

“How’d you do that?” She frowned up at him, narrowing her eyes when he smirked.

“Stealthily, that’s how,” was all he said, then returned to showing her how to activate it.

She wasn’t capable of touching her wrist, but found it wasn’t necessary. The second her finger hovered a few inches away, the device activated. A soft hum came from it, and then the metal began to change, extending outward the same way she’d seen his do.

He readjusted her arm so that she was no longer facing him, aiming it toward the middle hologram target. The fritz had fully formed now, still attached at the metal band that had narrowed some but otherwise remained unchanged.

He tapped it. “This is so you can’t lose your weapon. It becomes an extension of you, so the only way to lose it is if someone cuts off your arm.”

“Brilliant,” she drawled, ignoring the rush of heat skittering down her spine when he chuckled.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t actually intend for you to ever need this. It’s just a precaution. I don’t want what happened the other day to ever happen to you again. At least with this, you’ll be better prepared to defend yourself.”

“Speaking of, why didn’t they just shoot me?” she asked. If they had, there wouldn’t have been anything she could have done to stop them.

“We would have been able to trace which weapon fired the shot,” Ruckus divulged. “They all have monitoring devices inside, so we know the exact time they were fired, how far, how strong the setting was, et cetera. I’ve set yours to light, for example. It’ll stun people, not blast through them.”

“It’s not like I’m made of china,” she stated dryly.

“So seeing Pettus blast a hole clean through that Teller didn’t bother you at all?” he said, his sarcasm apparent.

“Okay,” she admitted, “but the guy was trying to kill me, and I’d probably have to see it eventually.”

“If I have my way,” he said, and readjusted her arm a second time, “you’ll never have to see anything like that again. But just in case … Now curve your finger inward. Yes, just like that.”

A trigger formed within the space between her hand and pointer finger. She didn’t touch it, afraid the thing would go off before either of them was ready. Even knowing it’d been set to the lowest setting and she couldn’t accidentally kill someone, holding a weapon like this made her uncomfortable.

“You’re going to aim at the big blue guy’s head.” He lifted her arm up an inch, until her line of sight was straight from the tip of her gun to the tall hologram in the middle. “And then inhale slowly and gently press down on the trigger.”

She sucked in a shaky breath and did as he said.

A thin green beam shot forward, heading straight for the hologram. When it reached it, the outline slammed back as if it’d actually been hit, bursting into a thousand tiny sparks of blue light when it came against the wall. They rained down and petered out of existence, leaving behind four remaining unaffected holograms.

“Whoa,” she said breathlessly. Then she brought her arm to the left, aiming at a shorter female target. “Let’s do that again.”

He laughed. “All right.”

*

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