Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (39 page)

Corinth’s eyes fluttered open, irises focusing on Malkor’s face. ::You came for me.::

“Of course,” Malkor said. “Can’t have anything happening to the junior member of my team.”

Corinth smiled, his lids drifting shut again.

* * *

Kayla’s throat clogged like a gummed-up pipe when she tried to swallow and she choked on her own saliva. That brought her sputtering awake. She coughed and spat, fighting to clear her throat and draw a full breath.

“Easy, Kayla, easy.” The soothing words, spoken in Dolan’s voice, had her coughing all the harder. She leaned her head forward, the only part of her she could move, and spat a clump of mucus on his shoes. She instantly felt better.

What had happened?

She had a debilitating pain in her skull and weakness in her limbs. She was strapped into a comfortable chair—chest, wrists, hips and ankles—and seemed to be a prisoner in his laboratory. The room was all smooth-paneled drawers, neatly organized work stations, foreign instrumentation and flashing digital consoles. Events of the last few hours cascaded through her mind.

The rescue.

Vayne.

She looked wildly about.

“Don’t worry, he’s here.”

Her heart broke to see her twin seated nearby, similarly restrained. He looked resigned, almost to the point of apathy.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wishing she could touch him, reassure herself that he was still alive—for the moment.

Vayne shook his head. “Not your fault.”

She spat again, and this time Dolan dodged. The bastard had anesthetized her, that’s how she’d ended up here, locked down, weaponless and pissed.

“How are you feeling?” Dolan appeared beside her chair, concerned. “I apologize for the rough treatment, but I couldn’t have you stabbing me.”

The haze fogging her brain made it tough to concentrate. She met Dolan’s stare, focusing on his good eye. “Release my brother. Whatever you want from me, you can have it.”

Dolan’s permanent half-smirk cocked up. “I know I can.” He touched her cheek and she forced herself not to recoil.

“If you release Vayne, I won’t fight you.” She swallowed hard against the words, squeezing them out. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Kayla—” Vayne started.

“Will you?” Dolan arched the brow ruined by the spider web of scars. He glanced over at Vayne. “He means that much to you?”

She nodded.

Dolan’s half-smirk turned into a smile. “Good. I had heard that on Ordoch, the bond between
ro’haar
and
il’haar
was much stronger than on Ilmena, and I have experienced Vayne’s memories of you. You do not disappoint.”

“If you don’t let him go, I will do much more than disappoint you,
kin’shaa
. You have my word on that.” She’d been stripped of her tac-suit and wore nothing more than a light gown, but she gave him the stare of the warrior she was.

Dolan walked behind her chair and out of sight. “You are lucky to have such a fierce champion, Vayne.”

Kayla twisted her wrists, testing the strength of her bonds. How long had she been unconscious? Had Rigger and the others made it to safety? Did they know what happened to her? Even if they did, what could they do?

Her bonds proved immovable. Organoplastic cuffs with an infused gel lining that conformed exactly to her wrists. She studied the room, trying to ignore the sound of Dolan working on something behind her. The one door she could see looked as sturdy as those on the prisoners’ ward, and there were no windows.

She jumped at a touch on her temple. Dolan affixed something there, then one on the opposite side. The things hummed to life and pressure built in her skull as they seemed to squeeze inward toward each other.

“Don’t do this,” Vayne said. “You still have me, that’s enough.”

“If you were enough, we would not be in this situation,” Dolan replied. “I need her.” He stroked the hair back from her forehead gently before affixing another device there. It was small, no bigger than a credit chip, and blinking with electrical impulses. He forced her head forward and attached one underneath her hair at the nape of her neck. The pressure intensified as those two devices started to pull on each other.

A console on the wall ahead of her lit up and revealed a neural scan of her brain. Dolan moved to study the screen. His lavender robes swirled around his ankles, giving him an oddly elegant appearance.

“As I suspected, your psi powers are intact. Look here.” He enlarged a section of the scan. “The cartaid arch is entirely undamaged. There’s no scar tissue or signs of past hemorrhage. You should have full access to your powers, but there’s no activity.” He tapped a finger against his lip. “I think it’s a mental block rather than physical.” Dolan turned to look at her. “You’re no good to me like this.”

Vayne sighed with such relief that her heart ached. Whatever being of use to Dolan meant, Vayne had clearly suffered the result of it many, many times.

“Let her go, Dolan. She’s useless for your plans.”

“I never said she was useless. She just needs to re-form the pathways between the cartaid arch and the rest of her brain.”

“How would that help you?” she asked. The constant squeezing on her head edged out the effects of the anesthesia.

He smiled. “I thought that was clear. I plan to control the Council of Seven.”

“With one vote on the Council?” That explained why he wanted Tia’tan to win the Game, if he thought her on his side, or why he might have helped Janeen in her attempt to fix it and put Divinya on the throne, if he could have used her as a pawn.

“Not one vote. All of them.”

Thoughts crawled over each other in her sluggish brain. Something about Dolan and mind control. On Ilmena. His experiments? The pieces clicked together haphazardly. An artificial intelligence, constructed to generate its own telepathic output. Something about keeping it constantly powered to maintain indefinite control over a group of people.

“You rebuilt your AI.” The only explanation. No Wyrd could achieve the level of sophisticated mind control on a consistent basis needed to control the Council otherwise.

“It took years,” Dolan said, “with only the empire’s rudimentary tech to work with. The invasion of Ordoch finally gave me access to the materials I needed.”

“How lucky for you,” she snapped. “So you’ve been, what, experimenting on my family these last five years?”

Dolan walked past her again, and when he returned to view he was affixing electrodes to Vayne’s head. He was less gentle about it and Vayne hissed when the last one locked into place.

“It was necessary to have test subjects while I refined the AI.”

“You did more than just test your AI on us,” Vayne said, his words echoing with contempt. “We’ve been your frutting playthings.” His aqua eyes blazed with hatred, and a betraying twitch in his hand showed how he struggled to sit still while the
kin’shaa
touched him.

Dolan lowered his voice. “Lie to her. Tell her you hated every second of it. Look her in the eye and tell her I never gave you joy, or happiness, or pleasure.”

“You took the choice from me.”

“I gave you so much more in return.” Dolan’s certainty made her shiver.

Kayla couldn’t bear the conflict of hatred and self-hatred on Vayne’s face. “Leave him alone.” His body might be stronger physically than she had ever seen, but looking at him now she knew he’d been destroyed on many levels.

She was going to tear the flesh from Dolan’s body while he still lived.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded.

Dolan looked over his shoulder at her, his ruined eye seeming to peer into her soul. “Many things, in time.” Again the certainty, and with it came a sick roll in her stomach. “First, though, I need your powers.”

“You just said I don’t have any.”

“You will. It takes only the right emotional trigger to convince your brain to re-form the connection to your cartaid arch. Vayne knows all about it.” Her twin wouldn’t look at her.

“What then? Once I have my powers—”

“He’ll harvest them,” Vayne said. “The AI doesn’t grow its own psi powers, they are grafted onto the neuroface. Once there, the machine can sustain the psi powers for a period of time, but eventually the grafted energies die, and,” he looked up at her, “more need to be harvested.”

“He’s been… farming you?”

“It’s slightly more complex than that,” Dolan said. A second screen lit up on the wall beside hers, showing Vayne’s neural scan. The area he’d indicated as the arch looked twisted and scarred. “As you can see, it’s not a forgiving process.”

Understanding clicked into place. “That’s how you got your powers back, after the Kalichma Ritual. You stole them from Vayne.”

“The ritual did much more damage to my brain than this—” he gestured to Vayne’s misshapen cartaid arch. “But yes, I was able to graft the energies from his psi powers onto my brain. He was the strongest of the Ordochians that I… acquired.”

Vayne cut in. “I told you—I am stronger than Kayla. If my powers are not enough to feed your AI then hers will be of even less use to you.”

“Alone, perhaps, but I did not capture Kayla to use her alone.”

Her head throbbed from the pressure on her skull and the anesthesia’s aftereffects. “What does that mean?”

“The energies of twins are complementary in a way that no two other psionics working together can be. I theorize that if I harvest the psionic energies from each twin, overlay them and splice them together
before
attempting to graft them on to the AI, I’ll be left with something greater than either of you could achieve on your own.” He frowned, looking grave. “I meant to try this with Erebus and Natali, but—”

“Erebus is dead.” Vayne’s words lanced into her. “And Shyla and Kuutu and Mother.” Each name was a blow to her heart. Erebus, her eldest brother, Shyla and Kuutu, her aunt and uncle, and… her mother…

“Enough. Now is not the time.” Dolan came to stand beside Kayla and she fought the urge to struggle against her restraints. “Are you ready to re-form the pathways to your psionic powers?”

“Only if you free Vayne.”

He sighed. “Kayla, this is going to happen either way. Even though I’ve recently harvested Vayne’s powers I might still need him. I’m afraid I can’t release him.” He lightly touched her shoulder, a caress through the thin fabric of the gown. “Maybe in time, if it means that much to you, I will consider it.”

She tried to shrug his hand off but only succeeded in shaking the chair that held her. His hand trailed down her bare arm before he stepped back. “We’ll need something to… expand your consciousness, before we get started.”

She felt the pinch of an injector in her neck. She saw in Vayne’s eyes the same frustration she felt. He couldn’t help her any more than she could help him. She held his gaze until the room started to slide.

“
W
hat do you mean she didn’t make it back with you?” Malkor’s near-shout silenced the room. He stood in the open living area of the safehouse the Ordochians had been brought to and stared at Hekkar. “I trusted her to you.”

“Malk, I’m sorry, but—”

“You’re sorry?” He practically spat the words. “Kayla’s been captured by Dolan and you’re sorry?” Corinth still lay unconscious in his arms or he might have grabbed his second-in-command. “I trusted you.”

He scanned the room’s faces. Gio, Aronse, Tia’tan. Luliana lay on one of the beds, tended by a medic. Same for two other people he didn’t recognize. Two rescued Ordochians, two lives for Kayla’s.

An unacceptable trade.

He strode to the nearest bed and lay Corinth down as gently as the fury racing through him allowed. He turned on Hekkar. “I’m going after her.”

“We can’t, you know that. Dolan’s on alert now.”

He pushed past Hekkar but the man grabbed his injured arm.

“Malk, think, for frutt’s sake.”

Malkor yanked his arm away, breathing hard as the burn across his shoulder and back stung. “Do you know what Dolan wants with her?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, and that scares the living shit out of me.” He forced a hand through his hair. Kayla, in Dolan’s clutches. Think. He had to think.

“She’s with Vayne,” Hekkar said. “At least, she was when—”

“Vayne’s alive?”

Hekkar nodded.

Stars. Was she happy to know he wasn’t dead, or devastated to know he’d endured as Dolan’s prisoner for the last five years? Which was worse?

“I’m going after her.”

This time Hekkar let him go, but Malkor didn’t make it three steps.

“Frutt.” Hekkar was right. He couldn’t charge back there, couldn’t break in alone. He couldn’t do anything. It was on his tongue to curse Hekkar again but it wasn’t his friend’s fault. Kayla had willingly risked herself in order to save her people. She would happily become Dolan’s prisoner, he knew, if the action would save her brother.

Only it hadn’t.

Now they were both trapped, and Malkor was utterly useless to her.

He faced the door, trying to get his breathing under control, trying to master the fear-born rage.

“Malkor?”

“I’m fine,” he said, when he could speak without shouting.

“Judging by your tac-suit you’ve been shot. More than once,” Hekkar said.

Malkor turned around with a sigh, giving up on rescuing Kayla… for the moment. “I’ll heal.”

“Not well, with the armor melted into the edges of the wounds. Let one of the medics look at it.”

He consented and took a chair by the door. Hekkar cut the melted tac-suit away from the wound on his shoulder blade, reporting on the mission while he worked. Apparently they’d rescued Natali, Kayla’s elder sister, and Ghirhad, one of her uncles. Both were in bad shape, but it seemed to be the mental, rather than the physical kind. Natali confirmed that the rest of the Ordochians were dead.

“So Parrel’s got Janeen?” Hekkar asked, when Malkor related the details of Corinth’s rescue.

“He promised to get the formula for the toxin out of her first thing. Toble’s with Isonde, ready.”

“They’ll get it in time.”

“They’d better, or I’ll kill Janeen myself.” And enjoy it. Immensely.