Fledge (5 page)

I shake my head.

"It's a test of sorts. To see which individuals can fulfill the potential bestowed upon them. Everyone you've met so far has succeeded in Fledge. Proved themselves worthy."

Tier's words on the rock on Earth come back to me,
She's worthy. That's what I thought. She's worthy – it's just that no one recognizes it yet.

"And there is a very simple test to determine if you're worthy or not." He stops and waits for me this time.

"Which is?"

"In this case it is a series of fights. That's what Fledge is. A series of fights to the death."

"So you want me to kill people in order to prove myself."

He nods. "Your clutchmate, Esta, went through Fledge a few years ago. So she earned her place. And if you want to stay here, you must do the same."

I shrug. "OK."

"You may not use the weapon."

"Lucan," I snarl his name, "seriously, if you think the most dangerous thing about me is that stupid weapon, you are grossly mistaken."

"There is one more thing."

"And that is?" I ask, looking at him sideways.

He hesitates and I notice the slightest crack of a smile beneath his facade. "You must testify against Tier."

"No problem." I catch his shock like a firefly in a jar and tuck down my satisfaction.

He physically moves backward. "And you will tell the truth."

"I always tell the truth, Lucan."

He regains his composure. "Very well. I will set it up."

"You do that," I say to his back as he exits the room.

You do that, Lucan. And I'll do the same.

Chapter Four

Braun enters before the door can close behind Lucan and his smile brings me back from the edge. "Junco," he says, "I get that you love the shirt, but you can't wear it like that."

I frown at him as he removes his knife and lifts the fabric up from my back. "What are you doing?"

He leans down into my face. "Making you look presentable, babe. Just give me a minute." His hands get busy cutting the shirt around my wings.

"Don't call me babe." I look over my shoulder at him and he shrugs.

"Sorry, Junco. Forgot." Then he flashes a smile and continues to cut. "I invited the 039 over for poker. And the box is stocked, so should be a good time tonight."

"Why?"

He's finished cutting now and he takes a second to straighten out my shirt before leaning into my face again. "Welcome home party, Junco." His hands take my arm and force it into the shirt. Then he manipulates the cloth so that his cut stretches over the uppermost portion of my wing. When his fingers make contact with the sensitive feathers my back arches involuntarily and I squeal. "Shit, what was that?" I ask, my breath heavy.

"Sorry, Junco. I know, it's weird, right? Don't take it the wrong way, I'm just trying to get them out through the cuts in the fabric."

"What way might I take it?"

He stops and leans around to see my face. "It's kind of erotic, isn't it? The whole wing-touching thing."

I raise my eyebrows at him. "Yeah, kinda."

He wrestles with the other wing, forcing me to stifle the sounds that want to escape my lips. When he's finally done I breathe out a sigh of relief and look up into his eyes. They glow a little more with each passing second and are a warm orange, like a beckoning fire. "This isn't my home, Braun." I pick up the conversation as quickly as possible to avoid the weirdness that wants to creep in.

"Is now. We inducted you as our ninth warrior back on the shuttle while you were out."

"I thought you guys didn't want me to morph? You were all outside the door when Tier and Layla were putting me under."

"Not us. That was the fucking crew and the other two teams that were hitching a ride after the clusterfuck in the MR. We were always on board. Tier would never make a decision like that without us. Just isn't done."

"Oh." I frown.

"What," he says as he studies my reaction, "is the problem?"

But I'm not sure, so I can't say. I shrug instead, thinking about being part of a team. So much has happened in two days it's hard to get my head around it. But this isn't stuff I want to share, so I exhale and push it down for later. "Nothing, just – unexpected, right?"

"It's good?"

I nod. "Yeah. Maybe."

He laughs. "Jasus, Junco, you're so hard to fucking please, ya know that?"

I watch the words come from Braun's mouth but I see Tier's face in my mind. I smile up at Braun, shake off those feelings, and then hug him. "Thanks, though. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you're doing right now."

He lifts his hands high up in the air, pretending to not want to touch me. "What? What did I do? I'm gonna get ya drunk, Junco, and probably take advantage of ya right here in the lab." He winks as I look up at him.

"You wish," I say into his chest.

"Oh, shit, do I ever!" Then he pushes me away and goes to set up the game. "But don't go blabbing it to the rest of the guys, Junco. They all have to feel like they have a shot with ya or they'll mope about all night."

"Where's Layla and Ash?"

He nods his head towards the door. "Talking to Lucan."

"Am I allowed to walk out that door?" I say it before I can stop myself, then get nervous with his silent look and scratch my neck and wince.

He shakes his head. "Not yet, Junco. But it won't last forever. So try not to think of it that way."

I sit down and he deals me in, sliding me a stack of high-value chips since we're only fucking around. "Did you really cheat yesterday?"

He doesn't look up from his hand. "Course I did, Junco." His eyes peer over the cards. "Do I look like an honest guy to you?" Then he winks. "No really, I did cheat. I always cheat, which is why I always win."

I raise my eyebrows at him.

"But I get caught a lot too." He laughs. "Plus everyone knows I cheat so they never pay me anyway. Did you really think I would make you buy me a house with 2x2 gauze?"

I laugh. "All's fair in cards and war?"

"Precisely! Holy fuck, that's poetry, Junco. You should publish that shit."

Ash and Layla walk in just as he's finishing. "What the hell is going on here, Braun? She's got shit to do, it's not poker time."

"Ash, you are such a straight-backed piker. Get the hell out, party's not until later. We're just having some fun, right, Junco?"

Layla interrupts as she walks into the lab. "He can stay if you want him to, Junco. But it's a little personal."

Braun gets up and squeezes my arm. "Just knock on the door when you want me to come back in, be right outside."

When he's gone Ash scowls at me as I walk into the lab with Layla.

"What?"

"I told you, Junco. Braun isn't the kind of guy you want to be hanging around with."

I make a face at Layla and we do the girlfriend laugh. "She's not dating him, Ashur, fuck. Calm down. He's keeping her mind off the serious stuff. You seem incapable of playing that part, so leave them alone."

Ash leaves, presumably to give Braun the same warning. Layla just shakes her head and lets out a deep breath. "Damn, he's so fucking wound up about Tier."

I change the subject. "So what's this then?" I ask, pointing to the screen she's looking at.

"DNA profile. You definitely have the genetics of Gyr. Did Tier explain that to you?"

I nod. "Yeah, some avian who was down in the MR and was taken out to the Camp a long time ago."

"Right. But you also have the genetics of a human and not from your parents or anyone else from the Stag Camp or the RR."

"How do you know? There's no database to check."

She smiles. "Well, actually, Junco, the RR has many databases you probably never knew about. There's no match for anyone in the RR. So we don't know who gave you the other half of your code."

"Is that important?"

She shrugs. "Might be, might not be. Hard to tell at this point. Anyway, the most interesting thing about you isn't the avian or the human genetics, it's the AI code we found."

My heart skips and I suddenly feel dizzy. "What?"

She gives me a look that says, sorry for the message, but someone has to deliver it. "Uh, yeah. You have code in those electronic circuits that was created for an AI."

"Like my HOUSE on Earth?" I know it's true before it comes out but the full meaning of it remains just under the surface.

She pouts her lip ready to say no, but another second of thought changes her mind. I watch her expression change in real time as the idea grows on her. "Maybe. Never thought of that. Good instincts, Juncs."

"So what does that mean? To me?"

"Nothing, it's inert. Not even activated, just no connections whatsoever. So it's a big nothing. We think it might have been a future project that was never started or at the very least never completed."

Yeah, right. I wait for her to say something else but she's moved on to other things. One thing you can definitely say about Layla, she's got a certain detachment for things of a personal nature – it's all science all the time.

Good for her.

Braun tells dirty jokes to me like I'm just one of the guys as we play a few fake hands of poker. It makes me laugh so hard I want to pee my pants, even though Ashur's scowl tells me he thinks it's inappropriate. I'm wiping the tears out of my eyes and fanning my face to make the heat go away when the door chimes.

"Enter at your own risk," Braun calls to the smart security. The door opens and two more guys come in, neither of them familiar to me.

Ashur does the introductions. "Juncs, this is Mish." He points to a tall slender guy with the same black hair and wings as Tier, but with the bluest eyes I've ever seen. "And Goldilocks here is Rikan."

Rikan is the first blue-eyed blond avian I've seen besides Lucan, but since he doesn't have wings he doesn't count. Rikan's wings are a honey cream color and my eyes linger on him a little longer than they should. Braun catches it. "Yes, Junco, we all know he's beautiful, but if ya keep looking at him that way, we'll have to beat the shit out of him to dampen down the ego."

I look away, embarrassed.

Mish takes a seat at the table, but Rikan comes up to me and squeezes my shoulder. "It's nice to see you smile, Junco."

Braun looks up from the deck he's shuffling. "Yeah, I think you've smiled more in the past few hours than you did in six months back on Earth." His eyes go back to his task, but I'm stuck on his words.

"Did all of you watch me?" I glance around the room. Oops. Everyone looks a little uncomfortable. "I mean, I don't care if you did. I just didn't realize my life was such an open book."

The door chimes again and Braun calls out, "Enter at your own risk," then winks at me as three more guys come in. Ashur stands up this time and claps a guy in a formal uniform on the shoulder, leaning in to have a private joke. The four of them chat for a few seconds before turning towards me as he motions to another guy. "Junco, this is Arel." Arel is the shortest of them all, darker than either Tier or Ashur, and he moves toward me to shake my hand like a prairie lion stalking grouse at dawn. I shudder to think of him hunting me. "Isten, who is your new counterpart by the way."

I look hard at Isten who, I notice, has hazel eyes just like mine. His wings aren't as mottled, but they are the closest thing I've seen to white so far. "Cold-bore kill-shot in one?" I ask.

He shoots me with his finger. "You must read minds or something," he says as he pulls a chair next to me.

"And Ryse here," Ashur gestures to a guy who could be Braun's brother and who is wearing the formals, "just passed his qualifiers for officer promotion. Here's hoping you make it, buddy, but if you don't you'll always have a spot flying our asses around."

I smile at him as he takes his coat off and settles into a chair between Ashur and Braun. My eyes travel from one guy to the next, watching them joke and talk with each other in a way only a true military team can. The only two missing are Layla and Tier.

We start the game and Braun is caught cheating on the first hand and is relegated to bartender. He beckons me to join him in the kitchen as he goes to get some beer.

"What's up?" I ask.

He's rooting through the fridge collecting bottles from various brands of alcohol that I don't recognize. "Here, take these. That's for Rikan and those three are for Ashur, Ryse, and Isten."

I take the bottles and turn to leave. "Hey, Juncs?" he asks, still fishing around for a few more beers. "We weren't spying on you, OK?" He looks up then, serious. "I know it might feel that way, but really, only Tier was on the ground most of the time."

I smile. "It doesn't. Feel that way, I mean. It's sort of a relief," I let out a deep breath, "not to have to hide things, actually."

He lets out his own long breath and I wonder if he was really that worried about how I might react. "You don't have to hide anything from us, Junco. We're a team now, you're official, no matter what happens from this point on. You're one of us. It was a done deal back on the transport when we took the vote."