Black of Hearts Page 2

  He’d barely left her alone, not since––

  Kiko blanked her mind.

  She fought back the image of Dex’s concerned face, his long jaw, that compassion and anger and helplessness she’d seen in his eyes when she first woke up in the hospital.

  She fought it all back, breathing through the knot in her chest as she forced herself to refocus on where she was. She took deeper breaths, remembering the calming exercises her Veterans Affairs shrink taught her, to help her deal with all her shit after Afghanistan.

  That tour––coming back from the months she’d spent over there, the things she’d seen––that was the first time she’d had to deal with anything like PTSD symptoms. If she hadn’t had Dex then, and eventually Black, she might not have stayed doing this kind of work.

  She might have gone back home, to San Diego, where her family lived.

  Her family wasn’t exactly big on shrinks… or psychiatry.

  Neither was Dex’s family, for that matter, which is how he knew to push on her, to not let her brush it off, to get in her face until she dealt with her shit honestly.

  Funnily enough, it had been Black who hounded her hardest to see someone the second time, when they took a few contracts out in the field that went sideways, ending in a number of deaths on their team. She didn’t know if Dex had been behind that, or, more likely, if Black just picked up on something himself.

  One thing she’d always liked about Black––he wasn’t weird or hung up about dealing head-on with emotional issues. He didn’t pretend things didn’t bother him. He didn’t get hung-up on his masculinity, with either the women or men he hired. He didn’t pretend he was immune to the terrible things they saw in the course of their work.

  Kiko had seen Black cry.

  Even before Miri, she’d seen Black cry.

  Black didn’t give a shit what anyone thought of him. He didn’t feel the need to play tough, or prove anything. Neither did Dex.

  It made her love them both.

  They were family.

  In some ways, they were more family than her biological family.

  Counting backwards, she consciously envisioned her feet on the packed earth, like her shrink taught her. She felt every detail of the ground, every uneven spot, the heat of the sun trapped in sandstone and dirt. Once she felt grounded in her toes and the soles of her feet, she felt her ankles, her calves, her knees… working her way up, fixing herself in this exact moment in time and space.

  She never took her eyes off the horizon.

  She’d been roughly in this area of the California desert before, but the view was different now. Whereas previously she remembered seeing an ocean of endless beige and yellow, scrub brush, cactus and twisted desert trees… the view had changed.

  The horizon was broken.

  Human hands had intervened.

  A dark line snaked down through the valley, flanked by rutted dirt roads on either side. From here, that long, snaking line looked like a crack in the Earth’s crust.

  It wasn’t, though.

  It was a wall.

  Kiko gazed out over the seemingly monochromatic landscape that surrounded that line on either side, the leeched-out yellow of the desert floor dotted with shadows. Some of those shadows were military-style transport vehicles. Smaller shadows dotted the desert floor in uneven lines stretching out from the wall; Kiko guessed some of those were people, some rocks, some motorcycles.

  She noted surveillance poles and cameras.

  From the high-powered binocs, including those in her headset, she knew many of the “birds” she saw were clouds of drones patrolling up and down the length of the barricade.

  Further from the wall, she saw shadows that appeared to be natural formations, too: dips and rises for hills and gullies, low twisted bushes, tumbleweeds, cactuses, trees, boulders, flowers, even the occasional coyote.

  One pattern of shadows interested Kiko in particular.

  A semi-symmetrical set of dark lines in the pale, yellow dirt ran in rows coming out from the wall on the United States side. Those dark lines and dashes appeared in clusters, strange clumping patterns that concentrated only in some areas.

  Kiko thought at first, looking at those shadows, they must be geological.

  Still, there was something about the near-symmetry of their locations that bugged her.

  It also made her suspect they were manmade.

  Her binocs weren’t powerful enough to answer the mystery. She wanted to send drones down there, but non-registered drones would be noticed, and probably shot down.

  She was still thinking about that, contemplating options, when the wind rose, ruffling her hair. Kiko tasted heat and sand on her lips––and smoke. That smoke had a slightly sweet, honeyed taste on her tongue and lips, a taste she now recognized as one of those strange joints a lot of the seers smoked.

  She glanced to her right.

  Jax stood there.

  She hadn’t heard him approach, but now he stood, silent, on the edge of the cliff, his handsome, dark-skinned face expressionless.

  Like Dexter, Jax rarely seemed to leave her side these days.

  He’d lingered around her since…

  Well, since it happened.

  Since Nick happened.

  Jax wasn’t Dex, though.

  Unlike Dex, Kiko barely knew the violet-eyed seer.

  His angular, borderline-hard features had become familiar to her, as had his oddly perfect mouth, which had the Greek-statue-perfection of most seer mouths. His features, which were both East Indian-looking, yet somehow distinctly not East Indian-looking, had become familiar to her, too. Her eyes glanced down his muscular frame, noting again, almost absently, that he wasn’t as crazy-tall as a lot of the seers in their camp, yet still managed to top six feet.

  Despite her familiarity with him now, she didn’t know him.

  What little she did know, hadn’t even come from him. It came from bits and pieces told to her by others, mainly from Black’s wife, Miri.

  Because of that, because she didn’t know him, Jax hanging around her all the time probably should have bothered her.

  Weirdly, it didn’t bother her, though.

  She didn’t mind him there now, standing there, smoking.

  She didn’t mind him sitting outside her camping tent at night, keeping watch.

  She hadn’t minded him in San Francisco either, when she’d often woken up to find him sleeping on a chair in her hospital room, or just standing by the window, looking out on the small lawn and scattering of trees that made up her view from the private room Black got her at UCSF Medical Center.

  The seer never tried to bother her, so maybe that was part of it.

  He didn’t give her non-stop worried or sad looks, like many on her team did.

  He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t even try to talk to her, really.

  He simply lingered.

  She felt his eyes on her, his attention, but he didn’t intrude.

  Weirdly, she found his presence comforting. Not comforting like Dex, who she’d known for years, whose life she’d saved multiple times and who’d saved hers just as many. Still, something about Jax being there eased her mind.

  She felt safe with Jax.

  Maybe more importantly, Jax was a safety net that somehow didn’t make her feel like crap for wanting him there.

  She remembered the doc, Black’s wife, telling her Jax had PTSD.

  Well, Miri said Jax had something anyway, some kind of trauma issue, some kind of intense shock, or lingering fear, or whatever the equivalent was for seers.

  Whatever it was, according to the doc, Jax still suffered from some pretty serious side-effects, although Miri didn’t really get into what those were.

  Kiko suspected Miri wouldn’t have said anything at all––doctor-patient confidentiality and all that––but, after securing Jax’s permission, Black asked his wife to debrief a subset of the leadership team on Jax’s condition. Black explained he was doing it so they could accommodate Jax better, but also because he wanted Jax to educate them.

  Black wanted them to understand exactly how Jax developed those issues.

  Unsurprisingly, it happened on that other version of Earth.

  Jax was a veteran of the last big war there, the one that ended in the planet more or less being destroyed. Despite Jax’s extensive combat experience, however, the doc didn’t believe “combat” was what caused his specific issues.

  Rather, she labeled his issues “combat-adjacent.”

  Black stepped in to explain.

  He told them how on that other Earth, seers fought dirty.

  He said combat seers there deliberately fucked with human and seer heads, screwing with their adversaries’ minds and something Black called “light.” Militarized seers from that world employed a whole host of twisted psychological tactics to that end––tactics meant to traumatize, frighten, exploit preexisting conditions, demoralize, and even drive enemy combatants insane.

  After glancing apologetically at Jax, Miri confirmed this, and said Jax had this happen to him. As a result, his behavior in some live combat situations might be unpredictable, especially if Charles and his seers employed the same tricks.

  Jax didn’t disagree with anything she said.

  Even with him standing there, stoically in agreement with Miri’s words, the discussion was uncomfortable and sobering for all of them.

  Dalejem, Yarli, Holo, and Mika spoke on the topic, too.

  They detailed some of what had been used against them in that other world.

  Mika described “seeing” dead people from her past, having to hear them try to convince her to give up, even to join the other side. Yarli talked about having to stay up for days at a time to keep her “light” from being drained, being hit with emotions that weren’t hers, being hit by memories that were disturbing or frightening.

  Holo talked more generally about being worn down and exhausted, emotionally and physically, by non-stop psychic attacks. He talked about having parts of his “light” broken or twisted into dark spaces, being forced into false depressions, anxieties, even panic attacks.

  Dalejem described being forced to watch a loved one being tortured, over and over in his mind. He described being forced to reexperience the death of his sister, with whom he’d been extremely close, and whose death had marked him in childhood.

  The whole time he spoke, Mika, Yarli, and Holo nodded emphatically, understanding in their eyes.

  Their descriptions were alien, frightening.

  They were also terrifyingly easy to imagine, in terms of things that might be used against her, meaning Kiko herself, in a similar situation.

  As to what happened to Jax, Miri didn’t say.

  He didn’t share his experiences like the other seers.

  Kiko knew Jax had been a slave on that world, and owned by humans, at least for part of his time there. Most ex-slave seers carried scars from that, obviously. Most were abused in various ways, from what Dalejem told her. Some were even experimented on, in labs or other quasi-scientific settings, often for military applications.

  Many, like Black, were sold or abandoned by family members.

  Many were abused by human guards and other seers in the slave pens. Some changed owners frequently at a young age, or were sold away from siblings or parents––

  Feeling the seer’s eyes on her, Kiko flushed.

  It was hard to remember, sometimes, that they could hear her.

  Clearing her throat, she focused back on her headset, and on her best friend, conscious suddenly of the long silence over the comm.

  “Dex.” She shook her head to get straight, black bangs out of her eyes, even as the desert wind ruffled them again. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay? I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, Kiks.”

  At her silence, his voice dropped further into that deep baritone.

  “Don’t bullshit me, okay?” he said. “You’re a thousand miles from fine. You’ve only been out of the hospital for, what? A week? And you hop on a damned Osprey, fly into what’s getting damned close to being a full-blown combat zone––”

  “Dex,” she said, sighing. “I really am fine… in the ways I need to be out here.”

  At his silence, she let out an exhale.

  “Being stuck in a hospital room was making me worse,” she admitted. “Being stuck at the building on California Street wasn’t making me any better. I was climbing the walls. You know damned well I don’t do well being idle. Especially with this much going on.”

  Biting her lip, she added,

  “Anyway, it doesn’t exactly help, having to watch everyone, even you and Black, constantly stare at me and wonder how I’m doing––”

  Feeling him about to protest, or maybe to defend himself, she cut him off.

  “––no matter how well-meaning, Dexter,” she said, exasperated. “Dexter. Honey. I love you. You know I love you. And I love Black. I appreciate both of you more than I can possibly say. I just need some space.”

  Feeling her jaw harden, she added,

  “More than that, I need to work. Sitting around like an invalid, watching crappy movies on the big screen wasn’t helping. And like I said, physically, I’m fine. I got a clean bill of health from the docs––”

  “Bullshit.”

  Despite the word, Dex’s voice came out more subdued.

  He sounded worried again, like he couldn’t help himself.

  He grumbled at her, like he couldn’t help himself with that, either.

  “––That’s not what they told me,” he added. “You haven’t gotten half your stitches out, Kiks. You’re still banged up and bruised. You’re underweight. You need to rest up, get more sleep. That’s what they told me––”

  “They’re stitches, Dex,” she said, exasperated. “I’ve got stitches. After that, I’ll have scars. Those aren’t going anywhere. And I’ll sleep when I’m dead––”

  “Kiks.”

  She fell silent, hearing the pain in his voice.

  Biting her lip, she considered hanging up.

  Just severing the connection.

  She knew that would hurt him more though, or worse, make him mortified that he’d hurt her, or worried he’d pulled her into his own emotional shit. Anyway, she already knew the urge to hang up wasn’t because she was afraid of his emotions.

  She was afraid of her own.

  Some part of her just wanted to keep on suppressing all of it, maybe forever.

  “Kiks,” he said, quieter. “Call me, okay? Later. If you want.”

  Biting her lip, she nodded, forgetting he wouldn’t see it.

  She nodded again, wiping her eyes in spite of herself, blinking against the sand that dotted her skin with another warm gust of wind.

  “I will, Dex.”

  “Promise?” he said, soft. “Only if you need to. But promise you will, if you do. Promise you won’t cut me out, Kiks.”

  “I will.” She bit her tongue. “I’ll never cut you out, Dex. Never.”

  She thought about saying more.

  She thought about voicing a smoother goodbye, a less awkward transition.

  She hung up, clicking off her headset and fighting to control her breath.

  As she stood there, she slowly grew aware of Jax again.

  She hadn’t seen him move, but he definitely stood closer to her now than he had when she first glanced over.

  Again, the seer didn’t impose himself on her.

  He didn’t invade her space in any way.

  He just stood there, smoking that dark, leaf-wrapped cigarette that smelled faintly like honey and burnt leaves. He stared down the valley at the wall below, his dark purple eyes flickering over the length of it, his expression unmoving.

  As she wiped her eyes with her fingers and the back of her fingerless gloves, he didn’t look over.

  He didn’t glance over even when she cleared her throat.

  “Anything come up in the scans?” she said, clearing her throat a second time. “Beyond what we can see with our eyes?”

  Jax looked over only then.

  His purple eyes flickered over hers. Despite how dark they were, especially compared to the irises of many seers, they still managed to stand out dramatically in his dark-skinned face. He looked over her features, a strangely intimate, probing look.

  He nodded, once, almost a military nod.

  “Yes,” he said. “A few things. I just heard from Ace, who’s manning the drones.”

  She nodded, still wiping her face, although the desert air had dried it in seconds. She did it compulsively, conscious that her tears might have carved lines on her skin with the layer of sand that already seemed to cover every millimeter of her.

  “No.” Jax took a drag of the cigarette, shaking his head. “Not at all, sister. You look fine.”

  She started a bit, confused by his words.

  Realizing what he meant, that he’d heard her thought and was reassuring her that she didn’t look like she’d been crying, even though she had been, she nodded, glancing at him gratefully in spite of herself.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  He also didn’t move any closer.

  Again, something about both things was strangely comforting.

  Unlike some seers she’d encountered, he didn’t try to excuse his drive-by mindreading. He didn’t try to convince her he hadn’t heard much, or that he hadn’t been listening on purpose. When she didn’t protest, he didn’t push it and further invade her space, either. He didn’t try to cover the awkward silence with bullshit.

  He was pretty ho-hum about all of it.

  “Do you want to know what Ace said, sister?” he asked politely, taking another drag of the leaf-wrapped cigarette.

  She looked at him, studying his angular face. “Yes. Mostly I want to know if he found any place safe for us to approach.”

  “Approach?”

  “The wall.”

  Jax quirked an eyebrow. “Short answer?” he said. “No.”

  She blinked, then followed his fingers as he gestured with alien grace towards the valley floor. Picking up on his meaning, even though he didn’t speak, she frowned.

  “They can’t be covering all of it,” she said. “Do you mean those poles?”