I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (58 page)

He kicked our asses.

Tier gave the orders, but Annun was still our main commander. And after six months of ass-kicking, Wyrd was shipped off to Lacerion for molecular training and that’s the last I saw of him.

But I’ve heard of him. It’s hard not to.

Because Wyrd might’ve been just another throwaway in the General Fledge that was pulled through by Junco. Like me. But that’s where his connection to the rest of us regular people ends.

Wyrd is exceptional.

Wyrd went on to stun people with his genetic manipulation techniques at Lacerion. He stopped the telomere degradation of our avian DNA by inventing no fewer than four solid cloning techniques. The telomere are the ends of the DNA strands inside the genome—every time a cell replicates, some of the genetic information near the end of the strand is lost. That’s part of the reason cells break down with age. But avian and Archer cells have been modified to prevent this degradation. Or at least, they
were
modified. But Lucan fucked all that up in ancient times when he introduced that retrovirus to drive away the Angels, and that’s how we got into this whole mess in the first place. This telomere degradation is the cause of all our genetic problems.

Wyrd’s work gave us an opportunity to hedge our bets on Junco, and that was a pretty big deal considering that Junco was MIA and being morphed into her Higher Order status by Inanna. And now that she’s gone off the rails and has deliberately disobeyed orders and gotten herself dissipated inside the Seventh Pillar… well, I’m pretty sure most everyone, with the exception of Lucan and Tier, think her path to victory is gone now.

Which makes Wyrd even more valuable. There was even a huge trial over him on Justice because after Fledge he belonged to Lucan’s Aves warriors. Gib wanted him in Clutch where Science Cluster kids go after their Fledge. But Wyrd failed his Science Fledge, which was some kind of special cloning task, and his project died. That’s why he got kicked into the General Fledge in the first place.

It was later proved that there was a problem with the growth media given to the pledges that year and Wyrd was not at fault for the failure. And since Lucan was still on Earth looking for Junco and wreaking death and destruction, Gib thought he could get away with it. But Lucan sees all, even when he’s two hundred million miles away. He got his way and made a special trip back from Earth for that. Gib never had a chance against Lucan. And after the whole Deliverance fiasco, Rache was not interested in being in Kadian’s spotlight, so he stayed out of it.

Wyrd squeezes me tightly as he whispers my name. “Tessen.”

It feels so good to touch him again.

“What did you do, Tessen?”

I pull away and sigh. “I couldn’t let them kill her, that’s all. Junco deserves to know. She deserves to take part in this decision. It’s her baby and she doesn’t even know about it yet. You have to help this child, Wyrd. Please.”

He peers over my shoulder and squints at the window. “Is she conscious?”

I reluctantly pull away and shrug. “We don’t think so. We gassed her a few hours ago like you said, and no one’s seen any movement, but we don’t know.”

He looks down at me again. God, it’s weird that he’s so tall now. When I saw him last he was a boy. “Tess, this isn’t a good idea. The chances of this thing—”

“She’s not a thing!”

“Whatever. The chances that this girl can be fixed are doubtful.”

“But if it can be done, Wyrd, you can do it. And I think… I just feel… if Junco gets through this, this will…”

“Make it worth it?” Wyrd finishes for me. His eyes are sad and his mouth is turned down.

I nod. “Yeah. Maybe it will be worth it. Maybe this will make up for all the lies and pain.”

After a few more seconds of sadness from Wyrd, he finally nods his head at me. “OK. OK, I’ll try. But if I say she needs to be put down, then you have to accept it, Tess. I don’t put up with much suffering in my projects.”

I want to do a little happy dance, but I control myself. This is just the first battle and it might not end well, so the time for celebration is later. “I promise,” I tell him earnestly. “You’re in charge.”

“OK. Merk,” Wyrd says, looking behind me. “Get a team and go in. But remember what this thing”—he stops to look at me and stutters—“errr… this girl, is. She’s not Tier and Junco’s child. She’s not some innocent immature avian inside a cluster. She’s not a human baby.”

Everything goes quiet as we wait for the word.

“She’s a demon on both sides.”

“Junco was, too. And they fixed her,” I say hurriedly.

Pike interrupts. “Fixed? She’s
insane
, Tessen. You know how I feel about this and if Annun were here he’d take my side and that thing would already be dead.”

“Tier spoke, Pike. He said we could try.”

He growls at me. “If someone dies, it’s on your head, Tess. Your fucking head.”

I turn back to Merk, who is a lot more reasonable. “Get the team, Merk. Let’s go in.”

Merk flips his fingers to the rest of our team behind him and the three of them come forward. “OK, everything on high stun. Don’t kill it or you’ll have to answer to Tier. And despite what you may think”—he directs his gaze to Pike—“Tier gave the order to save it, so in his mind, the child is alive. Remember that if you’re the one who decides to kill her.”

I step back with Pike, Merk, and Wyrd as Bridge, Tak, and Cres move forward. “OK,” I say as I open the first of the triple security doors. “Go into the first vestibule, I’ll close this door, then you can enter the second, I’ll close that one, and then you’ll be inside.”

No one has been inside yet. This is the first time. No one knows what this baby is capable of.

All three of my teammates look like they are about to shit themselves. But they move forward into the first vestibule and wait for the door to close behind them.

Once it’s secure I open the second and they repeat the process. We all press closer to the glass now. The shadows of the avians inside are hard to see through the translucent glass. The mechanism on the security panel flashes red, indicating that the door is fully closed.

The tip of my finger presses against the flat panel and the button flashes green to indicate it’s open.

Blood splashes against the glass in an instant and all three death beacons implanted onto the avian soldiers activate.

And just like that, less than a minute into the mission, I have three deaths on my fucking head and almost half our team is gone.

Chapter One—LUCAN

Amelia Habitat

You would not think that an artificial intelligence would have a scent, but Amelia does. It’s intoxicating.

Her apartments in the top floor of my home smell only of her. I’m not even sure I could describe it, but the closest thing would be space. Space has a smell. It’s not something you can discern directly because there’s no air in space and scents need to be carried on a current. And I can’t smell it on myself, not even when I come back from space because I’m encased in timeshift shell.

But I smell it on Amelia because she stands out in the dark nothing when she’s thinking. I always know when she’s in a pensive mood because the smell of space permeates everything. It clings to her even when I know she’s not been outside the habitat for weeks.

She smells like the stars.

Like the black emptiness, but the ice of a comet at the same time.

She smells like rocks from the asteroid belt and photons from the Sun.

She smells like mystery, discovery, and answers all at the same time.

I live for this smell. It makes me weak.
She
makes me weak. She, more than Junco, is my one true weakness because she is my one true love.

And she smells like this right now as she sleeps next to me in the body that Gib and I created. It was a large task—making her mind and body. I’ve nurtured her for more than three thousand years. She’s been my best friend, my confidante, and my lover for most of that time.

She is perfect in every way. Gib’s molecular techniques are unmatched. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, out of place or amiss in my Amelia.

I swipe a strand of dark hair away from her face as I think of our time together. Three thousand years is long by most standards. But to me it’s been fleeting.

Where did the time go?

We’ve raised families. Many families. But that was a long time ago. She was preoccupied with being normal back then. She wanted children. So I gave her human children and we raised them over and over again.

They have all since passed.

She didn’t want any more after the last one perished because the life span is just too short. And she never wanted an avian to raise. Not until I showed her Tier and Ashur. That day Tier was birthed at Clutch was a strange one for me. Gib thought I was losing my mind when I gifted a non-genetic son while he was still in the artificial womb. Gifts before birth are a loophole in the rules. It was the only way to create what I needed. I’d known it since before I was reborn because that’s how I was Chosen by my own father.

And I gave Tier the same gift my father gave me.

Unconditional love.

It worked for my father. I never did kill him even though sons killing fathers is almost cliché where we come from. Almost like it’s Destiny. But I cheated and shifted my fate so far, my Destiny slipped and I stopped being the son he made and remade myself over into Lucan.

And the rest is history.

I hate my father. Everything that’s happened to me in the last seven thousand years is mostly his fault. But his embryonic gift of unconditional love prevents me from killing him directly.

But I only play by the rules when I don’t care if I lose. When I want to win—and believe me, I’ve never wanted anything so badly—I cheat.

I cheated when I gifted Tier. And this makes me smile, because it was so easy and simple. And it was something my father never understood.

Love is earned, not mandated.

So I loved Tier back.

Fiercely.

I pulled out a brother for him that day and created Ashur’s Destiny as well. And the two of them, along with Amelia, have been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a family. Rikan came later, then Lili. But aside from their genetics they were not meant to do my bidding, not like Tier and Ashur. They are my true blood, whereas Raubtier and Ashur are not. Rikan and Lili exist in accordance with the Laws. They are known, their genetics have been recorded in the Book. They should not be High Order because they only have half the required genetics. But I have ways of cheating that rule too.

But only Tier, of all the children I’ve created over my lifespan, only Tier will be the One to make the ultimate sacrifice for me.

And he will do it, not because I order him or force him to love me like my own father did, but because he
wants
to.

Free will. That is the difference between
us
and
them
.

I never take away their choices. My sons do everything they do for me because they want to.

It’s the reason Junco bothers me so much. How much of what she does is real and how much is conditioning?

I’d like it to be one hundred percent real, but she has been manipulated and trained for her moment since birth. It bothers me that she was forced. Truly, truly bothers me. I have accepted the excuse Subjack laid at my feet after she was taken and I felt the need for retribution on her behalf. He admitted that it was the only way to get her past childhood.

I do believe it, because the Rural Republic had been trying to create my Seven for more than two hundred years. Longer than that little country was even a nation. And they failed, time and time again. So when I heard that there was a living Seven, and that she was already of age, it was almost too good. After preparing for thousands of years for my final judgment, it was at hand. I yearned for it. I wanted to end this phase of my cycle and spend my time putting things back together after the fallout.

But she—she is… nothing like I expected.

Oh, I expected the fierce little warrior. That was a given, it was programmed into her DNA. And I expected the crazy. That too was programmed in. All High Order are touched with insanity. We are all born demons and must fight to become calm and rational.