reflection 01 - the reflective Read online

  “Like in between?” he asked.

  Beth shuddered, thinking about jumps that had landed her in a place not unlike this fog-thickened weather.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  Jeb turned, surveying large yards containing mainly farm equipment and gardens thick with unharvested corn. Orange pumpkins burst here and there from the confines of vines gone blond with the change of season.

  “Let's keep going.”

  “I… Merrick.”

  He turned, impatience on every line of his body.

  Beth was so hungry she could hardly think.

  Of course, he must be far worse.

  Instead of telling him the obvious, she asked, “Do you have the Three currency?”

  He jerked his chin back. “Of course.”

  “Where?”

  Merrick unbuttoned the pocket that ran the length of his shin. He worked the denim with stiff fingers gone cold without gloves.

  They usually took only what was needed for their particular mission: currency from the appropriate sector and era-appropriate clothing and weapons.

  Even if they carried nothing else, they brought weapons. However, their mission had not been considered dangerous enough to require stabilizers.

  Beth had transported the weaponry, and Merrick had been responsible for the currency and light jackets they wore. Merrick called them “zip-ups,” but she knew they were called hoodies in this region. Hers was barely adequate, even with her body warm and loose from the trek.

  Merrick's hoodie hugged his lean, muscular form as though it had been made for him. Beth's was ridiculously large.

  No one had bothered to get a jacket that fit her, and she'd had to make due with a small male's.

  All those little slights added up—all those jackets that didn't fit, all those things made life so much harder for her. Many would have loved to see Beth fail because the Reflectives didn't see her as a compatriot, but someone they needed to excise, like a disease.

  “Hey.”

  Beth started.

  “It's right here.” Jeb held up the envelope Christopher had given him.

  She breathed easier. They had needed to get out of there so quickly that Beth hadn't kept track of the currency.

  “Satisfied?” Merrick asked, as bright as a new Sector Three penny.

  In contrast, Beth felt worn out.

  “Look sharp. We'll be entering another quadrant, and it might not be exactly like Kent.”

  Beth said nothing as she followed Merrick. When they got to a narrow bridge that crossed a large river, her nose picked up a delicious aroma.

  “The morning meal,” Merrick said appreciatively.

  Beth tucked her hair behind her ears, hating the curtain it made around her. She reminded herself of the need to blend in. The females of this region did not braid their hair in the way she did. She and Merrick already stood out a little because they could never quite eradicate their differences.

  Most of the Threes couldn't tell, but she had run across a few who had sighted them immediately

  Those Threes were known as Sensitives. They were not abundant but were plentiful enough that blending in was a Reflective's first priority. Of course, there was nothing they could have done during their most recent debacle.

  Beth thought of the zombie, Clyde, and his smart associates who policed his world. That had been unfortunate. Thank Principle Three was riddled with paranormals. Beth and Jeb’s disappearance would be noted, but not as noteworthy as it would have been on somewhere like Sector Seven, where humanoids could shift into different animal forms, vampires roamed unregulated, and a sub-species of human beings ruled through blood alone. Sector Seven was home to the Blood Singers, or Singers as the Reflectives had nicknamed them long ago.

  And there was the matter of the fey, who were as ancient as the Papiliones. That issue remained unaddressed. They were a secret people, and their very nature made them less of an issue. But if the fey chose to “out” themselves, then the Reflective would need to manage their reveal.

  Like many cultures that grew too powerful or advanced too quickly, no failsafe to provide a check and balance had been built into their culture structure.

  The Reflective would intervene before they ran amuck.

  Beth and Merrick followed their noses toward the food. Beth daydreamed of her butterflies, and Merrick kept his thoughts to himself.

  Beth didn't even care what he was thinking; she was sleepwalking and starving.

  Anything would do.

  *

  The bell tinkled as they entered, and Merrick excused himself to use the restroom. Dead on her feet from no rest and the all-night hike, Beth was desperate to splash a little water on her face. But she knew Merrick would be separating the money.

  They couldn't just run into an eatery and suppose Threes wouldn't notice a bundle in excess of ten thousand in Three currency.

  Beth stepped forward, and a young female smiled, giving Beth a slow perusal.

  “Table for two,” Beth said in a commanding way, breaking the young woman's curiosity with a neat hammer-to-glass method.

  The girl looked startled.

  “Right, this way.”

  She turned and led Beth to a table near the window.

  “This okay?” The girl named… Bethany asked.

  Suddenly sad, Beth's eyes went to the hostess. The girl knew who her real parents were and where she came from. She even had an entire name.

  Beth studied her and was startled to realize they were roughly the same age, even though it was clear that their lives were not parallel.

  “Hello?” she asked Beth.

  She scanned the inside of the food establishment. Merrick would want something with his back to the wall, where he could keep his eyes locked on the exits.

  There were three, Beth noted.

  “I need something over there…” She pointed to a semi-circle booth.

  The hostess rolled her eyes.

  Beth noticed her blond roots and rainbow-dyed hair.

  Is this beauty in Sector Three? Beth didn't know. It was ugly to her. Of course, she wasn't considered beautiful in Papilio, where pale hair and eyes were coveted. This one had covered her naturally pale hair with unnatural, multicolored hues—a confounding practice.

  Beth sat in the center of a semi-circle booth.

  Merrick came out of the restroom like an elegant panther from the rumored jungles of this sector's extreme southern greater quadrant.

  His nostrils flared and his head turned in Beth's direction.

  Beth's face flamed. He could probably smell her because she was as rank as Hades.

  What I'd give for a cleansing. Ugh.

  He slid smoothly beside her. “What?” he asked, not really looking at her but searching for potential danger inside the eatery.

  There was only one other patron at that hour. Merrick visibly relaxed. “Good choice for position, Jasper.”

  Beth felt stupid pride well inside her, and she stomped it out before it had a chance to grow.

  “Thanks,” she replied with feigned indifference.

  Merrick's lips turned up.

  Beth rubbed her palms against the stiff denim she wore.

  Thank Principle a Reflective can’t scent emotion. However, Beth wasn't entirely sure what abilities Merrick possessed. All Reflectives could heal quickly—and Merrick could regenerate during a jump.

  Merrick was also excellent with a type of thrall, a common vampire trick, though it did not work on younglings. Reflectives did not possess any paranormal talent within their own ranks, but some had interesting anomalous talents.

  With the exception of jumping at anything that reflected, Beth had come up short. Even her super speed, strength, and other heightened senses were nothing exceptional in the ranks of her kind. As a matter of fact, her strength and speed were constrained by her gender.

  The paranormal talents of this sector were due to the brilliant but misguided discoveries of a geneticist n
amed Kyle Hart. He had mapped this Earth's human DNA code, using an exhaustive process that had excavated the previously undiscovered paranormal markers. Exploitative Threes then discovered a chemical way to unlock that code, but only within the adolescent population.

  At that time, the Reflective had been placed on pointe. Sector Three Earth had gone from a sleeping to waking giant in the span of two cycles. Now Beth and Merrick were wandering a planet where everyone between the ages of fifteen and thirty could host any paranormal talent they could think of and a few they couldn't.

  Preparation was key.

  Meeting the AftD had been a real eye-opener. “That zombie was so gross,” Beth said.

  Merrick smiled. “Do you wish we had not helped?”

  “Watch your syntax.”

  Merrick frowned, clearing his throat. “Would ya have just dumped him?”

  Beth grinned at his efforts. “Not bad. But did you get a load of Bobbi Gale?”

  Merrick snorted. “She was as local as they come.”

  “She nailed us.”

  Merrick nodded. “Yeah, she did.”

  He scooted away from her and leaned forward, making her immediately self-conscious. Do I reek that bad? Something must have showed on her face because Merrick said, “I'm watching the other exit.”

  Right. Okay… Beth was acting like a regular female instead of a Reflective.

  She needed to nip that in the bud, as they said here.

  “That was a kick-ass jump, Jasper… even if you screwed the end.”

  Beth frowned.

  “Listen, I jumped with you. Yʼknow how hard that is.”

  “Of course I know.”

  A waitress with red hair came to their table. The color was not natural but was easier on the eyes than the rainbow hair on Bethany, who kept casting furtive glances in Beth and Merrick’s direction.

  “What'll it be?” The waitress’s nametag said Doreen.

  “Yeah, I'd like the special.”

  Beth's eyebrows rose.

  “How do ya want your eggs cooked?”

  Merrick hesitated. Finally he replied, “All the way.”

  Doreen kept chewing a wad of neon-green food inside her mouth.

  Nasty. Beth stifled mild revulsion.

  “Listen, pal, don't get cute. It's five in the morning. Over-easy, medium, or hard.”

  Merrick blinked.

  “We'll have them medium.”

  Doreen gave up on Merrick and turned to Beth, the reasonable half of the pair.

  Beth smirked.

  “Bread?”

  “Wheat,” Beth replied quickly.

  “Juice?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “Citrus,” Beth replied, delighted to use her language skills.

  “I give up,” Doreen said, her paper and writing utensil protruding from ample hips.

  Uh-oh.

  “Grapefruit, apple, or orange?”

  “Orange,” Merrick piped in.

  “Great, a comedian.” She looked from Beth to Merrick. “Anything else.”

  Merrick grinned.

  Oh Principle.

  “Yes, I'd like to try these hotcakes.” He pointed to a beautiful graphic of five circular discs that resembled a pastry popular on Papilio.

  “Uh-huh,” Doreen acknowledged. Then the glob in her mouth came out and grew like a green tumor.

  It suddenly sucked back into her mouth, and Merrick jumped when it popped in an explosive snap.

  His hand flinched around his weapon.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Doreen asked.

  Beth was unfamiliar with the idiom.

  She could tell that Merrick thought that required a simple response. “No, there are no felines present.” He peered at her name tag. “Dor-reen.”

  She stared a hole through him.

  “Right, yeah—thanks for your order.” She sauntered off, shaking her head.

  “What was all that about?” Merrick asked.

  Beth shook her head. “I'm not sure. I thought I was fairly well-versed in this sector.”

  “Syntax,” he mocked, his eyebrow quirked.

  Beth glowered at him, wanting to give him the stiff middle finger.

  “I mean, they only live around eighty cycles, but maybe… there is a big gap between the younglings and old ones in terminology.”

  Merrick waved his hand. “I don't care. I want food.”

  Agreed. “I'm famished.”

  She licked her dry lips, wishing for a toothbrush, water, food, a cleansing… and not in that order.

  “I could eat a horse.”

  Merrick chuckled, scrubbing his face.

  Beth could see, and feel, his fatigue. It matched her own.

  “What is their obsession with animals here?”

  She gave a weary laugh that was more like a cackle, so when Doreen showed up with water, Beth asked for a pitcher in between hiccups.

  “Slow. Drink it slow.”

  Beth's eyes shifted to Merrick.

  “Right—disease.” She'd almost forgotten.

  He nodded and slid an inhibitor tablet across the table.

  She swallowed the opaque oval pill with water that was contaminated, as their food would be.

  This world still used artificial manipulation on their food and water sources. It was a shame. They were a hundred years away from sanitation that didn't deplete the Earth's own resources.

  The Reflective could do nothing for that. It broke the third directive: Change not what must be.

  It was one of the most difficult directives to follow. There was so much they wished to accomplish, yet meddling was disallowed.

  The hotcakes came, and Beth explained the minor difference between hotcakes and pancakes.

  “That's an eastern-region phrase.”

  “Right,” Merrick dismissed, pouring a slow-moving hot amber liquid over the stacked discs.

  He shoveled the first mouthful and sighed, and Beth laughed.

  “Males!” she said under her breath.

  “There is more of me than you.”

  “Uh-huh,” Beth said, taking a delicate bite of her egg, when she would have liked to fold the plate in half and funnel the entire meal down her throat.

  Merrick stared at her and cut off a piece of the steaming dessert disguised as the morning meal.

  “Open,” he commanded.

  Beth didn't think he fed his other partners.

  She didn't say so.

  The tenderness Merrick had displayed when she was injured had seemed out of character to what she understood him to be.

  She was so starved for any kindness from her own kind that she popped open her mouth and closed her eyes, going against her better judgment and experience.

  Flavor exploded in her mouth, and she closed it, moaning in bliss as the mix of creamy, fluffy warm goodness with a kick of maple filled her mouth to bursting.

  She smiled through the pancake and opened her eyes.

  Merrick's expression was curious, then he seemed to take interest in something else.

  Beth had a moment to wonder what his face had been trying to tell her before the roar of noise filled her ears. She glanced outside, swallowing the thick lump of pancake.

  With a teeth-thrumming rumble, two-wheeled transports crawled up alongside the curb of the eatery. She saw fifteen different vehicles of similar design—she struggled to remember the name for them on Three.

  Merrick supplied the word without her asking.

  “Motorcycles.”

  “Oh,” she said, hating the noise. Beth wanted to slap her hands over her ears.

  “They're awful.”

  “Many years ago, we had something similar.”

  Beth remembered the history: they destroyed everything, polluting the world, killing the precious butterflies.

  Papiliones traveled by hover transport, but she could not fault this sector for not yet having the technology. It simply wasn't their time.

  Though the pr
imitiveness was painful to endure.

  Merrick's head snapped to the right, his eyes narrowed at the rainbow-haired hostess and their hostile waitress.

  “I don't like this,” Merrick said as the first male who’d arrived by motorcycle strutted into the eatery.

  Beth assessed the females inside.

  “They're scared.”

  “Yes,” Merrick said, keeping the steady consumption of his food moving.

  He had a plan.

  “What do we do?” Beth asked.

  “Eat up,” he said.

  “Then?”

  “Nothing.”

  He turned to her, using the paper that lay underneath the flatware to cleanse the corners of his mouth.

  In the pale morning light, Beth noticed a shadow of wheat peppered Merrick's square jaw; the cleft of his chin suggested a darker gold.

  “Finish,” he said.

  Beth chewed then swallowed mechanically, her eyes pegged to the entrance as more of the Threes came through.

  She smelled something.

  Merrick's eyes focused on the signs of her distress.

  Beth knew he could count her heartbeats and respiration, smell the adrenaline increasing, and see her pupils dilate.

  His palms flattened on the table.

  “What is it?” He tossed the last of the polluted water down his throat and Beth saw the knot of hard flesh all males had plow up and down his neck.

  His unnerving gray eyes darkened like a coming storm.

  Females were known to have a slightly better sense of smell.

  Beth was no exception.

  “I smell gun oil.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jeb considered Beth's color and overall wellness to be restored. She would be as fatigued as he was, but they still had a chance to get out of their current situation unscathed if they played it right.

  He racked his brain.

  The cleansing room had sported a mirror. However, without a locator, its surface was too small to use for a jump. It would be their stupid luck to end up in an even more remote place than the one Jasper had already placed them.

  No, we still need to find a greater body of water.

  Damn.

  Most males of this sector seemed to be intimidated by Jeb’s persona. He and Jude Calvin had made hundreds of inductee jumps together, and unless they were Sensitives, Threes gave the men a wide berth.

  However, though Jasper wasn't classically beautiful for Papilio, she held a sort of fragile quality that circled true beauty, never quite landing, and was appealing nonetheless.