Bree may be away healing, but she has left behind a thank you gift! For the next few weeks, Tuesdays & Thursdays will feature new posts from a serial featuring some old friends. This serial was originally posted (mostly!) on Patreon, and has been edited and finished to be posted live on our blog over the next few weeks. But for those who just want it NOW, or who hate reading on a blog and would like an epub… Well here is the epub!
Return to the world after the Beyond Series and meet the residents of Sector Three…
When Ashwin asks Six & Bren to take in an emotionally fractured Makhai soldier, there are a thousand things that could go wrong. But they are hard at work building their school and rebuilding their sector, and Sebastian is a genius who can fix anything. Anything. In return for his help, all they have to do is give him a safe place to find out if his emotional wounds can be healed.
Just one traumatized supersoldier in the middle of a school filled with former feral street kids, war refugees from exclusive brothels, and a few dozen kids who barely know what a school is.
What could go wrong?
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DISCLAIMERS: this is a serial meant for existing readers of the series. it contains full series spoilers for the Beyond Series and may not make sense if you haven’t read it.
It is also NOT erotic. This is the first part of a very very very slow burn romance between a broken Makhai soldier and an artist who escaped Sector Two after the bombings. There may also be a few other romances a brewing… consider this more like a TV show with multiple members of the cast up to hijinks, even if there are two main characters.
—
Six didn’t think she’d ever be entirely comfortable with Ashwin.
Seated across her paper-strewn desk, the Makhai soldier looked as severe and controlled as always. A soldier, at ease but never at rest, every line of him screaming danger to the gut instinct that had kept her alive as an orphan in the ruins of Sector Three. If she let him walk out of here and cross the road to the school, every street kid in the place would probably bolt. They’d recognize the predator, no matter how he smiled.
Not that Ashwin smiled. Not even when he was asking for a favor.
Six glanced down at the tablet in her hand. At the picture displayed there. The man on the tablet could have been Ashwin’s brother, though the longer she stared at the picture, the more she realized the resemblance wasn’t just physical.
Both men had light brown skin, dark hair, and deep brown eyes. Both had precise haircuts that might as well be stamped military. But the shape of their faces were different. Ashwin looked carved from stone, but the man on the tablet had softer features. Higher cheekbones. Freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose. If anything, he reminded her of Mad. If his expression hadn’t been so severe, Six might have called him pretty.
The expression overwhelmed everything, though. Compressed lips. Tight jaw. Those hard eyes. Dead eyes. Sometimes she thought she saw a flicker behind Ashwin’s now, but the first time she’d met him she’d recognized the terrifying blankness staring back at her. Like something had snuffed out all the light that made a man feel, that made him human, and hadn’t bothered to replace it with much of anything.
The almost-pretty man staring up at her was a Makhai soldier.
And Ashwin wanted to give him to her.
“I don’t understand,” she said finally, trailing her finger to the left just to swipe away from that dark, intense gaze. “Why would the Base hand me a Makhai soldier?” Unless they want spies in my house.
“They’re not…precisely doing that.” The pause was uncharacteristic of her experience with Ashwin. He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who hesitated. “You’re aware that there was a change in leadership at the Base during the revolution.”
Change in leadership seemed like a polite way of saying the Base had had themselves a rip-roaring bloody coup. Details were sparse, but Ashwin had told Gideon enough, and he’d shared it with the other leaders. Not that any of the sector leaders trusted the new people in charge–but they had to be better than the ones who’d signed off on firebombing a sector full of high-priced whores and their teenage trainees.
“I’m aware,” Six replied, watching Ashwin’s face carefully. Her patience was rewarded when a muscle in his cheek twitched slightly.
Ashwin Malhotra was nervous.
He proved as much by clearing his throat. “Under the old regime, a fractured Makhai soldier who could no longer be recalibrated would be decommissioned.”
The sterile description twisted her lips in disgust. “You mean under the old regime, if they couldn’t torture you out of having inconvenient feelings, they’d put you down.”
“Yes.” He said it calmly, like it was an accepted reality of life. Like it was acceptable. “The situation hasn’t come up yet under the new regime. Until now.”
He nodded to the tablet, and she glanced down again.
Project: Makhai Serial #: 34721
Sebastian “BAST” Montoya
Birthdate: 2042-01-31
2042. The year of the Flares.
Six swiped her finger back, her brow furrowing as she stared at the picture. If the birthdate was correct, the man–Bast–was in his early 40s. He looked a decade younger, which had her eyeing Ashwin over the edge of the tablet again, wondering how old he was. Maybe a lot older than he looked. Genetic engineering probably had all sorts of freaky side-effects.
“So you’re not trying to give me a Makhai,” Six said slowly. “You’re trying to give me a broken one. No offense, Ashwin, but I was there at the City Center the day you lost your shit. If that’s what a fractured Makhai soldier looks like…”
“It can be,” he replied without hesitation. “It can look worse. I won’t lie about that, Six. We’re expertly trained killers, stripped of any bonds of human connection, and punished for acknowledging we still feel. We’re dangerous. All of us. Especially when we’re fractured.”
“So cut the bullshit,” Six retorted. “I don’t have time to do polite politics and dance around this all day. Lay it all out.”
After a moment, Ashwin nodded. “Bast was always different. Emotionally unsuited to life as a Makhai soldier. Being…cold did not come naturally to him. If he’d been born a decade sooner, or a decade later, the chances are good he never would have made it through training.”
Ashwin shifted in his chair, the fidgeting a sign of how uncomfortable he was. Six supposed spilling the inner secrets of Project Makhai wasn’t a common occurrence. “But they let him live.”
“They let him live. Because he’s a genius.” Something definitely sparked behind Ashwin’s eyes this time. A protective defiance. “By the time he was ten, Bast was converting outdated vehicles to run on solar power with whatever scraps of tools they could find him. You could drop him in a bombed out ruin of an old factory with a knife and a week’s supply of water, and when you came back he’d have restored electricity and built a basic carbon nutrient synthesizer. He kept the Base running until we could replenish supplies.”
Six’s heart beat a little faster. Oh, Ashwin was good. He was so fucking good. He’d baited his trap with the one kind of miracle she couldn’t pass up.
A guy with skills like that could turn her five year plan into a six month achievement.
She carefully put the tablet back down on the desk and leaned back in the chair. Her lack of interest likely didn’t fool him–she wasn’t exactly an actress–but she did her best. “If he’s so god damned magical, why are they giving him up?”
“He won’t work for them anymore.” Ashwin’s lips compressed. “He went on strike the day they bombed Two. He’s been either in solitary confinement or undergoing recalibration for ten months.”
Horror knotted in Six’s gut. “They’ve been torturing him for a goddamn year?”
“For ten months,” Ashwin corrected.
“I don’t–” She exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose. “So why are they willing to hand him over to me?”
“Actually, they’re willing to hand him over to me.” Ashwin straightened in his chair. “I have an understanding with one of the Generals. He’s aware of the stabilizing effects that bonds of community have had on me. He reached out to me about Bast’s situation and asked if I could help.”
“And Gideon didn’t snatch him right up?” Six asked doubtfully.
“He certainly wanted to,” Ashwin replied. “Dallas O’Kane would also likely have jumped at the opportunity. I can’t imagine any sector leader who wouldn’t. But when I agreed to take responsibility for Bast’s well-being, I took on the responsibility of finding him a place to be comfortable.”
Six opened her mouth to ask why me again, but the question didn’t form. When she looked down at that too-young, almost-pretty face, she didn’t just see blankness in his gaze. She saw more–a familiar wariness. A weariness. A brick wall, meant to keep everyone out.
“He’s a soldier,” she said softly. “So is Bren.”
“So are you,” Ashwin said just as quietly. “Even if your training ground was different. The O’Kanes were what you needed. The Riders were what I needed. I think Bast needs you, and your school. All of those refugees you took in from Two. A mission he can believe in.”
Six rubbed her thumb along the edge of the tablet. “I have to talk to Bren first.”
“Of course.”
“And I want to meet him. Somewhere neutral. Away from the school. I have to think about the students first of all. If he’s a danger to them…”
“If I thought he was a danger to them, I would end him myself,” Ashwin replied. “I expect nothing less of you.”
“All right.” She swiped the tablet off. “Give me a week. And set up a meeting. No promises.”
“Thank you, Six.” Ashwin stood, his expression serious. “If you do this for me, I’ll owe you a favor.”
“Yeah?” She quirked a smile. “I hear that’s some pretty serious shit where you come from. You sure you want me calling something like that in?”
“If this works, it will be worth it.”
Ashwin inclined his head and turned, as if that was that, his combat boots near silent as he slipped out the door. He moved like a ghost–because he had super strength and super speed and all sorts of other freaky genetically enhanced powers she probably hadn’t even considered.
Sebastian Montoya would have all of that too. She could talk big about putting him down, but if she had to, it would likely hurt. She had to be sure he was stable before letting him into her sector, and into her school.
But if he was… Ashwin wouldn’t owe her shit. She might owe him by the end.