Found family and hidden heroes.

A past that won't let go.

A chance to get everything back.

When Xlack Ekymé had nowhere to go, Navaria Twi's team took him in. Like him, these Adjuvants are hybrids of the lost Magni race and possess extraordinary talents. Unlike him, they live in the dark nooks of Knalcal Alliance Space, believed to be myths by the worlds they protect.

The leaders do not trust Xlack, and suspicions grow when assassins from his homeworld appear. Among them is a friend he thought lost who will stop at nothing to get Xlack to come home.

With prodigies slain, children abducted, and Twi a target, Xlack dives back into the intrigues of the Napix Empire, where change eats away at the familiar. This time, he must publicly declare his loyalty. One choice can restore everything and save his homeland, but only if he abandons Twi.

Released March 24, 2024

ISBN: 979-8320082578

1| We Could Be Anything

ADJUVANT BASE ABOVE MUMIR, KNALZ, KNALCAL ALLIANCE

"Breathe, Xlack Ekymé," Twi had said on the tram,shoulder near his but not touching. "No one expects us to win this."

Expect, no. Want, though? Thanks to his Mind Talent, her longing for victory, for validation, buzzed against his skin. It tasted of metal and something not quite sweet. More lurked in its depths, old and bitter, like a dead worm in polished fruit, but he hadn't called it out.

This was supposed to be a friendly competition between Adjuvants. Admittedly, Xlack hadn't caught all the rules, but he was fairly certain children weren't supposed to fall out of the sky.

He caught that one and left the boy in the care of his teammate, Rifo. In hindsight, leaping onto the nose of a passing ship was reckless. It rocked under Xlack's weight, and the pilot glared at him through the canopy.

'Are you crazy?' The mental whisper was more than words. It was all the feeling behind them.

Xlack sent one back. 'Go up.'

He didn't have the argument or even an image to explain why, but the imperative's baked-in desperation was enough. The ship ascended, and within two heartbeats the scene was worse than he had feared.

Another child teetered over the edge of Mumir's highest platform. Her feet stabbed empty air, and her terror sliced Xlack's heart. The pilot saw her, too, and the ship dashed as close as it dared, banking hard to avoid the ravine's wall. Fighting the wind, Xlack sprinted up a steepening wing and jumped.

"Never expect the sky to catch you," a teacher had lectured him once. "To the wind, you are an amusement unless you prove yourself its master."

"With our Kinetics, right?" Xlack had guessed, hand raised but too impatient to wait for permission to speak. He was Aylata, a hybrid of the powerful Napix and extinct Magni, a combination resulting in Talent, prestige, and expectations. "If we use it to control the wind, can we fly?"

The answer to that was no, though the teacher used bigger words.

Now, Xlack's Kinetics yanked at the platform's stone, and it was like flying. He couldn't have jumped this far without it. He caught the girl, cradling her as they crashed down on dark marble and plowed into a pair of legs.

As he dropped, the owner of those legs fired a dart, and the needle refused Xlack's influence. By practiced reflex, he swatted the projectile, wrapped it in a tight grasp, and stabbed it into the man's thigh.

Xlack was on his feet. The girl retreated behind him, hands lifted in loose fists and stance solid. She'd had training. Her life-signature said she was of the Tala race. So did the slits along either side of her flat nose and the glisten of her skin.

The man already rose, eyes unfocused as he took aim. Light glinted off a pond in the platform's center, undulating over the too-familiar sigils on his Metacloth jumpsuit. With a click, his ammunition switched.

Xlack snatched at the gun, but this, too, denied his Kinetic call. It was made of metachrome, alive by some definitions, a substance new to the Napix Empire when Xlack had left six months ago. He had hoped never to see it again.

The soft ping of an exa-bullet rang in his ears, and he dodged. He stayed low, caught a physical grip on the pistol's barrel, and yanked. A kick came at his side, but he stepped back and captured the man's boot. A spin flung his foe at the pond.

The platform boasted little aside from this water feature. Potted plants littered the space, and a thick column in each of the five corners held the ceiling and floor together.

Across the pool, a Knalcal leaned against one of these pillars. A scarf covered the lower half of his face, and metallic birthmarks dripped from the mask burned into the skin around his eyes: a battoo, a mark of adulthood for those of Aberrant affiliation. His battoo resembled flames, and the asymmetry of his wild hair added to the explosive theme.

His name was Azin, and he was the first Aberrant Xlack met when he came to Knalcal Alliance Space. He had been friendlier than the next ones.

The girl—and the Aberrant indoctrinated boy who had fallen before she did—must have been with him, but why come here to the main base of a rival organization? What was Azin doing, staring down two men in the mottled, armor padded jumpsuits of Napix troopers?

Xlack started toward them, heart dropping. Those were Napix troopers, down to the sigils identifying their rank and legion. One remained motionless, gaze and aim locked on Azin. The other whirled and fired.

Xlack ducked. The pond stilled beneath his step, but ice from his Talent wasn't as instant as he hoped. His right leg submerged to his knee before he stole enough energy for the water to solidify in an expanding sheet.

Exa-bullets sliced through the ice and exploded some distance below. If only they had stuck with the darts. The laser-shields on these faster projectiles were beyond his influence and would relieve Xlack of his hand if he tried to physically catch them.

Tugging his foot free, Xlack somersaulted. His heels splashed into the pool, and ice locked them in place. He leapt anyway, stretching full-length across the pond's surface, and it froze under him. Rolling, he grabbed the metachrome pistol from the first man's sinking hand.

On his feet, he took aim, but his finger hovered over the trigger. Aylata didn't shoot Napix troopers. Xlack was with the Adjuvants now, but Adjuvants didn't use guns because of a legal technicality.

Aberrant had no qualms about either. Azin wrangled a weapon from his attackers and fired, but the dart had no effect on the trooper. As impaired as the Aberrant seemed, he wouldn't figure out how to switch ammunitions.

Dread sank its molten claws into Xlack's gut. If the drug didn't work on the troopers but it did on Azin, he had a horrible suspicion what it was.

Xlack's finger curled against the trigger.

A hand clutched his ankle and yanked him backward. As he splashed into the water, burning muscle gripped his wrists and trapped his arms behind him. A kick between his shoulder blades wrung air from his lungs, and his stolen pistol hurried off to find the bottom of the pond.

Xlack returned the kicks, but he wouldn't allow instinct to match his attacker's heat. He forced his temperature to lower, to take the energy he sapped from his surroundings and hoard it. It wanted to be chaos. He molded it into a motionless dance.

Questions sought to distract him. The sigils on his opponent's shoulders touted allegiance to the hundred-and-fifth legion of Napix's Yakru territory, but they said nothing of rank. This man wasn't a trooper. Though he wore no scarf, cape, or clan embroidery to reveal his caste, his Fire Talent spoke in their stead. This was an Aylata.

Despite the cold, the Aylata held on tight. Bubbles waltzed through the pond's slushy state and twirled with their thrashing kicks. Xlack wrenched one wrist free and twisted to face his attacker. In the flickering light from the surface, the dull chrysolite of the Fire Aylata's eyes effervesced.

Had he known Xlack had Mind Talent, he would not have let their gazes meet, but how could he have guessed? Xlack had already shown his Kinetics and Ice. By the time he noticed the third Talent, the man couldn't look away. His frustration was a simple string curling around Xlack's mental fingers.

Neither of them could breathe here underwater. Silent suggestions were more difficult and dangerous, but this had to end quickly.

Xlack gathered all the strands of their desperation, wound them around the cord, and yanked. 'Sleep.'

The Fire Aylata's eyes slid shut.

Xlack towed him to the pond's edge and left him strung over the side like a discarded fish. Azin lay nearby, a limp arm across his chest. Aside from a dozen dart punctures, he didn't appear injured, but if the drug was what Xlack suspected, he wouldn't.

Except, the drug Xlack knew wouldn't have killed him in such small quantities. He should only have been comatose, but Azin wasn't breathing, and his life-signature had faded beyond detection.

At the platform's edge, the Tala girl lay slack in the arms of a limping trooper. Xlack reached toward them, Kinetics shoving at the trooper's suit. As the man backpedaled over empty air, Xlack's influence found a grip on the girl's non-Metacloth belt and towed her to the safety of his embrace.

A glider's wings unfolded from the trooper's pack, and he swooped away. The other snatched the Fire Aylata and did likewise.

Xlack watched, gulping air. At least he had saved the kid, but as the troopers shrank in the distance, his sightline fell to Azin. If he was a teacher, a sutae who raised Magni hybrid children, why would he come here?

"You said you were going to help him!" The first Aberrant child to fall from the platform now charged across it. Rifo followed, wincing at the noxious tincture of frustration and fear seeping from the boy like a horde of flaming arrows. They bellowed his intention before he scooped a silver circle from the ground and snapped it open.

Xlack couldn't see the color of the Aqkashi's searing tendrils. He never could if they were anything other than a shade of gray. They were a slight distortion of what lay behind them, arranged in the shape of a narrow whisk that extended from either side of the handle, ends broken and pointed. Yet, their heat still bathed his skin, promising to shred it if they came any nearer. They pulsed in tune with what had been Azin's life-signature. The weapon had been Azin's.

Holding the girl to his chest, Xlack caught the boy's hand and stilled the weapon. The child's wrist fit between his fingers, all attempts to wrench free inconsequential. A squeal escaped as he met Xlack's gaze.

"Sleep."

The boy collapsed over his teacher.

Rifo knelt alongside Azin, and two fingers pressed against the Aberrant's neck confirmed what Xlack already knew. "I'd rather have gotten some answers from him."

Xlack agreed, questions an avalanche within. He deactivated the Aqkashi and pocketed it. "He's dead, Rifo. He can't answer anything."

"I meant from the kid. We should call an official." Rifo stood, pikes of bright hair tousled by the breeze as he tapped the sys clipped to his ear.

Xlack's attention dropped back to Azin, eyes narrowing as if answers were written on the dead man, readable to anyone who looked hard enough. Why had Napix troopers attacked him, and what was that drug?

A spiked stone rolled in Xlack's stomach. He had left Napix and chosen to make a life for himself here, with Adjuvants in the Knalcal Alliance. It was different, at times difficult, but he tried. He didn't need Napix to show up now, especially today.

An hour ago on the tram, Twi had whispered, "This contest is one chance every fifty years to prove ourselves. This morning, we are low-rankers and young. This evening, we could be anything."

The fact that "anything" included "dead" hadn't occurred to Xlack.

Call ended, Rifo knelt again, lilt thick with remorse. "He looks familiar, but I don't remember his name." He gestured at the scar on Azin's left hand, scaled silver like his Knalcal birthmarks but more jagged. A caricature of fire had been carved into him in childhood. "He was apparently true-talent. To be branded so is considered an honor among Aberrant, though it must hurt like swallowing a pooff whole."

Xlack didn't get the analogy. Pooff were creatures that appeared to be the size of his fist, but seventy-five percent of that mass was fluff.

"Did ya see who killed him?"

"Yeah." But Xlack didn't feel like telling his assigned partner, his amaraq. Not yet. Maybe after the competition when the team was victorious and reunited: Zeln and Aarex, Stevalok and Entrycii, Twi and Lanox. Even little Teree and Naday who weren't in the competition. When he could watch all their backs.

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