[LEGACY VERSION] The Emperor of Time (Book 1 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 24 - Landon

The Armada was still close behind but Luc slowed, looking for Damon's orange uniform and arm sling. He didn't see it. Maybe a flash of red from someone's jacket ahead of him, but not orange. The crowd pushed him back. Someone tried to grab the shackle cord between his wrists but Luc ducked aside.

Behind him, the Armada loud comm continued its bellow. "Move aside! Pursuit of fugitives!"

He had to keep going. But he had to find Damon. Damon would show up loudest on the Kynaston-tuned scanners. Void, and he should have found some way to re-encrypt Damon as an adult. If he had, they wouldn't be here right now. None of this would have happened.

And they'd still be slaves, wouldn't they?

A sudden pain sliced through Luc's head and then drove itself deeper. He bared his teeth and staggered to one side, blinking hard to keep from blacking out.

A flood of images forced their way into his mind, drowning out all else. Flashes of corridors. A confused jumble of station schematics--and Damon in slaves' orange, shackled to a group of slaves. Pain ripped up his arm. He saw numbers, and interspersed with it all, a view of a grim-faced woman in Armada uniform. A name bubbled up. Talina Zivali. Friendly.

Luc clutched his head and growled. Was the woman--Talina--in his head? He shoved against the intrusion of images.

"Landon."

Luc's breath went out in a rush. His senses trickled back. People were eyeing him. He stumbled back into motion.

Find her. Free Damon. Get the hell out of here.

The voice faded, and so did the images.

Luc knew that voice, and he didn't want to think about it.

But he had to, didn't he?

"Move aside! Pursuit of fugitives!"

He forced himself to keep running. The voice had been Alexi's. But he'd watched Alexi get shot. Alexi had taken pulse darts to his chest and shoulder. He'd seen Alexi collapse, unconscious. Or maybe dead.

He hated himself for running away.

Luc tried the idea that the voice and images were from Alexi's ghost and dismissed it. He knew Alexi was not what he seemed, gods he knew. But he hadn't thought, even with what Alexi had told him about himself, that he'd feel anything for him other than contempt at the whole situation. But when he'd watched Alexi jerk and fall under the pulse dart fire, it had been like watching his son.

Alexi was something that shouldn't be possible. So Luc would go on the assumption that Alexi wasn't dead, and that the images he'd dumped in Luc's head had a purpose.

His attention snapped back to one image--Damon bent over, pain ripping up his left arm. Slavers. Damon had been taken by slavers.

The Armada loud comm came again, much too close now. He'd lost precious seconds during that mental invasion.

Void. He wouldn't do Damon any good if he was caught. And they'd known Alexi on sight, even with his appearance altered to the unusual pallor that is was now. He had to assume the Armada could mark any of them visually.

Luc veered toward the vendor stalls lining the concourse. He pressed the hidden releases that would make the shackle cuffs fall off and triggered one before he reached the stalls. His right hand came free.

He ducked into a clothing shop. The Armada's scanners would still find him here, if they were looking for him--he would strip out of the slave's orange and get out.

"Hey." The shopkeeper started toward him from the back of the shop, pulling his pistol.

Luc swiped his halo and made it be a knife. His attempt to disguise the weapon was lost, though, as it cracked open to full length, blades sliding out.