Bree has recovered from surgery, but we’re still scheduling these ahead as we work on a secret project! Mwahahahaha! 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.
—
Even trapped in a nightmare where fire licked over his skin, burning it to ash, Sebastian heard the squeaky creak of the unoiled hinges on his bedroom door.
He flashed from sleep to battle-alertness in an instant. The pain faded more slowly, the heat of acid in his veins still vivid. He ignored the memory of it the same way he’d ignored the reality, and kept his breathing to the easy, steady rhythm of sleep.
The footsteps that followed were all wrong. There was no stealth in their even whisper, but they were still soft. Small feet, a short stride. Not hurried, not furtive. A child’s gait, more likely than not. Young.
Children could be dangerous, too. Especially in a place like Sector Three.
There was a gun under his pillow, two knives tucked between his mattress and the wall, and enough of an electrical charge in the ring around his thumb to drop a grown man when activated. Sebastian thought about Bren, asking him if he liked the violence, and throttled back the instinctive need to engage an enemy.
The footsteps approached his bed. The shoes squeaked. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell that the room was light enough that he’d slept past sunrise. Unsurprising when he’d spent most of the night finishing his upgrades on the truck. But it didn’t explain why there was a child on the fourth floor. In his room.
Anger burned in his gut. Not at the intrusion, but at the sheer recklessness of these people. No one should allow a child this close to him unsupervised. He could break the bones in an adult body without even trying. Children were so terrifyingly fragile.
And he was a monster.
“I know you’re awake,” a quiet voice whispered. “It’s okay. I pretend too, when I’m scared.”
The voice sounded so young, but the words held a weary wisdom. Pricked by the sympathy in them, Sebastian opened his eyes and turned his head.
A girl stood next to the bed. She had huge brown eyes, freckles, and dark hair in a messy braid. Bits had escaped to curl around a serious face that was still thin, likely from recent malnutrition. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, but her gaze was far from childlike.
She was clutching a huge stuffed dragon in one arm. It was vividly colored, bright orange and green, with cheerfully vicious felt teeth. As Sebastian watched, unblinking, the girl gently reached out and deposited the dragon on the edge of the bed.
“My uncle Ace gave him to me,” she said earnestly. “He protects me from nightmares. You can borrow him.”
Sebastian studied the girl. “Why do you think I need protection from nightmares?”
“I could hear you through the door.” Her gaze scanned his face with innocent concern. “It sounded bad. I have bad ones, too. Were you in the war?”
Lying there while a tiny child stared at him was too awkward. He’d gone to bed in pants and a T-shirt, so he picked up the dragon and slowly rose to swing his legs over the bed. Seated on the edge, he was only a few inches taller than her. “Something like that.”
“A lot of people here were in the war.” She shifted her weight. “I’m Dee.”
At a loss, Sebastian stared at her. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be up here, Dee. Six would not like it.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “It’s not exactly against the rules,” she said far too quickly. Her defense tumbled out with the conviction of someone who’d already practiced it in anticipation of having to use it. “I’m allowed to come see Zayan when he’s here. And I can’t know if he’s here if I don’t come up and check. But then I heard you and I didn’t want you to be scared. Now you don’t have to be.”
Sebastian turned the dragon over in his hands. It was high quality, clearly sewn with deep love. Glittery thread outlined each individual scale, and the fabric felt hand-woven, instead of the synthetic stuff they made in Eight. For a child from an impoverished Sector like Three, it was an almost impossible treasure.
He was still trying to decide how to respond when he heard the door at the end of the hall crash open. The bootfalls approached at a near-run, and Sebastian wasn’t surprised when Six appeared in his open door, her expression blank and her fingers already curled around the butt of the gun strapped to her hip.
She took in the situation rapidly, with the sort of professional assessment he would expect of someone with her training. And her fingers stayed curled around the pistol. “Dee,” she said sharply.
Dee drew in a deep breath. “I’m allowed to come see Zayan when he’s here, and I can’t know if he’s here if I don’t–”
“Hallway.” Six didn’t raise her voice, but the crisp command brooked no nonsense. “Now.”
With one last worried look, Dee scrambled past Six. She turned at the last minute to peek around Six’s waist. “You can keep Sir Puff until you feel better.”
Six spared him the necessity of figuring out how to reply. “Sally’s waiting for you in the kitchen, Dee,” she said without taking her gaze off Sebastian. “After breakfast, we’re going to talk about the rules again.”
It should have sounded like a threat from a woman gripping a firearm. But Dee heaved an aggrieved sigh and disappeared down the hallway. A few seconds later, he heard light footsteps skipping down the stairs.
Six exhaled and lifted her hand from her holster. “I’m sorry. It’s not personal–”
“Don’t,” he snapped, more harshly than he intended. But his temper, thwarted by his bafflement over Dee’s behavior, roared back to life. “I don’t want you to apologize for treating me like a threat. I am a threat.”
Six sighed and leaned back against the doorframe. “Everyone in the damn building is a threat, Sebastian. Did you forget to lock your door, or did she pick the lock?”
He honestly couldn’t remember. He’d been tired when he’d finally sought his bed, and the last thing he’d been worried about was the possibility that a child would try to get into his room. He was usually the one being locked out. The monster people tried to keep away.
Besides, the kinds of things he feared couldn’t be stopped by a lock.
Just like that, his temper fizzled. “I might have forgotten,” he admitted. “I won’t in the future.”
“We should also upgrade your lock.” Six’s lips quirked in a half smile. “Dee is…precocious. And she has way too many indulgent aunts and uncles.” Six hesitated, then nodded to the stuffed dragon he was still holding. “I take it you were having a nightmare?”
“Apparently.” Not that it was unusual. It had been a long time since Sebastian slept without nightmares. He hadn’t realized he verbalized the distress though. Not that the Base would have told him. He was sure there was an observation file somewhere detailing every twitch and groan in minute detail, but he’d declined Ashwin’s offer to obtain it for him. Sebastian preferred not knowing which memories were real.
Six sighed. “It’s a thing here. Dee’s sensitive to it. The first month she lived with us, she’d wake up screaming. Ace painted her walls with dragons and gave her Sir Puff to guard her dreams. So now she wants to protect everyone else.”
The name hadn’t registered before, but Sebastian tilted his head as the memory clicked into place. Even a Makhai who almost never left the Base was drilled in the power players in various Sectors. “Ace is…Alexander Santana? The O’Kane artist?”
“Mmm. He’s mentoring one of Dee’s brothers. She adores him, and he’s not immune to her big eyes.” Six huffed. “No one is except me, which means I’m going to have to be the bad guy. But I’ll make sure she doesn’t come up here again. For everyone’s sanity.”
Relieved and still oddly at a loss, Sebastian held out the dragon. “You should return this to her.”
“I will.” Six accepted Sir Puff, her fingers stroking over the shimmering scales. “I know what it’s like, you know. To come from someplace terrible, and all the crazy fuckers in this new place are acting like reckless lunatics and talking wild shit about family and safety. It feels like bullshit. It’s fucking scary.”
It was too accurate. Sebastian said nothing.
“I’m not going to talk wild,” Six continued. “We’re not all safe here. We’re not even all a family, yet. Because most of us came from someplace terrible. And we all have nightmares, Sebastian. Every fucking one of us.” She met his gaze firmly. “That’s why Ashwin sent you here, you know. Because you’re one of us, even if you don’t know it yet.”
Something inside him cracked, the pain so sharp he almost hissed. He curled his fingers around the mattress and rode out the pain of it. He knew why the words hurt. They were a fantasy, the cruelest sort imaginable. A Makhai soldier didn’t belong anywhere but the Base, and barely there. It was the first lesson they learned, ground into them every time they faced the fear and horror in the eyes of the people they’d been created to protect.
The citizens of the Base liked having monsters on chains to do the monstrous things that kept them safe. They even faked a grotesque sort of respect. But all the extra coffee rations and fresh fruit in the world couldn’t turn the way people had skittered out of his path in instinctive horror into anything but rejection.
Sebastian was Makhai. That was what he was. The only brotherhood that could ever say you’re one of us and mean it.
It had to be true. Because if it was a lie, Sebastian would have suffered for nothing.
“I am what I am,” he forced out, faking a calm he didn’t feel. “I’ll install a proper lock on my door tonight. The truck is fixed. Do you have a new task for me?”
“I’m sure Bren’s got a list.” Six tilted her head. “He’s going to be at breakfast soon. The staff usually eats before the kids show up, if you want to join him. That way you two can run before the full mob descends.”
Sebastian preferred taking meals in his room, but he had promised Bren one week. Six more days of engaging with these aggressively irrational people, and then he could retreat and crush the fantasy of being anything other than a broken tool.
“I’ll be there,” he promised. And he would be.
After all, he’d survived the worst torture the Base could throw at him. What was the worst a handful of whores and street orphans playing at being teachers could do to him?