Free Beyond the Red by Ava Jae Page B

dying. I’m not sure if it’s blood on my lips or tears on my cheeks or saliva on my chin.
    Someone peels back the eyelid on my right eye and bright light pours into half my brain and the fire—it’s an explosion. I jerk my head away and someone mutters something and hands grip both sides of my skull, holding my head still.
    I can’t move and the white sun is igniting my eye and the explosion is going to consume me, the pain is going to kill me. I’m dying. I must be. I don’t know what I did to deserve this kinduv death, this kinduv agony, but it needs to end. It needs to stop because I can’t handle it much longer. I can’t hold on like this.
    Then someone says “phaser” and the sun shuts off and hands release my head, release my arms. It’ll be over soon. They’ll end the torture.
    Something hot slams my chest—races through my veins—reaches my skull and—

There is blood on the textured white floor of the dining hall and the doctor just shot the half-blood in the chest.
    I whirl around and snatch the phaser out of her hand. “What in Kala ’s name was that? I tell you to help him and you kill him?”
    Her eyes widen, stretching the black text marked beside her left eye. “ N-Naï , el Avra ! He’s not dead—I stunned him. Or, I should say, I stunned the nanites. He’s having a reaction to the tracking nanites we injected him with. I-it’s rare, but we can flush them from his system and—”
    “Just take care of him,” I say, and she nods and works with her apprentices to slide a floating board beneath him and rush him to the infirmary. Long after the doors slam shut behind them, the half-blood’s screams echo in the room. In my ears, compounded by the angry chorus flooding the hall from the guide coverage of the riot outside.
    I pinch the bridge of my nose and inhale deeply. Anja whispers something about bringing Iro to my room and finding someone to clean the mess. I nod. Her footsteps pad quietly across the cool stone, followed by the whoosh of a closing door.
    I open my eyes and grimace at the blood smeared on the floor. I hope he’ll be all right.
    I turn on Dima and his men. “Everyone out except for my brother.” For a breath, no one moves, and I step forward and clap at them. “Now!”
    Jarek pulls his bloody fists behind his back and grimaces at Dima. The two exchange a look I don’t understand—Jarek almost seems reluctant to leave—but before I can question it, he turns away and files out with the others.
    Dima turns to me with an unapologetic glare, with a simmering behind his eyes that makes me want to slap him and strip him of his title. If he wasn’t my brother, I would do just that.
    I break the silence first. “You have yet to explain to me what in Kala ’s name happened.”
    He pauses, then tightly crosses his arms. “He showed me disrespect.”
    “Oh? And how is that?”
    “He made a mess in the training room, lied about it, then attacked one of my men.” There was more—I can see it in the way he glares at the puddle of red-tinted blood on the floor—and the blossoming bruise on his left cheek might have something to do with it.
    I almost hope the half-blood hit him. It’s about time someone stood up to my sko of a brother.
    “I assume all of this was unprovoked,” I say. “And he began tearing apart the training room and attacking your men without cause.”
    Silence. That’s what I thought.
    “I must also assume, then, that your men were not aptly trained to handle a threat from a half-blood slave.”
    He scowls and steps toward me. “My men were handling the situation.”
    “Oh, that I can see. Sha, they handled it exquisitely well, didn’t they?”
    “You disrespect my—”
    “Naï, Dima, I’m stating fact. Had your men handled the situation well, I would not have witnessed what I did. He never would have made it to the dining hall, and there wouldn’t be blood on the floor at your feet.”
    He glares at the reddish-purple smear again.
    “You