Chapter 50: A World Beyond Us
K slid his fingers across the security lock of his shared apartment, the door chimed and clicked open. The large space lit up and the sight that greeted him nearly knocked him unconscious.
Lex and Iniko were at each other’s throat. Literally.
The woman Matyr had her forearm pressed into Iniko’s neck while Iniko locked her legs around her neck and her palm pointed at Lex’s neck. Her nails prickling into her neck.
Since they had returned from Nythera and the two had been admitted by medics they had been acting strangely. From the day he had woken up to the two of them ’lending’ him heat to when they were released and Lex insisted she stay with him at his shared home.
He inhaled and cleared his throat, "what is going on here?"
The two women instantly released each other.
"K! Welcome home!"
Iniko shot forward, her arms spread as she went in for an unsolicited hug.
K side stepped her but she recovered quickly and latched onto his leg.
"I was teaching Lex how to properly disorient her foes when held in a headlock, her arm is still healing and we need her to be in top shape by the time it has fully healed!"
Quite thoughtful.
He rubbed her head and waddled to where Lex stood.
"Hand."
He held out his hand for her to show him her still stiff limb. The cast had been removed and replaced with a sling.
"The doctor said I’d be fine, it’s healing at a really fast rate. What did Bak say?"
K sighed and shook his head.
"Still the same thing. We wait til your arm is fully healed."
"What? The doctor might be in danger!"
"Bak doesn’t really care, Lex, he’s stalling... and I don’t know why."
"I’ll go talk to him."
"What difference would that make? We are both soldiers asking for the same thing, he’d just give you the same fucking answer."
"..."
"Where’s your friend?"
Iniko climbed up, wrapping her legs around his waist. Her chest pressed into his back, the thin material of her camisole did nothing to tone the buds that poked into him down.
"Kagu?"
"Yes, the cute girl."
"She’s currently on lockdown."
"What?" Lex gasped.
"Bak had technical experts limit her hopping and confined her to Thira’s lab."
"...that is so cruel."
"It’s Bak, what did you expect?"
"..."
"I still don’t understand why he insists that you come with us."
"He always has his reasons..."
"If only we had Kagu, she would have had this fixed and done."
"..."
"And apparently Thira has been doing a lot of things behind our backs."
"What?"
Do not get ahead of yourself.
K turned to face where the voice came from. Shira hovered at a corner in the room. Her eyes bore into his with something unknown.
Do not rush into things.
And why is that?
I...
Tsk.
"I have to go wash up."
Iniko let go of him and slid into the couch nearby.
He gave Lex’s arm one last long look before heading inside to wash away today’s rejection.
Meanwhile...
Back in Thira’s private lab, Kagu hacked away at the restrictions binding her.
It was risky but it had to be done.
Her master needed her help.
The coordinates she had given K to show Bak weren’t wrong, she was sure of it. She even ran multiple recalculations but the answers remained the same.
So why did Bak’s people rule it as incorrect and off proportion?
Something was fishy and she would surely get to the root of it.
She was a firewall deep when the doors to the lab chimed and slid open.
Admiral Bak Seong-Hyun sauntered in, his eyes darting around the lab as if searching for something.
"Admiral." She bowed while subtly dismissing her holographic tabs.
"K.A.G.U."
"Yes, how may I be off help to you today?"
The admiral said nothing. He just kept staring at the surrounding of the lab, it took a while but he finally settled on Kagu’s outlet.
"Give me your analysis on this projection."
He held out a round black disc, a small silver circle rotated between it before shooting up into a diagram display.
It was the same coordinates calculation they had done about a week ago.
"My navigation team says there is no intersection between this three lines and therefore no definitive point to mark as a target location. What is your analysis, K.A.G.U?"
Kagu swallowed and increased her frame size until she was nearly as large as the display. Her eyes scanned the projection over and over again.
It was true.
The lines didnt intersect so there wasn’t a definite point to mark...
"I reran calculations sir, these coordinates are accurate as accurate can be. The only explanation I can give for this is that the calculations would lead to three different locations."
"Look here."
She spun the hologram to face him and pointed at where the three lines began to converge.
"Like a road before it splits into three different directions."
"I’m not sending my soldiers to an indefinite location—"
"You don’t have to! We could send an exploration team! You could have passed the clearance for it a week ago had your answers by now."
"Watch it."
He growled, "do you see the distance between our mother planet to that uncertainty? We don’t even know what’s out there! What if it’s all a trap? Huh?"
"How could this be a trap? My master is in danger!"
"It could be a staged thing for all I know!"
"...how can you say that?"
"If he can go behind my back and make you, go behind my back and take out K’s pellet then I’m pretty sure he can! Who knows, he was probably in contact with them all this while."
"My master isn’t someone like—what did you say? The doctor t-took out K’s pellet?"
Something flickered across the admiral’s face but he quickly played it off.
"You’ll rerun your calculations again, I’m not sending my men into a world we know nothing of."