“You’re incapable of failure,” he replies. “You just need practice.” He holds up his wrist communicator. “Here.” He takes it off, holding it out in front of me. He presses the screen, displaying the time for me. “Focus on this.” He changes the time, setting it a few minutes ahead.
I try again to concentrate. I take a cleansing breath, inhaling Trey’s clean, masculine scent. I relax a bit. My eyes blur as I watch the timepiece tick away the moments. When I exhale, my breath is visible as cold, smoky plumes.
A trumpeting noise sounds near the entrance to Trey’s apartment. The holographic projector near the door lights up with the image of Wayra’s face filling the space. First Wayra’s nose is huge and then Wayra moves so that only his eye is projected. It spans the space of at least six feet. “May eye remind you,” Wayra’s voice pipes through the speaker in the wall, “that time waits for no one? Open the door.”
As my focus returns to Trey’s alert expression in the present, I break out into a smile. Trey smiles back and it causes my heart to race in my chest. “What is it?” Trey asks.
“Wayra is on his way here,” I reply. I begin to climb off Trey’s lap. He steadies me with an arm beneath my elbow. I don’t wait for him to rise, but hurry up the few steps to the main floor. From there I walk to Trey’s foyer and stand by the door. Over my shoulder, I tell Trey, “When Wayra arrives, he’s going to project an enormous, giant eye on the hologram.” Trey nears me, leaning against the wall by my side. He crosses his arms and waits. In a few minutes, a trumpeting noise sounds. Wayra’s nose appears larger than life and then his eye comes into focus. Through the intercom, Wayra’s voice booms, “May eye remind you—”
I push the button on the side of the door, triggering it to open and recess into the ceiling. “—that time waits for no one?” I finish for him.
Positioned with his eye nearly pressed to the black camera lens mounted by the door in the corridor outside, Wayra’s violet eyes widen in surprise before they quickly narrow into a scowl. “Don’t do that, Kricket!” He shivers as if he finds me creepy. “How did you know what I was going to say?” His broad, uniformed shoulder pushes past me into Trey’s apartment. He’s almost as big as Trey; they could be brothers in that regard, but Wayra has more of a brutish look, whereas Trey’s is refined.
“A lucky guess?” I offer.
Jax follows close behind Wayra with a serious expression on his face. It throws me off for a second, because Jax is usually very easygoing. He combs his dark hair from his eyes with his fingers, highlighting his need for a haircut. He’s probably the most lax Cavar when it comes to his hair. He let it grow a little longer when he was at the palace as my military bodyguard. I think it suits him as a medic.
“You’ve been playing with the future again, haven’t you?” Wayra asks. “Good, because we need your help. Something’s wrong.” He looks past my shoulder to Trey. “We can’t get close to Defense Minister Vallen’s office—it’s surrounded by Brigadets.”
My brow wrinkles. “Brigadets?”
Jax pipes in, “They’re another branch of armed forces separate from the Cavars. They’re not like us. Cavars are like your Marines—Brigadets are like . . .” He trails off, struggling for a word.
“Wackers,” Wayra says unhelpfully.
“Military police,” Trey provides the answer from behind me, frowning at Wayra for swearing in front of me.
“Yeah, they’re like military police,” Jax agrees.
“They’re knob knockers, Kricket. Stay away from them.” As if using his favorite filthy swear words is not enough, Wayra punctuates his words with a finger point in my direction. He glances past me again to Trey. “They’re following us. I clocked at least a dozen. What do you wanna do, Sir?”
Walking back into the apartment, I near the window again. From just behind me, Trey asks Wayra, “Are the cycles ready?”
Wayra nods. “Always.”
Trey looks in my direction once more, but his attention rests there only briefly before he focuses over my shoulder on the window at my back. Tensing, Trey moves to me, pulling me away from the window and behind his broad back. The sunlight that was streaming in the glass dims, casting a shadow on us. He gives a soft whistle, nodding toward the window. Wayra swears again under his breath and reaches for the pistol-like weapon on his belt that they call a harbinger.