“Da. I have checked and run perimeter, checked for bugs, and run EMP to be sure any that are already here are taken care of,” said Shura said, before a heavy pause. “You have Manya and your father?”
“He has no one!” my father blustered from the seat beside me, coughing wetly and putting his knuckles to his mouth as spittle sprayed the dashboard in front of him. “Is that how you talk of me when I cannot hear you? ‘Have me,’ as if I am some invalid. Pah!” My father spat, rubbing the underside of his nose and glaring at the radio through slanted eyes.
“Apologies, Papa Koalistia,” Shura muttered deferentially, his surprise evident. “I was told one of the other byki would be collecting the two of you.”
The muscle in my jaw twitched, my fingers flexing once more.How convenient, for him to think that the three of us would be separated, leaving me alone. Fuck.
But I didn’t want to think like that. “Send me the coordinates, I’ll be there as soon as possible.” I didn’t wait for a goodbye nor did I offer one of my own before ending the phone call.
My father stared at me contemplatively, a quiet kind of respect in his gaze that I hadn’t been expecting. “You still think it is Shura?” he asked, his body language impassive.
“Da,” I muttered, unable to expand any further than that.
“Then what are you going to do?” There seemed to be a test behind those words, a kind of quiet patience that meant more than his usual gusto.I knew what to do; I had spent my entire life passing his systems of checks and balances, learning from his cues and his demands.
“I’m going to go to the location,” I answered slowly, as the GPS coordinates dinged on my phone showing me where Shura was asking us to go. “And then I am going to kill him.”
The sharp gasp from the seat behind me was just as emphatic as the grunt of acknowledgment to my right that, for the first time ever, meant absolutely nothing—not in the face of what I was being made to do.