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He staggered back. His lips white and pinched. His hands shook as he raised them hesitantly towards her face.
“Kara?”
Her own hand shaking, she reached out to him. But then he stepped back.
“No,” he said, voice hard. He took another step backwards. “No, it’s not you, it can’t be. I looked everywhere. I’ve searched. For years, I’ve searched.” He sucked in a deep breath. “She died. My sister is dead!” He knocked her hand back and spun around to leave the room.
But Kara grabbed his hand, holding on tightly. For once she would gladly use her strength. She couldn’t lose him again.
“But I didn’t. It’s really me. She rescued me from that place.” Kara pointed at Isra. But still, he wouldn’t turn back, yet he didn’t pull away from her.
“Brother, it really is me.” She licked her lips, desperately thinking of a way to convince him. Where were her memories when she wanted them? She thought desperately, trying to remember something, anything, to make him believe her. Slowly, a memory bubbled to the surface. “On Alkath you’d take me to play with the fish in the aquaponics habitat, do you remember?” His shoulders tensed, but he stopped pulling away. Hope seared her heart. “I’d always be getting into trouble with our parents, but you’d be there for me. And you didn’t tell them how often I’d sneak away to dance in the fields. You’d even do my chores for me so I wouldn’t get in trouble.” This had to work, or she didn’t know what to do. “On that last day, I gave you berries.”
He slowly turned back to her, his eyes searching her face. “Kara?”
“Eternities, yes. It’s me.” She sniffed back tears.
Then she was enveloped in his arms, squeezed tight. She never wanted to move as they both cried. In joy. In remembered loss and pain. In relief and disbelief.
Eventually, the tears subsided, and Arlen leant back, still keeping his arm around her shoulders. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.” He grinned. “What happened to you? Where’ve you been? And what have you done to your hair? It’s gross.”
She made a helpless gesture, unsure where to start. Despite him being her brother, despite being happier than she thought possible, the years of her service with the Elites kept her reserved. And she didn’t want to tell him about what had happened to her in that base. So, she stuck to her cover story.
“I work, well worked, for the Council as an aide.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Isra minutely relax.
Arlen half gasped, half laughed at that, shaking his head again. “The Council, damn. No wonder I couldn’t find you, no way were we going that far into the Empire. I’m glad you got out of that base safely.” He grinned again and pulled her tightly into his side. “Can you believe it, Zeph? This is my kid sister.”
“And my hair’s like this because I put engine oil through it,” Kara muttered begrudgingly.
Arlen raised one eyebrow and started laughing at her.
“Don’t give me that look. It was the best I could do for a disguise. Violet-tinged hair is pretty distinctive, alright?”
The room filled with chatter and laughter as the tension from before disappeared. Arlen kept asking her questions and she answered as best she could, without talking about the Elites or her own experience at the hand of the Dark Raiders.
“Arlen, how did you end up here?” she asked at one point.
He sighed and stared at his cybernetics and a muscle in his jaw ticked and jumped. “They were augmenting us. Telling us they were improving us, making us better, stronger, faster.” He shook his head. “Taking away our chance to live a normal life with our families. A few of us didn’t like it. We didn’t like that they’d kidnapped us, killed our parents, siblings, partners. We wanted out. Turned out there were a lot of us unhappy with the way things were going, Zeph included.” Arlen gestured to the man.
Zeph grunted in agreement. “We were prisoners, and no convincing on their part was going to change my mind on that point. Nor Roth’s. We hatched a plan to escape.” He grinned.
“Yep, and they’d given us the means to do it too.” Arlen flexed his arm, the cybernetics rippling along with his muscles. “It was a hard-won battle. We lost good friends.” His voice dropped, eyes going distant. “I looked for you that night. I should have looked more, damn it!”
Kara reached out and cupped her hands around his fist. “You did what you could. I remember that night, the fires, the explosions. The chaos. Without you, I never would have escaped either, remember that.”
He looked at her in grief and tugged her back in for a fierce hug. “After I couldn’t find you, I came to the Dark Zone.” He kept holding her, and spoke to her head. “Not like I could go anywhere else. But I kept looking for you. I sifted through so much information, spent so many hours chasing leads. Why couldn’t I find you?” He grasped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length, staring at her intently.
He never would have been successful because the Sword and Shield had been very thorough in wiping her from the system. They had made it look like she’d died that night.
“I’m known as Kara Valkaith now. I was afraid someone from that planet would hunt me down, so I kept a low profile for the first few years.”
“Eternities, you would have been scared.”
“I didn’t think you’d survived either. I didn’t think you’d be looking for me, otherwise I would have risked it.” She placed her hands over his where they rested on her shoulders.
Arlen smiled at her in relief, once again looking at her from head to toe. “I was so scared they modified you, too. That you would have no life. How did you escape so unscathed?”
Isra caught Kara’s gaze, a wealth of warning in the momentary connection. Beside her, Tarsk shifted uncomfortably. She turned her attention back to Arlen before he could become suspicious.
“I don’t know why they treated me differently.” She shrugged helplessly. “I think they were going to do something, though. They were taking me from my cell when all the fighting broke out. That’s when I escaped, in the confusion.” It seemed to satisfy him.
“If only I’d found you that night.” He stroked the side of her face, tears filling his eyes again. “Things would have been so different.”
Yes, they would have, she thought. She met Tarsk’s solemn eyes. If Arlen had found her, she would be dead right now.